Nixon Through Different Lenses

Sir / From the outside looking in. I continue to be amazed by the contrasting colors of this man they call Nixon.

One week he is being despised, cursed and rejected by millions of his people. The very next week he commands the praise of millions in a welcome that not even Julius Caesar could match in his visits to the banks of the Nile.

Historians are going to have a lot of fun trying to explain this one.

ALDO PALMA

Waterloo, Ont.

Sir / The Watergate debacle has pointed up yet another flaw in our system of Government: with a four-year presidential term, you just don't have enough time to impeach the guy.

LARRY G. SPARKS

Louisville

Sir / We shall rebuke the memory of Richard Nixon not for Watergate but for the foreign entanglements into which he led us in the summer of '74.

E.W. TYLER

Jacksonville

Sir / W. Averell Harriman correctly observed that the "Soviets would pull in their belt before they'd let us tamper with their system." The naive stance of the "Jacksonians" is destructive to the continued easing of tensions between the U.S. and U.S.S.R.

Perhaps Senator Jackson revels at the prospect of a new Soviet belt tightening and a return to the good old days when two hostile, unyielding, nuclear-armed monsters crawled steadily toward a final terrible resolution of differences. I, for one, do not.

ROBERT RAND

Skokie, Ill.

Sir / I have learned the hard way that detente is far from being a "marriage contract." My Soviet fiance and I have been attempting to marry for over a year now and, unable to see each other during all this time, have suffered one cruel disappointment after another. My fiance has recently applied for a visa to come to the U.S. and is now undergoing the harassment that generally accompanies this action.

Apparently detente is for governments and businesses, and not for people.

CHARLOTTE DAIGLE

New York City

Negative Attitudes

Sir / Your reference to children's negative attitudes toward the presidency [July 1] reflects an experience we had with our eight-year-old grandson. He told us that in his school play, he had taken the part of President Nixon. When we asked him how he was cast in that role, he explained: "I was absent when they gave out the parts."

MORRIS N. KERTZER

Scottsdale, Ariz.

Sir / I am amazed at how wonderfully articulate our third, fourth-and fifth-grade children have become. Isn't it a tribute to the quality of the education they are receiving that they can already comprehend such descriptive characterizations as "truly malevolent, undependable, untrustworthy, yet powerful and dangerous"?

THOMAS J. KERVER

Silver Spring, Md.

Consumers All

Sir / Your article, "Meat Uproar, Act II" [July 1], failed to mention an important fact: farmers are consumers too!

We buy clothing, groceries, furniture, health insurance and cars. We also buy gasoline, fertilizer, seed and machinery, all of which have seen large price increases.

If economists expect inflation to stop just because farm product prices have dropped, they are mistaken. Farmers can't whip inflation alone; there have to be rollbacks all the way up the line.

TERRY R. DANIEL ROSE ANN DANIEL

Leigh, Neb.

Sir / Another first? I think our esteemed Secretary Butz has created a hybrid answer to our current economic plight. He has crossed the philosophy of the Court of Versailles ("Let them eat cake") with the insanity of the Mad Hatter's tea party and come up with a formula to save the country--i.e., since dried beans, rice, potatoes, etc., are in the luxury realm for lower (and lower-middle) incomes, we can now solve that by simply filling our freezers with meat.

(MRS.) DORIS A. COOPER

Waverly, Ohio

Feeding the Hungry

Sir / I congratulate TIME on taking note of the nation's nutrition problems--"For the Poor: More Hunger" [July 1]--but I would like to set the record straight on some points.

Although the panel that reported to the Select Committee on Nutrition was critical of the food-stamp program, ultimately preferring some form of an income-maintenance program in its place, the same panel also said: "A truly adequate income-maintenance program is not an imminent political possibility . . . Until such time as it does arrive, the food-stamp program must be retained." I agree with this and with a recent assessment of the food-stamp program by President Nixon's former chief adviser on welfare reform, Richard Nathan, who wrote: "The dramatic growth of the program is the single most important welfare change in America since the passage of the Social Security Act of 1935."

On Plowshares for Peace, it is an error to say that it is intended to "set up a $20 billion . . . program that would build stockpiles of food for needy nations . . ." Plowshares for Peace is intended to be a development program, encompassing agricultural research, fertilizer production and technical assistance, with the cost to be equitably shared by all nations. The purpose of this kind of program is to enable the poor nations to develop the ability to feed themselves rather than having to depend on others.

GEORGE MCGOVERN

United States Senate

Washington, D.C.

Unbridled Expansion

Sir / Your article on Gary Davidson, "The Brilliant Closer" [July 1], was very interesting, but to the sports fan, the unbridled expansion fostered by Davidson has meant only that the quality of the event that he pays good money to see is at an alltime low.

What Gary Davidson has given us, in essence, is poorer-quality professional sports, higher ticket prices, and the annoying feeling that a real sports fan cannot now name all the professional teams, as he once could do with ease.

A.S. DANIELS

Wayland, Mass.

No Puffing Litterbugs, Please

Sir / Please don't, as you advised vacationing Americans, give Kilimanjaro a call [July 1]. The East African peaks and the surrounding wildlife sanctuaries are in a struggle already with crowds of tourists and the agricultural needs of an agrarian society. They do not need a gaggle of American litterbugs puffing up and down, spreading the flotsam of affluence over the landscape.

Besides, June through August is a lousy time to climb.

DONALD O. VOGT

Nairobi, Kenya

Sir / Alaska must reluctantly claim the title as "the world's tallest rubbish heap." Our Mount McKinley has nearly 6,000 ft. more garbage and litter than Mount Whitney. Climbers report having to pick their way through banana peels, cans, and food wrappers to reach the top of North America.

RICHARD F. SCHAFER

Anchorage, Alaska

The Navel as Centrist

Sir / "The Trouble with Being in the Middle" [July 1] is poignantly illustrated by the navel, that useless and innocuous configuration that serves neither physiology nor aesthetics. It merely remains there, indolently comfortable, insouciantly secure and abominably smug. Extremities do have their place in the world, and that is precisely where the middle is not.

MICHAEL G. DRIVER

San Francisco

Sir / Amen! The middle will be as honorable as the left or the right only when it is peopled by those who have considered and practiced their reasons for being there.

The sum total of my values and opinions--conservative on some issues, liberal on others--has made me an "independent" voter, but such inconsistency has forced those around me to hang a "middle" label around my neck. There are people in the middle who have chosen (not defaulted into) the center of the political spectrum.

DAVID WELBOURN

Lewiston, Me.

Sir / To choose the best from the left and the right and arrive at a compromising middle does not indicate that people are tolerant or indifferent. On the contrary, it demonstrates that we in the middle are capable of exercising good judgment and prudence. All three groups are necessary if we are to obtain a just and free society.

GINETTE T. HOCHMAN

Florence, N.J.

Meager Rears?

Sir / North American women--with the obvious exceptions of blacks and those of Latino descent--have really no use for the Tonga, or String [July 1]. They are generally well-endowed, but they most certainly lack the proper posteriors for this look. I suggest to the rest of North American females to refrain from showing their meager rears and concentrate on what they can more successfully exhibit.

JUAN FRANCISCO LUNA V.

New York City

Sir / Your nubile nudes are retrogressing to diapers. What could be more appropriate?

SALINDA BEWLEY

Birmingham

Sir / The String: legalized streaking.

JOHN J. LYONS

Chicago

Sir / These indecent Strings are worn to stir up lust in the hearts of carnal men. No wonder the number of rapes is increasing. Too often it is the innocent lady who suffers the results of lust that has been stirred up by the indecent exposure of others.

ROBERT G. CUNDIFF

Jackson, Ky.

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