Letters
Now Must Men Join the Women's Club?
Regarding the editorial "Equal Access to the Club" (April 10): When you think about it (surely someone there does), doesn't it strike you as bizarre that some among the species equate "social progress" with feminine invasion of men's clubs and institutions? Specifically, the Augusta National Golf Club?
Does it follow that social equality is but a hollow shell if men aren't admitted to women's institutions as full, uninhibited partners? And that the country won't be saved from itself until those lofty goals are achieved?
"Oh, but the Supreme Court ," you say. The Supreme Court wouldn't even have had to deal with this without the misguided insistence of a peculiarly misguided minority. Enough already. The damage has been done at VMI and the rest, and may not be reversed until it dies of its own weight. But one would think dignity and common decency would move the feminist fringe to bend its energies in constructive directions, and "equality" would be seen as something more than sharing men's locker rooms or overrunning a facility that has enjoyed singular excellence because it could be exclusive.
Allan S. Olsen
Trenton, N.J.
Nice, if given a chance
I was very moved by "My Foreign Letter of Introduction" (April l8) in The Home Forum. The author is a good person, and those who saw him on his 850-mile trek from Batumi to Baku recognized his goodness. They responded accordingly. The key phrase of his wonderful brief essay on the theme, "people, by and large, are nice," is contained in the additional, subordinate clause, "if given a chance." It is so important not to forget this "if given a chance," and I am thankful for this gentle reminder.
Joachim T. Baer
Greensboro, N.C.
Professor, Department of German and Russian, University of North Carolina
Why must films pair them off?
The review (April 18) of the movie "Murder at 1600," starring Wesley Snipes and Diane Lane, says, "It's worth noting that most big-studio films starring black men break Hollywood's pattern of letting hero and heroine pair off." This puzzles me. What law of dramaturgy (even Hollywood-style) requires that male and female protagonists get together romantically in any play or film?
It seldom happens that way in real life, and less and less so these days in serious cinema. I can't escape an uncomfortable feeling that the reviewer is reaching just a bit, creating a nettlesome issue where one doesn't necessarily exist.
Richard M. Sudhalter
Southold, N.Y.
'Absolutely wrong'
Regarding your Editor's Note to the letter "Old Meaning of 'Young Turks'" (April 14): I would like to thank you for explaining to the reader the real significance of the expression "Young Turks" used in the Monitor's March 19 editorial on Boris Yeltsin.
However, I am terribly disturbed with the first two words of your note, "Absolutely correct" [after the letter's last words "...the 'Young Turks' organized and carried out the 1915-1923 genocide of 1.5 million Armenians"]. The proper way to begin your explanation should have been "Absolutely wrong." There was no "genocide." None of the following believed that such a thing ever took place: Adm. Mark L. Bristol, the US High Commissioner in Istanbul; world-famous historian Arnold Toynbee; the investigatory arm of the then-British government; the old League of Nations; more than 60 emminent US and international writers and historians; the recently declassified archives of the old Ottoman Empire; and finally the statement of ex-Prime Minister of the Soviet Armenian Republic, H.E. Hovhannes Katchazouni.
Mahmut Esat Ozan
Miami Lakes, Fla.
Past President, Florida Turkish-American Association; columnist, The Turkish Times
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