Man of the Year (Contd.)

Sir / Two of the greatest strengths of the U.S. are its resiliency--its ability to face its errors and to recover from them --and its decisiveness, most apparent when it has decided upon its goals.

Richard Nixon, more than any other American in recent history, has championed these traits. He not only deserves TIME'S Man of the Year [Jan. 3] citation, but also a second term as the President of the U.S.

ROBERT A. WALL

Berkeley, Calif.

Sir / How frightening it is to have a mummy in the White House. The symbolism of your cover picture cries out for interpretation. Not a life-and-blood Nixon but a memorial of the most perishable claim to fame as well as notoriety --the daily headlines.

Congratulations for this surrealistic revelation of a poignant truth.

(MRS.) CHRISTA TALBOT

Moravia, N.Y.

Sir / I resent your scurrilous portrayal of the President of the United States on the cover. You have given aid and comfort to the enemy. You have taken a cheap shot at a great man.

LEROY LUTES JR.

Colonel, U.S.A. (ret.)

Alexandria, Va.

Sir / Yes, President Nixon has done a lot in 1971--definitely more than he did in 1970. But he has only gone from being a very bad President to being a bad President. It would be more appropriate to make him Most Improved Man of the Year. If he continues to improve at his current rate, he might be an excellent President in 20 or 30 years.

CHARLES BRYAN COX

Rock Port, Mo.

Sir / Your selection is a bad joke in poor taste. Since when were his "shocks" and "surprises" anything but betrayals of our few friends? Under whose leadership was our country worse off?

(MRS.) ELMA ROSENBERG

Poughkeepsie, N.Y.

Sir / Stop the world! I want to get off --Nixon is Man of the Year.

ARTHUR S. DROOKER

New York City

Missing Image

Sir /1 sadly noted that Women's Lib didn't make your "Images '71" [Jan. 3].

Instead, the usual sexist stereotypes appear: woman as bride, wife and helper; woman as victim (Ireland); woman as prostitute and temptress (Mary Magdalene in Jesus Christ Superstar); and finally, woman as sex object and clothes horse, cavorting in hot pants.

Would Indira Gandhi have made "Images" if no war had occurred between India and Pakistan?

PAT K. LYNCH

New York City

Vengeance and the Camera

Sir / Vivid pictures like those accompanying your article "Vengeance in Victory" [Jan. 3] may win awards for photographers, but in me they evoke only shame. It pains me to witness, albeit vicariously, the degradation of man. Obviously the Bengalis are totally consumed by vengeance and the sick need to retaliate in kind, but I cannot understand how Western newsmen can hold their cameras so still while other men are being brutally murdered.

I also cannot understand how newsmagazines justify reprinting these obscene horrors.

(MRS.) ELIZABETH F. SHAPIRO

Chicago

Sir / The Mukti Bahini get much applause for the nine months they resisted the barbarian rule of the Pakistan army, but the ecstatic joy of the guerrillas at the liberation of their country soon turned to a savage spirit of vengeance.

The guerrillas may feel justified, and they are, in wanting revenge for the reign of terror. But to inflict that revenge makes them no better than the Pakistanis they hated so much.

DAVID SNIDER

Fairbanks, Alaska

Sir / I wonder whether your brutal pictures will wake us up to the ugliness in the world or will merely condition us to accept it here at home.

THOMAS C. HARNEY

Los Angeles

Daring to Meddle

Sir / I think your new typographic format [Jan. 3] is wonderful. It's one small step for TIME and one giant step for your readers.

For a month or so you'll get complaints because you dared to meddle with an institution, but functional changes soon pay for themselves in optometrists' bills.

TIMOTHY D. BUNN

Syracuse

Sir / Your wider margins will now enable me to read TIME in the bathtub without getting the type wet and smeared.

DOUG PALMER

Minneapolis

Sir / Your new layout has about as much style and taste as a cookbook.

JIM SWANSON

Chicago

Jobs for Vets

Sir / I was disturbed by the article "JOBS --The Plight of Viet Nam Era Vets" [Dec. 27]. I acknowledge the great problem of recruiting these young men and bringing them back to meaningful places in our economy and society, but your story offers a gloomy appraisal of one of the few programs that is doing something positive about the situation. It condemns the program to failure before it has had a chance to succeed.

This is a new challenge for the National Alliance of Businessmen, an unprecedented partnership between Government and business, and certainly one of the outstanding business-Government success stories of our time. This organization has found jobs for more than 750,000 people classified as unemployable in the past three years. You must be aware that the request to find jobs for 100,000 veterans was an addition to NAB's goal of 225,000 jobs for poor and disadvantaged Americans in the current fiscal year.

The veterans program is now moving into full-scale operation. It is producing results at a level that assures its success in attaining its goals.

JOHN D. HARPER

Chairman of the Board

Aluminum Company of America

Pittsburgh

Return to Rotten Teeth

Sir / The small item, "The Age of Reason" [Jan. 3], noting the growing phenomenon of the anti-or at least ascientific ambience in society, including intelligent society, alarms me.

If problems of overpopulation, war, famine, racism or crime are to be solved, rational processes will solve them. Those who squander their mental energies upon occult matters, such as astrology, tend as a class to depend upon the technologists and rationalists. I fear that if the present trend continues, our society will evolve toward exquisite dependency upon a dangerously small percentage of our members who remain in the rationalist camp. Should this come to pass, I fear that within a generation we would return to 30-vear life expectancies, rotten teeth and digging in the dirt with sticks for our food.

NORMAN POS

Imperial Beach, Calif.

Sir / I doubt that Carl Jung ever studied astrophysics; however, he did study astrology. Are we to call him "antiscience" or "anti-intellectual"?

Dr. Bromley's remarks on the growth of "antiscience or anti-intellectual activity" reflect the attitude that all that is not science is not fit subject matter for study. It is in part this unimaginative attitude that reflects the poverty of the present scientific endeavor and turns seekers of truth away from science.

LAWRENCE LECHNER

Rochester

Discordant Note

Sir / Let this 20-year member of "Jimmy's own" Local 299 in Detroit check in with a discordant note amid the jubilation over news of Hoffa's release [Jan. 3] by your Man of the Year.

The President's humanitarian instincts notwithstanding, his action here was the consummately cynical move of the total politician. Its immediate effect is negation of a formidable body of congressional testimony and the dedicated efforts of men such as John McClellan and Robert Kennedy. It also lends further credence to a growing suspicion that this Administration totally misreads public opinion.

To say that James R. Hoffa remains "tremendously popular" with rank-and-file Teamsters may or may not be true, but it overlooks many of us who long ago rejected--and have actively opposed--his autocratic brand of unionism.

JAMES P. LEAVITT

Detroit

Sign Language

Sir / It is really fantastic that "after more than six years of psychological and engineering research, the U.S. Department of Transportation is unveiling a whole new set" of pictorial traffic signs [Jan. 3] that have been in use in Europe for years. Why did Americans need six years of no doubt expensive research to copy European traffic signs?

(MISS) H.J. HARTONG

Rotterdam, The Netherlands

Sir / The basic shapes of the road signs date back to the Middle Ages. The gypsies used to mark a charcoal sign on the first available white wall of a village on the road. A triangle, the angle downward, stood for a hand with the index finger toward the ground and meant, "Danger, be careful, no hospitality"; the triangle with the angle upward, stood for a hand with the index finger aiming toward the sky and meant, "Go ahead, good place on this road"; a circle meant, "Nice place for the circle of the campfire, a place to rest."

EMILE MERLE D'AUBTGNE

Neuilly-sur-Seine, France

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