Energy and Guilt

Sir / I hope your assessment of the American attitude toward the energy crisis [Jan. 21] is incorrect. Americans must realize that even if the present "crisis" has been engineered by the oil companies, the country must still admit to having squandered energy for much too long a time. If the crisis is shown to have been fabricated by the oil companies, let that serve to flood the companies with public indignation. But their possible guilt must never become an excuse to let us return to our thoughtless, wasteful expenditures of energy.

PETER FAUR

Manhattan, Kans.

Sir / Generalizations are generally suspect, but I believe that the Federal Energy Office illustrates the general bureaucratic response to crisis. When it could have helped, it was not in existence; now created, it creates its own crisis to justify its existence.

J. SAMUEL GILLESPIE JR.

Richmond

Sir / William Simon should raise the thermostat setting in his home to 68DEG, keep his library doors open and not "keep the fire going." Then let him find out how the rest of us have to live!

SAMUEL BEACH

Brooklyn

Sir / I pay double for home heating oil; I wait 40 minutes to get a third of a tank of gas at the one out of 20 stations open in my community; I keep my house cold and my speed down. But when my relatives tell me there is gas aplenty, even on weekends, and 70-m.p.h. speeders in California, Texas and Florida, my "popular mood" is hardly "sour skepticism." In short, I am madder than hell, and firmly convinced that we in the Northeast are truly being ripped off!

CAROL SELSBERG

Stamford, Conn.

Sir / Energy crisis--bull! I have not talked to one person who believes it is not contrived. We have had every shortage in the past year that one can imagine. Would you believe a girl at a florist shop told me the reason I could not find a large clay pot was because of a "clay-pot crisis"?

JOANNE BLOSE

Allison Park, Pa.

Sir / TIME rightly concludes that despite what the skeptics have been saying, the energy shortage is indeed real. In one respect, however, I believe that TIME'S reporting is inaccurate and misleading. The first page of the article "The Whirlwind Confronts the Skeptics" presents a picture of six ships that are reported as being queued to deliver fuel. Presumably this was included to support the allegation that tankers are offshore, loaded with supplies, waiting for prices to go up before unloading.

Speaking for Exxon, I can say that we most certainly and emphatically have not done this. At any given time, the number of our tankers waiting to unload has not exceeded the number we would have expected from historical experience. While I cannot speak for other oil companies, the port captain of New York Harbor is on record as having said that the alleged tankers waiting offshore, about which we have heard so much, were in fact not tankers at all; they were container ships, and the pile-up was due to bad weather.

Of the six ships shown, only four might be said with any confidence to be oil tankers. Of these four, two are riding high in the water, obviously having discharged their cargoes.

J.K. JAMIESON

Chairman of the Board

Exxon Corp.

New York City

Dark and --46DEG

Sir / In Alaska kids always go to school in the dark [Jan. 21] and come home that way too. At --46DEG no one can see more than 10 ft. ahead because of the ice fog. Maybe that's why we've had no rise in crime. We just can't find each other!

HARRIET BENSON

Fairbanks, Alaska

Checking Constituents

Sir / Our Congressmen should go home and check their constituents before deciding what to do about Watergate [Jan. 14]? That's like standing by a cesspool and asking someone else if it stinks before you decide yourself. What ever happened to men who make up their own minds on the basis of what is morally right or wrong rather than on what is politically expedient?

Maybe our representatives are even more reprehensible than Nixon.

BOB COHN

South Euclid, Ohio

Daily Kicks Where Needed

Sir / If you cannot rate it among the ten best American daily newspapers [Jan. 21], certainly the Des Moines Register should be in eleventh place. It supplies what Iowa needs: good national and international reporting, sprightly accounts of local doings, consistent but not overweening concern for the farmer, and daily kicks in the butts of reactionary native-born Iowans.

ALBERT H. BOWERS

Clinton, Iowa

Sir / For the most part, your list seems like the ten most liberal American dailies. Anyway, I have always suspected that TIME could not fathom the distinction between a left-leaning bias and quality journalism.

RALPH COTI

Ho-Ho-Kus, N.J.

Sir / But what is a good newspaper? If it is journalistic quality, then the Christian Science Monitor would be my choice to head your list of America's best.

CHRISTINE M. POTTS

Fullerton, Calif.

Sir / Your article was not exactly news to anyone here in Spokane. We Spokanites have known for years that there must be good newspapers somewhere, and thanks to you, now we know where.

DAVID STRAUGHAN

Spokane, Wash.

Sir / The segment dealing with Newsday helps to perpetuate an allegation that congressional investigators found to be unwarranted.

In a Dec. 20, 1973 report, the staff of the Joint Committee on Internal Revenue Taxation states that it found no evidence of unfair treatment of taxpayers by the Internal Revenue Service because of political views or activities.

The committee staff referred specifically to the case of Robert W. Greene of Newsday, reporting that "his return was not audited by the Internal Revenue Service but rather by New York State," adding that "the staff has talked with Mr. Greene, the New York revenue agent who audited Greene's state return, and other people in the New York State department of taxation and, as a result, believes that his audit by New York State was unrelated to his being classified as a White House 'enemy.' "

P.L. ROTHCHILD

Assistant to the Commissioner

(Public Affairs)

Internal Revenue Service

Washington, D.C.

sbNewsday says that when the tax returns of Editor David Laventhol and Investigative Reporter Robert Greene were audited by New York State, the two men were told individually that it was being done at the request of the Federal Government. Publisher William Attwood is not aware that his returns have been audited.

Brother Bob

Sir / Thank you for the article on Bob Dylan [Jan. 21]. Here in Texas we are waiting for him, and it is almost like waiting at the train station for a half brother you never met but are certain to recognize.

JOHN DONNELLY

San Antonio

Sir / There are no Dylan experts; there are only us Dylan freaks, and TIME'S David DeVoss is one of us. He spoke for all of us because he gave his own inner experience of that great moment, and in language that evoked much of what had always been inside us.

DeVoss saw that there is no reclusive Dylan. There is only the Bob Dylan who has consistently shared more of his inner nakedness with more people than most gregarious politicians could ever hope to shake hands with, and then hide from.

(THE REV.) EDWARD F. BEUTNCR

River Falls, Wis.

No Time for Lucifer

Sir / I, too, have a few pastoral problems resulting from The Exorcist [Jan. 21]. My reply to the people who come to me is: "I'm sorry, but I just do not have time to believe in the Devil. All my time is taken up believing in Jesus Christ." This usually puts a little perspective in the discussion.

(THE REV.) JOHN BECKLEY. S.M.

Bedford, Ohio

Sir / Regardless of the theological inadequacies of The Exorcist, it has, without doubt, shocked us into the realization that there is a Devil and a "place" called Hell.

KATHY OLOHAN

Manchester. Mo.

Sir / You refer to the Devil, demonic possession and exorcism as subjects that "would have embarrassed thinking Roman Catholics." Why? They may have bothered pseudo sophisticates, but not believing Catholics. It is a matter of definition: a Catholic is one who subscribes to "these and all the truths which the Roman Catholic Church teaches" and not one who believes selectively.

(THE REV.) FINTAN M. HANLEY

North Tarrytown. N.Y.

Mannequin Model

Sir / The first mannequin to be modeled after "the boss's wife" was not modeled after the wife of the president of Sakowitz [Jan. 14]. I, the wife of the former president of Saks Fifth Avenue, Adam L. Gimbel, was the model. The mannequin was commissioned by Henry Callahan, vice president and corporate display director of Saks Fifth Avenue. It was made in 1956 for Saks Fifth Avenue, not for Gimbel Bros.

SOPHIE H. GIMBEL

New York City

Failure in Seduction

Sir / Re football recruiting at the University of Florida [Jan. 21], characterized as the "most seductive sell": when I look at our football record over the past five years. I can only say that I wish it had worked.

LEES. STRICKLAND

Gainesville. Fla.

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