Tripping on the New York Times

To the Editors:

Most American newspapers have developed such laid-back images that it's culture-shock time. Like where's the news? The New York Times [Aug. 15] is still where it's at, and this reader trips on both the entrees and the pickles.

Barba Campbell Whitehall, Pa.

Somehow your gentle article on the New York Times missed the most important point. Its motto, "All the News That's Fit to Print," should be changed to "All the News that We See Fit to Print the Way We See Fit to Print It."

Oscar D. Summers Oyster Bay, N. Y.

Let's have more news and less about dill pickles.

Charles Belfoure Belle Harbor, N. Y.

Arthur O. Sulzberger looked like a rose in a cabbage patch 25 years ago, costumed in Marine dungarees and articulately sensitive to the fact that a man could get killed in Korea--possibly even in the safety of Division CP. To several of us enlisted combat correspondents, he was "Little Artie," the mouse-quiet Reserve shavetail. We wondered, covertly, what a nice rich kid like him was doing there.

I seriously doubt that his brief tenure in the Reserves did it, but that super self-confident executive staring beady-eyed at me from TIME is a paragon of toughness. I reckon you can be a softy and also be a Marine, but you can't inherit the New York Times without taking on some of the characteristics of a sergeant major.

Frank D. Praytor Houston

I greatly enjoyed your fascinating article on the New York Times. However, I was disturbed by the celestial metaphor employed to characterize the newsroom hierarchy. You state that "principalities and powers were clustered close to the news desk, with mere dominations, thrones, archangels and angels arrayed in descending order ..." As I recall from St. Thomas Aquinas' Summa Theologica, thrones rank third, below cherubim and seraphim, clearly outclassing mere principalities and powers. Moreover, dominations are just below thrones and are thus similarly superior to the above-mentioned orders, which in fact are numbered six and seven out of nine (archangels and angels are indeed the lowest).

John C. Harrison Hanover, Pa.

The hierarchy of the heavens has been listed in various ways over the centuries by many authorities, among them St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Jerome and Dante. TIME was following the version compiled in the Etymologiarum by the 7th century scholar Isidore of Seville.

The New Look

TIME'S new look [Aug. 15] is splendid in every respect. If the editors of the magazine are collectively holding their breath in anticipation of reader reaction, they can breathe a huge sigh of relief. Art Director Walter Bernard has given the magazine its handsomest design ever.

Cable Neuhaus Pittsburgh

I like it! I like it!

Albert M. Simon East Brunswick, N.J.

Will cries of outrage make you go back to what made you readable? If so, consider this my personal scream of anguish.

John Nyberg Denver

It is like reading through prison bars.

David C. House Lebanon, N.H.

When 1 picked up my copy of TIME, 1 was floored. Your new format aroused feelings of love and hate. I found myself asking: Where was the believability of my old TIME? But, after studying it for some time, I'm beginning to love it.

Tim A. Ernst Vincennes, Ind.

Christ as Myth

The Myth of God Incarnate [Aug. 15] is another jaded attempt to season Jesus to the palate of current sophistry. Editing the Bible according to what one chooses to accept may be popular, but cannot pretend to integrity of scholarship.

Jesus' claim of oneness with the Father is the warp and woof of the Gospel. Rather than deny that claim, he accepted death. No internal evidence in extant manuscripts suggests otherwise.

Therefore, Jesus was either a suicidal megalomaniac whose charisma has endured unaccountably for more than 1,950 post-mortem years, or he is, as claimed, divine Lord and Saviour. Any other claim is specious, so we must choose: belief or ridicule.

William H. Hunter, Pastor The United Methodist Church Cairo, N. Y.

It is decidedly inaccurate to refer to Unitarianism as "a sort of vague Christianity without Christ." Although its early historical roots were in the Judaeo-Christian heritage, Unitarian religious philosophy has increasingly become a process of the rational-ethical-universal-mystical, and especially of the humanistic. These many tentacles represent a strength, not a diffusion.

Because we are non-creedal, individual Unitarians may consider themselves Christians (vague or otherwise), but few do. Our basic emphasis is on this world, this day, this individual--whatever the larger relationships may be.

Charles White McGehee, Minister

Unitarian Universalist Church

Chattanooga, Tenn.

Elegy for the New Left

Bravo! I enjoyed Lance Morrow's Essay "An Elegy for the New Left" [Aug. 15] very much. While showing the New Left reduced to ashes he is wise enough to see that it may well rise again, as did the phoenix. I was born a few years too, late to participate in the social movements of the '60s. But I, and others born in the mid-'50s, watched and learned much in those developing years. Many of us have adopted the value system that then flourished and have tried to guide our lives by it.

We must learn to put people and our planet before profits, the quality of life before the quantity.

Harlow B. Amsbary Bloomington, Ill.

In his Essay, Mr. Morrow founds his argument on Philip Rahv's quasi-philosophical sigh that nothing can last in America for more than ten years. So much for the Constitution, John Wayne, apple pie, Saul Bellow and the Ford Motor Co.

He has nothing to say about all the lives that went down the gutter of history or now populate prisons and asylums because of the New Left's "wisdoms" and its rock troubadours. He lists the end of the war and the draft, the wide acceptance of marijuana, and women's liberation as the New Left's enduring accomplishments. Whether these will positively shape the course of the future remains to be seen. Mr. Morrow seems unbothered by long-range outcomes. He comforts and encourages the radicals that their "cycle will surely come around again."

Leopold Tyrmand Rockford, Ill.

Mexican Ties

Your recent evaluation of American foreign policy under President Jimmy Carter [Aug. 8] failed to include any discussion of U.S.-Mexican relations. In my judgment this was a serious omission. The initiatives of President Carter in this regard must surely be viewed as one of the major achievements of his early foreign policy efforts.

He and his counterpart in Mexico, President Lopez Portillo, have worked together to establish a diplomatic climate that has encouraged unprecedented communication and cooperation between our two neighboring countries.

Ambassador Patrick J. Lucey

American Embassy

Mexico City

Reforming Welfare

If Carter's welfare program [Aug. 15] passes Congress, I'd like not to hear the Government tell me how it has eliminated poverty.

I prefer to wait until those who have been helped say it.

Joe Meny North Plainfield, N.J.

I see no mention in President Carter's welfare package of no-crop welfare payments to wealthy landowners, welfare payments to the shipping industry or welfare payments to the tobacco industry sufficient to ensure lung cancer for all of us. It is ironic that these payments are now in effect, while the very meager payments to the needy poor will not be in full effect until 1981.

Robert H. Sawatzki San Diego

Expensive Experts

Big Government gets bigger. Now we have a Department of Energy [Aug. 15] with a first year's budget of $10.5 billion (sure to increase in years ahead). That comes to some $48 for every man, woman and child in the country. Perhaps from would be a better word than for. If that seems like a lot, think of it as enough to buy more than 800 million barrels of oil at$13 per bbl.

And for all the ballyhoo and expense, DOE will not find, produce or refine a single solitary drop.

David N. Peacock Englewood, Calif.

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