What Money Can Buy

Sir / Congratulations on what has to be the gutsiest (or most courageous, if you prefer) cover of TIME yet [Oct. 23].

Never has the word disgrace been more appropriately used than in describing an election costing $400 million.

MRS. PETER K. McMICHAEL

Cumberland, R.I.

Sir / I am impressed. All this wheeling and dealing just so poor li'l ole me can go to the polls on Election Day and vote for the best man money can buy.

SHIRLEY BILOW

Cranston. R.I.

Sir / I am appalled by TIME'S bias against the private financing of popular elections. No doubt you would enjoy seeing this system supplanted by a massive federal bureaucracy which would spend $4 out of every $5 on the administrative costs of allocating funds to prospective candidates. Which candidates would get how much?

No, what we need is candidates who have the integrity not to accept money with strings.

CHARLES CROSS

Lewiston, Me.

Sir / And we call it a free election!

M. VEDA BRINGHURST Lancaster, Pa.

Sir / Let us keep our perspective. I really don't see what the fuss is all about.

The election expense is only half a percentage point of our annual military budget, we only indulge in it once every four years, and it is just as important to us to ensure democracy.

Here, all the bags of money cannot take away the basic freedoms ensured us by the Constitution, wisely drawn, thank God. We would never vote a really bad rich man into office as President.

BORIS SOROKIN

Los Angeles

Sir / So the Chappaquiddick Kid, that paragon of virtue and morals even going back to his college days, is going to hold hearings into the campaign fund raising and behavior of the Republicans?

S.M.SILVERMAN

Baltimore

Sir / If Richard Nixon spends $45 million and gets reelected, it will have cost 34-c- per eligible voter. If George McGovern wins by spending $22 million, he gets the White House for only 17-c- per voter. Not too long ago, local yokels were paid $5 per vote, and that was just in the primary. Either the courthouse is worth a lot more than the White House, or wholesale is still cheaper than retail.

DAVID TOMPKINS,

Gastonia, N.C.

Sir / Just think: over $60 million for the presidential campaign, and I wouldn't give a dime for either candidate.

GABE GIBBONS

Houston

Gin Label on the Milk Bottle

Sir / Attempting to change a society through a mere change of words as discussed in your Essay on "Sispeak" [Oct. 23] affects that society about to the extent that pasting a gin label on a bottle of milk makes the contents eligible for martini construction. Words are not things; words are only words.

EDWARD M. ANTHONY

Pittsburgh

Sir / And from now on who will lie in wait in dark corners, the bogeyman, the bogeywoman or the bogeyperson?

C.A.ANDREWS

Houghton, Mich.

Sir / If feminists bent on emancipating the English language ever take over Madison Avenue, is it possible we will be in for a lot of ad-libbing?

DUNSTAN L. HAETTENSCHWILLER

Buffalo

Sir / When I finish my prayers, what do I say instead of Amen?

EDMUND B. FRIEND

New York City

Bound Over

Sir / In your article "Bracelets That Bind" [Oct. 23], you stated that President Nixon does not wear a P.O.W. bracelet. Whether it be for five minutes or five hours, the President was wearing his bracelet at the annual convention of the National League of Families of American Prisoners and Missing in Southeast Asia.

BARRI LYNN TWERSKY

New York City

qedTrue, but next day he gave it to his daughter Tricia.

Reflections after Death

Sir / My husband and I read with great interest the article on the Neiman-Marcus plaster dummies [Oct. 23].

May we suggest that the dummies would make great tombstones? The dummies could give their names, dates of birth, dates of death and personal philosophies. The descendants could drop by for a chat with Great-Aunt Mary. It could start a brand-new form of literature, "Reflections after Death."

(MRS.) CATHIE TUSHA

Kansas City, Mo.

Search for a Bigger Bungle?

Sir / The bombing of the French embassy in Hanoi [Oct. 23] has shown the world only that the U.S. Administration has not abandoned its predecessors' search for a bigger bungle for the buck.

PAUL VILLIERS

Reading, England

Sir / So Nixon sent a note of apology to France's Georges Pompidou. Now does he plan to apologize to the Vietnamese woman you pictured in the same article mourning for her dead family?

JOAN F. MALONE

Columbus

Rx for a Dose of Sugar

Sir / I find the TV review of the Julie Andrews Hour [Oct. 23] despicable. Can this lack of appreciation of a truly great talent possibly reflect the opinion of its viewers? Surely not. How much better this world would be if we acknowledged the fact that a spoonful of sugar helps any medicine go down. Perhaps Gerald Clarke should substitute a dose for the obviously bitter pills he swallows.

(MRS.) JOYCE B. ROEDING

Fairport. N.Y.

Science or Sorcery?

Sir / In your kind review of my book Social Sciences as Sorcery [Sept. 25], you unfortunately attribute to me a view that only a doctrinaire could hold: namely, that next to nothing has been added to man's knowledge of himself since the death of Herbert Spencer. It suffices only to mention the names of Freud, Adler, Pareto, Durkheim and Malinowski to show how absurd would be such an assertion. What I do maintain, however, is that the so-called "structuralists" and "structural-functionalists" offer us a garbled version of Spencer's century-old ideas as their latest discovery.

STANISLAV ANDRESKI

Reading, England

Peale with TM

Sir / It was great to see your article "TM: The Drugless High" [Oct. 23].

The effects of transcendental meditation and yoga, which I practice, combine the Norman Vincent Peale "positive thinking" with the soul searching and, ideally, self-understanding of psychiatric care.

I am glad to see that so many people are reaching out toward peace and enlightenment.

SANDRA WAGNER

Seattle

Sir / In your article on transcendental meditation you seem to hesitate to commit yourself to a decision on its effectiveness. Although I have been meditating just five months, I can say without a doubt that TM is a most effective way of achieving "deep thought, creative intelligence and expanded awareness."

KEPS ASKENASY

Tucson. Ariz.

Norway and EEC

Sir / Reading your article "Norway Says Nei to Europe" [Oct. 9] was not very satisfying. Norway did not say Nei to Europe; Norway said Nei to EEC. which makes a great difference. In the article, Norwegian anti-Marketeers were described as a group of diverse elements, upset farmers and selfish fishermen "supported by a diffuse alliance of Maoist youth, Lutheran fundamentalists, mildly leftist university professors," etc. This bunch was reported to "smash windows" and "rip radio aerials from cars bearing 'Yes to EEC' bumper stickers." The only argument this bunch was credited with was that "EEC membership would allow 'dirty Italians' to steal Norwegian jobs and 'rich Germans' to grab Norwegian land."

I think a majority of the Norwegians deserve a better description. The article could have been written by any Norwegian Eurocrat trying to cast suspicion on the Norwegian grass roots of anti-Marketeers.

BJARNE RO/SJO/

Ytre Enebakk. Norway

Real World Foods

Sir / Too bad you had to choose such a partisan nutritionist as Dr. Winick to cover the International Health Fair [Oct. 23]. Though he renders a service in exposing the faddism and snake-oil huckstering in the movement, he overlooks what will be its lasting effect: turning Americans away from the plastic "long shelf life" foods of the supermarkets back to the plain, flavorsome--and more healthful--foods of the real world.

TED BEAR

Edwards. Calif.

Sir / Jim Thorpe was recognized as the greatest athlete of his generation, all members of which were raised on "organic" foods.

He would have difficulty making a taxi squad on any of today's N.F.L. teams, which are loaded with men who can outrun his best times, outleap his best heights, and who hit with 40 or more pounds of additional muscle. These men were raised on food fortified with artificial preservatives, flavorings and colorings, and made available through the use of insecticides.

A.R. HELDT

Tucson, Ariz.

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