Fowles should back off from his voluminous vocabulary and go back to the basics of how a person is educated. We learn through our five senses. Of course TV informs us, via sight and sound, the most important learning receptors. What we are dealing with here are the young, impressionable minds of children. They lack the experience to discern the difference between fiction and fact and between right and wrong.
Byron Hawkins
Napa, CA
If TV violence begets violence in real life, it must be inferred that other depictions on TV are likewise impressed upon reality. After all, it ain't all violence on the boob tube. The very same programs full of mur-der, beatings, and chaos are also replete with empathy, altruism, heroics, charity, and the triumph of good over evil. Does fiction transcend fact? Where are those studies?
Gilbert J. Strong Jr.
Maplewood, NJ
Censor Happy
I enjoyed Jesse Walker's "Intolerant Alliance" (March), but I have a problem with the assumed equation between protest and censorship. Certainly REASON has not hidden its light under a basket when it comes to pointing out the dangers of various corporate and governmental idiocies. One assumes you have no problem with government regulation of, say, lead in drinking water. So why does raising the question of whether images can be dangerous immediately bring on an almost hysterical reaction?
I totally agree that all the instances of censorship Mr. Walker cites were laughable and stupid. However, I would like some idea of what he considers acceptable and appropriate concern. REASON fights stereotypes of businessmen despoiling the earth. Some of us would like to fight the stereotype of Larry Flynt, fearless and noble defender of free speech.
Jozseph Schultz
Santa Cruz, CA
I found "Intolerant Alliance" fascinating. However, your reference to Abingdon Press as a religious right outfit suggests that you are clueless about the landscape of American Christianity. You should run your stuff by a fact-checker.
Dan Stichman
Lancaster, CA
Jesse Walker replies: Mr. Schultz need not worry: I don't equate protest with censorship. As the cliché goes, the solution to bad speech is more speech; if Mr. Schultz doesn't like what Larry Flynt has to say, he has every right to express his criticisms. But when the protesters turn to advocating censorship, or to pushing dubious causal theories from the censors' arsenal, it then becomes my turn to protest.
And speaking of protesting bad speech: Mr. Stichman is quite right. Abingdon does publish some conservative material, but it also publishes books that would give Pat Robertson hives. Mea culpa.
Election Wrap-Up
It is rare to find as much utter nonsense in an issue of your usually superb journal as is contained in the election analyses by Richard Epstein and Mike Godwin ("The Legacy of Election 2000," March).
Mr. Epstein blames Democrats and Republicans equally for the bitter dispute over the Florida vote. While this kind of morally equivalent approach will generate kudos from the politically correct, it reflects an intellectual fuzziness.
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