Letters to the Editor
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
Don’t Whitewash Auschwitz
Re: “Annan Steers Holocaust Assembly Away From Current Disputes,” Benny Avni, Foreign, January 25, 2005. The blame for crimes against humanity should be laid where it belongs, on the Germans. This will cover the Nazis, too, where blaming the Nazis alone would clearly whitewash all the non-NSDAP card-carrying members. Put the blame where it belongs, on all Germans of that time, since they are the ones who brought so much misery on the world. During the time I lived under German occupation, I never met a single German soldier or civilian that behaved toward my people or myself other than as a cruel beast with murder on his mind. After the war’s end, I resided in Germany from August 1946 until May 1951. Throughout all those years, I never met a single German who knew what had transpired during World War II. Or so they said.
Did the wolf change into a sheep? I doubt it.
JOSEPH CEDER
Far Rockaway, N.Y.
No More Mr. Softee Jingles
Glad to hear that Mr. Softee may have to stop playing its jingle continuously [“Businesses Criticize Mayor’s Proposed Noise Ordinance,” New York Desk, January 27, 2005]. Its simplistic jingle repeated endlessly is nerve-wracking. Noise, however, is not the only intrusion by those ice-cream trucks.
Some of them are parked all day, even in illegal spaces (as just off Fifth Avenue in Midtown). During all those hours, the engines are on, spewing fumes. Why aren’t they given tickets?
RICHARD H. SHULMAN
Manhattan
Abortion Does Hurt Men
Re: “Abortion Hurts Men, Too,” Chris Ward, Letters, January 28, 2005. The letter’s heading got my attention immediately. I am one woman who knows for a fact that abortion does hurt men, and I deeply sympathize with Mr. Ward and others like him who grieve for their unborn children, whom they were unable to protect. What can we say about a society that allows fathers no legal say in the abortion decision — even when they are willing and able to care for the child – but then expect them to be financially and emotionally responsible parents should the mother choose to have and raise the child? Talk about double standards.
PAULA ROSS
Manhattan
Blame Sexism for Differences
Re: “No Apologies Are Needed, Mr. Summers,” Amity Shlaes, Opinion, January 25, 2005. The assertion that women are inferior to men in mathematics and physics due to genetic inferiority is purely speculative with no scientific evidence supporting it – no genes for math and physics identified, no brain centers or neuronal connections, etc. Lawrence Summers’s inspiration for his brilliant insight was the fact that his little daughter designated her toy trucks as mommy truck and daddy truck.
On the other hand, sexism is a well-established phenomenon, and numerous studies – not to mention personal experiences – prove its deleterious effect on women trying to perform their best and pursue careers. In academia, math and physics are among the last bastions of ingrained sexist attitudes that exclude women by creating an inhospitable if not downright hostile environment. (One thing about women is they do seem to be more sociable, and thus one might expect in general that they would be more likely to be deterred from entering a hostile field.) Anyway, in case you hadn’t noticed, most men aren’t exactly math and physics whizzes anyway.
JASON ZENITH
Manhattan
Kenyon Cox, Anti-Semite
A New York Sun art critic, Maureen Mullarkey, in her January 20, 2005, review leads off by lauding the aesthetic outlook of the late critic Kenyon Cox, and this, by my lights, should raise quite an eyebrow [“Gallery Going,” Arts & Letters]. Cox was not only a famous philistine when it came to advanced art of the early 20th century and the School of Paris oeuvre, he was, as well – and as neocon art authority Hilton Kramer has explored elsewhere – a person who committed to print his bigoted, prejudiced, often anti-Semitic viewpoints; characterizing Jewish immigrant American painters as artists of, using his terms, inferior “Ellis Island art.” It is disturbing that, apparently, Ms. Mullarkey does fancy herself an heir to this benighted aesthetic translation of Kenyon Cox.
ROBERT WEISS
Manhattan
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