Amy Musher's Mailbag

By Amy Musher

There's something wonderfully reliable about the people who write letters to the editor. At the receiving end of the missives, both paper and electronic, we begin the week by placing bets on what articles will prompt a big response and how the battle lines will be drawn. (Hey, we take our fun where we find it.)

--MEN OF THE YEAR? By now everyone knows that the title notwithstanding, this designation is not the equivalent of a good-citizen award. Yeah, right. We took one look at the Bill Clinton-Ken Starr double billing on the Dec. 28-Jan. 4 cover, and we knew what we were in for. Sure enough, of the 1,431 letters we received, 881 begged us to "make a New Year's resolution: give more thought to 1999's decision." One disappointed reader suggested we should have changed the title to Jerks of the Year.

--THANKS BUT NO THANKS When readers don't like what they see on the cover, they return it--sometimes whole, very often in shreds. And 76 readers did just that when they spotted the aforementioned Men of the Year duo, which some called "Dumb and Dumber." An inventive 42 sent back what they thought was the undeserving half.