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Your article "Surviving the Super Bowl" [Jan. 24] is a sobering comment on life in America, where the term burnout is now more widely used than the word success. By insisting on winning in competitive sports, we have encouraged self-destructive behavior.
Kathleen Seusy Moline, III.
Stopping Scoff laws
Re your Essay on scofflaws [Jan. 24]: most people obey laws not because they fear the penalty but because they believe the laws to be good and necessary. Rules that are not widely perceived as essential tend to be ignored. This was the case with Prohibition; it may also be true of the 55-m.p.h. speed limit. If many motorists are ignoring the speed limit, they may be voting with their right foot.
John Griffiths Sedona, Ariz.
The growing disregard for the nation's laws is insidious and damaging to everyone's safety and welfare.
Kent E. Watson San Francisco
Reporting Economics
The networks are not only reporting the state of the economy, they are influencing it [Jan. 24]. The country's financial performance is affected by the expectations of Americans. By harping on bad economic news and ignoring the good, television undermines our confidence and therefore weakens the economy.
A. Robert Florio Jamaica, N. Y.
Australian Intrigue (Contd.)
I write as the former Governor-General of Australia who in November 1975 terminated the commission of Gough Whitlam as Prime Minister of Australia and thereby dismissed his government. You discussed that event in your issue of Dec. 13. Your article stated that since the dismissal, allegations have surfaced that "the CIA had a hand in Whitlam's fall." You referred to a recent piece in Foreign Policy magazine in which a Professor James A. Nathan stated that "a plausible case is being developed that CIA officials may have also done in Australia what they managed to achieve in Iran, Guatemala and Chile: destroy an elected government." I do not know what the CIA did or did not do in those other countries, but it is totally false to say that it did this in Australia.
Before publishing your story you gave me an opportunity to comment, but I decided to continue my longstanding policy of not speaking to the press about these events. However, Nathan's article presents much rumor, gossip and allegation as fact. As a result of being mentioned in TIME, his piece has received widespread circulation in the U.S. and throughout the world. Thus I have come to the conclusion that my denial of CIA participation in any act of mine should be equally widely published.
My decision to dismiss Mr. Whitlam was exclusively my own, made upon my sole and full responsibility as Governor-General. No one else produced it. The CIA had no part in it.
The Rt. Hon. Sir John Kerr London