A Grateful Marine
WE RECENTLY RECEIVED the copies of THE WEEKLY STANDARD that have my cardboard postcard printed in it. What a thrill. Thanks for doing that. All of my Marines loved seeing it. One of them even said, "Hey, I remember sending that one out."
I also had a chance to read Michael Goldfarb's CASUAL ("Lock and Load," Dec. 6) on video games and enjoyed it. I read it by the light of my flashlight, since the other officers in my room were all trying to sleep.
Thanks again! Semper Fi.
1st Lt. James Crabtree
Iraq
"Anonymous" Responds
THOMAS JOSCELYN takes issue with my writings on Iraq's al Qaeda ties ("Now You Don't Tell Us," Nov. 29). It's true that in my first book, Through Our Enemies' Eyes, I discussed what I concluded was a connection between Iraq and al Qaeda.
Quite simply, I was wrong on that score. The book was based exclusively on open-source information, and I used that unclassified material to support my arguments. Prior to the 2003 Iraq war, I was assigned the task of reviewing a decade's worth of CIA holdings on the issue. Having reviewed more than 19,000 documents, the agency found nothing resembling a "relationship" between Iraq and al Qaeda. The best information available to the U.S. intelligence community showed no Saddam-al Qaeda connection. It likewise showed that the analysis on Iraq and al Qaeda in my first book was incorrect. I hope to correct that mistake if the book is ever reissued in a revised edition.
Michael F. Scheuer
Falls Church, VA
Crouch on Culture
ONE WOULD NOT BE surprised to find that I take exception to Harry Siegel's review of my new book, The Artificial White Man ("Artificial Culture," Nov. 15). What I find most bothersome is the fact that Siegel seems to have not really read the book, since he claims that "too often" I became "unhinged" and used language more appropriate for a gangster rapper.
Beyond the three essays Siegel's review makes clear that he did read, is this frequently unhinged quality evident in the ones about John Singleton, Michael Jackson, Jorge Luis Borges, and Alfred Appel Jr.? Is it true of the summing up essay, "Blues to Go," which proves Davy Crockett a forerunner of gangster rappers; addresses the problem of acceptance and rejection among minority and women writers when faced with bigotry in literary giants; and says new things about the fiction of both F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ralph Ellison? I think not, though I fiercely plead guilty to now and again bringing together intellectual language with that of the street when I want to carry home a point with a sidewalk jolt or a concrete snatch of humor.
Perhaps that justifies Siegel's accusing me of being a "hack" while offering no proof. Uh-oh. Now that I've played my blues, I think it's time to go.
Stanley Crouch
New York, NY
The Literal Truth
I READ WITH PLEASURE Stephen F. Hayes's lament on the widespread and seemingly unstoppable misuse of the word "literally" ("Literally Exasperated," Dec. 13). It raised in my mind another abuse of language, pertaining to the word "incredible." Like a cancer, this word is infecting our discourse in a way that is destroying our ability to distinguish between the merely amazing and the (if you'll pardon the expression) literally unbelievable.
I made this mistake years ago in a conversation with a friend from Holland. I declared her account of an especially remarkable (though by no means impossible) chain of events to be "incredible." She fired back, "No it's not!" (Leave it to a nonnative English speaker to teach us how to use our own language.)
As a philosophy professor, I'm especially concerned about the prospect of losing our ability to make distinctions. I will continue to correct my incredulous students in this regard, in what may well turn out to be a losing battle to preserve our rich vocabulary for expressing astonishment that falls short of incredulity.
Chris Stewart
Houghton, NY
I THINK STEPHEN F. HAYES should consider what has become acceptable usage of the adverb "hopefully." In which case he should accept reality and "literally" throw in the towel. Having done so, Hayes can hopefully overlook other journalists' grammatical peccadilloes.
Ed Wells
Eau Claire, WI
Intolerance Chic
IN READING Paul Marshall's "Fundamentalists & Other Fun People" (Nov. 22), I was most struck by the tone of various writers and columnists in describing the "religious right." They seem to be guilty of the same kind of ignorant intolerance of which they accuse so many Bush voters.
I think all of these people would do well to spare an hour or two on a Sunday, tear themselves away from the New York Times, and actually go to a Catholic mass or any type of Protestant service, especially one in a "red" county. The Gary Willses and Maureen Dowds of the world might actually learn something. That would require them, however, to keep an open mind.
Richard DiNardo
Stafford, VA
Back To School
TOM WOLFE may understand "the social meaning of clothes, cars, glasses, words--even the way that people sit and stand" better than any other contemporary novelist, as Joseph Bottum writes ("School Days," Nov. 22). But Wolfe doesn't seem to know that Ivy League schools do not field basketball teams with only one Caucasian star (Jojo in the novel).
Maybe Wolfe thinks that Duke is an Ivy League school.
Jerome S. Shipman
Potomac, MD
Hatch-et Job
STEPHEN F. HAYES'S "Porter's House" (Nov. 29) failed to mention an important point. The Hatch Act for Federal Employees makes it illegal for CIA employees to engage in partisan activities, and expressly states that they may not use official authority or influence to interfere with an election.
Rather than merely being forced to resign, I suggest that some of these former CIA employees were removed from their positions in accordance with the Hatch Act's penalties.
Jean Palmer
Baltimore, MD
California's Emergency
WESLEY J. SMITH laments that Californians passed Prop. 71 but rejected Prop. 67, "an initiative that would have added a modest tax to phone bills to keep the state's endangered emergency rooms and trauma centers from shutting down" ("Suckers for 'Science,'" Nov. 15).
California's emergency rooms are shutting down because they are overwhelmed with nonpaying illegal immigrants who treat these facilities as drop-in clinics. Prop. 67 could have been more accurately described as "a small phone tax to continue providing free medical care to illegal immigrants."
This situation isn't likely to be remedied until the whole ridiculous system collapses. So I voted against Prop. 67 to hasten its collapse--and thus, I hope, its repair.
Brent White
San Jose, CA
Who Dubbed Dewey?
IN YOUR NOV. 15 ISSUE, David Gelernter wrote that "Walter Winchell (or someone) is supposed to have called [Thomas] Dewey 'the little man on top of the wedding cake'" ("Truman Beats Dewey! Again!!"). In your Nov. 29 issue, letter-writer Nicky Billou responded: "Actually, it was Alice Roosevelt Longworth . . ."
I, too, had thought that this cruel description of Thomas Dewey came from Mrs. Longworth, until I consulted Safire's New Political Dictionary. The waters become very muddy. In addition to Walter Winchell, Harold Ickes, and Clare Booth Luce, the phrase is attributed to Ethel Barrymore (by Mrs. Longworth) and (again by Mrs. Longworth) to Grace Hodgson Flandrau.
Mrs. Longworth is quoted as saying: "I did not coin the phrase . . . though I admit that I gave it currency." Indeed she did. But the authorship of that nifty phrase is still in doubt--unless Mr. Safire has an update on the matter.
George Murray
Ossining, NY
Catholic Voters
JOSEPH BOTTUM was completely off-base in his far too robust generalization that there is no such thing as "the Catholic vote" ("The Myth of the Catholic Voter," Nov. 1 / Nov. 8). As a political scientist whose central concern is the Catholic voter, I wish to remedy this logical mistake.
In order to evaluate whether there is or is not a "Catholic vote," we must know who the Catholic voter is. The logical problem is thus: Is the Catholic voter a voter who happens to be Catholic, or a Catholic who happens to be a voter? This is a clear syntactical issue. I propose that the latter is really what we are looking for. If we consider those persons who are Catholic--that is, those who accept the Catholic worldview as enunciated by the Catechism and Church teaching--it does seem that there is a unique psychology and, in that sense, a Catholic vote. Contrary to first-response intuition, these persons are not reflexive partisans or abortion-only voters. They are truly independent in their outlook and use their faith and intellect to evaluate the political landscape.
We must divorce ourselves from the notion that the former definition I provided for the Catholic voter--the voter who happens to be Catholic--is valid. This sort of voter will confound and complicate our understanding of Catholic voting, for this voter does not evaluate politics through his Catholic lens. Rather, his Catholicity is a mere sideshow.
If Joseph Bottum recognized this, then he would most certainly have restricted his generalization to a subset of those who call themselves Catholic.
Adam Ramey
Rochester, NY
Errata
In Joseph Epstein's "A Lad of the World" (Dec. 6), the real-life murdered family depicted in Truman Capote's In Cold Blood was misidentified as the "Cutter family." The family's name was actually Clutter.