Bald Fact
Sir:
I'll bet any of your able editors the sum of $1 that the next President of the U.S. will be bald-headed . . .
ROBERT C. MASON
Los Angeles
Bishop on the Air Waves
Sir:
Let it be said, to TIME'S eternal credit, that its April 14 cover article ennobled one of God's noblemen. The Bishop Sheen story, like the Marian Anderson story [TIME, Dec. 30, 1946], will long be remembered as a superlative piece of biographical writing. Seldom have the spirit, the dedication and the intellect of a man been so completely captured. . .
FRANKLYN E. DOAN
Chicago
Sir:
Fearing that some irascible Protestant may send you an ill-favored letter of criticism of your feature article ... I hasten to write my thanks and appreciation . . .
(REV.) F. I. DREXLER
Mill Valley, Calif.
Sir:
Your article about Bishop Sheen was tops. A man so successful is a subject of interest to all ... Nevertheless, how can the average citizen forget that he gets wide publicity in the press such as his church does not allow when it is in control of a country?
The bishop is a member of a minority whose rights are protected by our Government ; yet there is danger that it will become the majority, then we, as the new minority, will be deprived of our rights and be treated as are Protestant minorities in Spain, Argentina, etc. . . . [Thus] His Excellency is a threat to the U.S. . . .
L. LEE LAYTON JR.
Dover, Del.
Sir:
. . . You've done a wonderful job of introducing and explaining Bishop Sheen to those who may wonder what a Roman Catholic clergyman is doing on television. Too many people (Roman Catholics included) have the feeling that priests should be as inconspicuous as possible, lest someone think that Rome is running the U.S. . . .
PATRICIA M. MADDEN
New York City
Sir:
I enjoyed your article on Fulton Sheen. He portrays Christian Truth in his programs only because he omits the relics, superstitions, traditions and nonBiblical hocus-pocus of the Roman Church . . .
(REV.) W. E. TREXLER
St. Stephen's Church (Evangelical and Reformed)
Perkasie, Pa.
Sir:
Bishop Sheen's Life Is Worth Living program might put a few psychoanalysts out of business. He has good medicine for a bewildered soul, and a lot more cures for a tired mind than listening to the antics of "Uncle Miltie."
Your presentation was wonderful, and proves that there is still room for God--even in a national publication.
GEORGE D. SCHECKEL
Chicago
Sir:
I am truly amazed. I had no idea our nation was blessed with a theologian of such stature that he influenced the popularity rating of Milton Berle to the extent of a ten-point drop . . .
JOHN MEEHAN
Boston
The Martians Are Coming
Sir:
It was a bright notion to use someone who had not read anything more recent than Robinson Crusoe to review my Galaxy Reader of Science Fiction [TIME, April 7]. To be expected, however, was the primitive satirical device of too-brief synopses to indicate absurdity. Shakespeare, by this method, reduces to boy meets girl.
Your tree-dwelling pundit can readily accept whatever exists, as shown by the appearance of the review in an issue that discusses such recent impossibilities as atomic medicine, antibiotics, rocketry. These, of course, were thoroughly explored in science fiction before they became reality . . .
H. L. GOLD
Editor
Galaxy Science Fiction
New York City
Sir:
I cannot understand why your book review columns never mention any science fiction publication without ridiculing it ...
There is much that is fascinating and worth reading in both fantasy and science fiction these days. So give us a break, will you? Enough people have laughed at this type of fiction already . . .
There's nothing wrong with imagination. Most great writers have delved into fantasy at one time or another. Verne, Wells, Poe and others are revered figures. Yet people scoff at the new stories in the genre . . .
DONALD V. ALLGEIER
San Marcos, Texas
Sir:
As one of the authors represented in the anthology, allow me to offer you my masochistic approval of your review . . . Spare a tear for the writer who understands just how bad science fiction is, but who needs the money. After what the avant garde boys have been doing to literature in the past 50 years, it is not easy to get anywhere with writing founded on respect for the past (economically, that is) ...
Think of us, writing the damned stuff . . .
JOHN CHRISTOPHER
London, England
Alma Mater or Rich Pater?
Sir:
As one of "the graduates at the bottom of the economic pyramid: teachers and preachers [median income: $3,584]," I shall not be able to buy your $4 book, They Went to College [TIME, April 7] I wish, therefore, that your three-column analysis had been clearer on one point, but what you do say lends weight to an idea about which I have long been wondering. Do not the higher salaries among the Ivy League graduates come primarily from the fact that a high percentage of them go into their father's business, their father-in-law's business, or into some other business open to them primarily through family contacts ? May not the group that does this (and inherits their parents' wealth) be large enough, and make enough money, to raise the general average? . . .
J. KENNETH O'LOANE
Durham, N.H.
Sir:
"The Old Grad" interested me. As an Indiana University senior, I find that I am: 1) a social science major; 2) a Phi Beta Kappa; 3) in four extracurricular activities; and 4) working my way through school. Am I doomed to dismal failure?
WARREN W. SHIREY
Bloomington, Ind.
P: Let Reader Shirey take heart. As a Phi Bete he might expect $5,141 (median earnings) a year; as a Hoosier, $5,176; as a campus hotshot, $4,775. As a social science major, TIME'S study indicated only that his tribe was increasing.--ED.
Free Air
Sir:
During the next few months, the Federal Communications Commission will hand out to lucky corporations and individuals all over the country--free of charge--more than 2,000 licenses for new TV stations. These licenses are, in effect, valuable perpetual monopolies (if the owner behaves himself), which we know, based on the prices radio stations have brought on sale, often sell for more than $1,000,000 each . . .
As these TV and radio broadcasting stations are such gold mines for the owners . . . why should not the owners pay annually a percentage of sales to the Government, as any merchant must do who leases a valuable property? It is time to let the poor taxpayer get on the broadcasting gravy train.
FRANK KLOCK
Pasadena, Calif.
Mrs. R. (Cont'd)
I am no New Deal fan, Roosevelt fan, nor even a Democrat, but I thought your [April 7] cover story on Eleanor Roosevelt in very bad taste, and written in a most petty and slighting manner, totally unworthy of a woman of her stature . . .
FLORA PENCOMAN
South San Francisco
Sir:
Your article . . . was gentle and sympathetic. You were appreciative of the handicaps of her particular life, and you condoned her trotting the stairways of the world, straightening its curtains--like a tolerant second cousin . . .
KATHRYN NELSON
Worthington, Minn.
Sir:
. . . Long may she traipse!
FRANCES STERN
New York City
Sir:
You may admire Mrs. Roosevelt--we pity her. Naturally, she is embarrassed at the discovery of the festering Red sores in her husband's administration, but she might have the grace and sportsmanship to admit their existence . . .
CATHERINE PRENDERGAST
Bronxville, N.Y.
Sir:
. . . You refer to a question which still troubles those who find it not difficult to resist her charm: "Does she know, with her feelings as well as with her mind, that Russia is a terrible and terrorized police state, ruled with complete cynicism by 'a gang of ruthless and bloody-minded professors?' " I know Mrs. Roosevelt knows, and I think she knows it with a feeling even deeper than Mr. Churchill's. She is a communist not a Communist; a democrat not a Democrat; and a christian not a Christian, as her "performance" of namaskar so movingly declares . . .
MARCIA LEE ANDERSON
Cambridge, Mass.
Sir:
. . . Mrs. R. is a great-hearted woman, in spite of her manifest ineptitudes . . .
KENDALL WEISIGER
Atlanta
Sir:
. . She has redeemed herself to some degree from being an active associate of a regime of incompetence and demagoguery. Why don't we let it go at that and let Eleanor retire to the sidelines where she truly belonged in 1932?
ROBERT FAIRBANK
Morro Bay, Calif.
Anguish in Bartlesville
Sir:
You may be forgiven for featuring a chess tournament in your Sport pages. You may be forgiven for nigh onto any other honest mistake. But take cover, brother . . . when you misplace a cherished possession of 20-odd thousand fight-at-the-drop-of-a-hat citizens of Bartlesville, Okla. When those citizens read in TIME, April 7 Sport section that the Phillips Oilers were from Denver, Colo., the air was rent with screams of anguish that would have done justice to the Brooklyn faithful in the Polo Grounds last October.
For the past 32 years, the Phillips Oilers have been a part of Bartlesville, and by dern tootin' they always will be, championship or no championship . . .
BILL MARINO
Bartlesville, Okla.
P: TIME'S Sport researcher, who is no one's brother, takes cover behind her blushes.--ED.
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