JJ Letters to the Editor

February 9, 1993   Robert Bianco‘s triumphal return gets a resounding second from this viewer/ reader who also laments the eight-month news void that the boob tube couldn’t fill.   The mindless Mickey Mouse channel that calls itself a “24-hour news source” gave us five-second weather reports alternating with 10-second repeats of day-old headlines. If…

March 8, 1992 Last Sunday’s unsettling story on fraternity house drinking (“BYOB switch lets frats ease insurance liability”), contained documented evidence of past abuses — and the resulting increase in insurance rates for frat houses which buy and serve beer by the keg. Dianne Gregory, executive director for Alpha Xi Delta fraternity for women, was…

October 28, 1991 We have almost a whole year before the 500th Anniversary of America’s discovery, and already I am sick and tired of the Columbus bashers. To Columbus and the other European settlers, Indians were barbarians from the Stone Age. They were dirty, frightening and capable of horrors and a bestiality unknown to newcomers…

September 28, 1991 Your Sept. 12 article on the alcoholism study at the Harvard School of Public Health reports that “Hospital treatment for alcoholics (was) found to be best,” i.e., “more effective than Alcoholics Anonymous.” As they taught me in journalism school, “Define your terms.” An alcoholic’s hospital regimen is only a medical detoxification process…

January 27, 1991 The grim TV coverage of our young Americans exposed to danger in the Saudi Arabian desert was exceeded in horror only by the spectacle of other youths — safe at home — publicly protesting the wisdom of that sacrifice. To me, their histrionics conjured up a half-century-old image of their patron saint,…