‘National Treasures’

Re: “National Treasures,” David Gelernter, Opinion, August 16, 2005. In an otherwise admirable column on Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, David Gelernter quotes Ginger Rogers as saying “I did everything Fred did, but backward and in heels.” This quote did not originate with Rogers, but in a 1982 “Frank and Ernest” newspaper comic strip. Then Texas Governor Ann Richards repeated it in her keynote address to the Democratic National Convention in 1988, apparently to appeal to feminists.

Rogers repudiated the quote at that time, and praised Astaire’s leadership as a partner. As every ballroom dancer knows, the person who leads does most of the work. It is the follower’s job to look great, or as swing dancers say, to “shine.”

SUSIE PARIS
Manhattan

‘Conservative Hypocrisy’

Re: “Profiles in Conservative Hypocrisy,” Colbert I. King, Opinion, August 8, 2005. As a conservative, it’s not every day that I agree with Colbert I. King. I oppose racial profiling as a tool to fight terrorism on both moral and practical grounds.

In October 2002, many so-called “experts” were telling the media that the sniper who was terrorizing the Washington, D.C., area was most likely a lone, angry white male. While they were wasting their time looking for a nonexistent white sniper, the police let the real killers, John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo, who are both black, slip by and kill more innocent people.

As a tool to fight terrorism, profiling limits the police by ignoring Al Qaeda’s numerous non-Middle Eastern collaborators in the West. Consider a few examples. On December 22, 2001, Richard Reid, who is half-British and half-Jamaican, attempted to blow up an airliner with explosives hidden in his shoe. In 2001, John Walker Lindh, who is white, traveled to Afghanistan, where he trained with Al Qaeda and later fought alongside the Taliban. Jose Padilla, who is Hispanic, is currently being held by the American government over allegations that he is an Al Qaeda operative and wanted to set off a “dirty bomb” in America. Recently, radical lawyer Lynne Stewart was convicted of illegally transmitting messages from her client, Egyptian Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, to his terrorist followers.

What about the many far-left academics on college campuses, such as Nicholas De Genova of Columbia University, Richard Berthold of the University of New Mexico, and Ward Churchill of the University of Colorado, who openly sympathize with the terrorists’ aims? How long before they start acting on their radical beliefs and leave explosive packages in public places?

Obviously, random searches at subway stations will not catch or deter every possible terrorist. I believe that the New York Police Department should expand its K-9 unit and deploy trained police dogs at subway stations throughout the city to sniff out explosives (and drugs).

DIMITRI CAVALLI
Bronx

‘Blue, White, and Orange’

Re: “Blue, White, and Orange,” Editorial, August 12, 2005. Your editorial is based on the mistaken premise that the retreat from Gaza was decided by “a Jewish democracy.”

Unilateral disengagement from Gaza, proposed by Sharon’s opponent, was overwhelmingly rejected by the Israeli electorate at the last election. Sharon then betrayed the electorate, fired cabinet members who disagreed, and refused to hold a referendum. Rather than an example of democracy, it is the shameless decision of a dictator. That is the true tragedy.

DAVID M. LEVIN
Southampton, N.Y.

‘Job Gains’

Re: “Job Gains?” Editorial, August 15, 2005. It’s unfair to compare New York City’s job numbers with other cities that did not experience 9/11. All things considered, I think we’re doing pretty well – every other day there’s a story in the paper about the city’s construction boom, and tourists are coming back to the city in droves. Mr. Bloomberg can absolutely take credit for the fact that jobs are coming back to this city. Do you really think we would have done this well under a Mayor Green or a Mayor Ferrer?

ARIEL WEINSTOCK
Brooklyn

‘Partisan Review’

Jacob Gershman refers to Partisan Review as a “neoconservative journal” in “New York Press Weekly to Refashion its Image, New Editor Says” [New York, August 16, 2005]. Surely “dissident Marxist” fits the bill better, or “modernist”; after all, Partisan Review had been publishing for two generations before the term “neoconservative” was coined, and its politics could only properly be called neoconservative in its last few years. Isn’t this like talking about neoconservatives working for FDR?

DAVID RANDALL
Brooklyn

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