‘The Skinny on Fashion Week’

Andrew Wolf’s column “The Skinny on Fashion Week,” shows a feast or famine approach to proper nutrition that has as little to do with reality as his acquaintance with the rules of logic [Oped, “The Skinny on Fashion Week,” February 5, 2007]. Does Mr. Wolf read while he eats? If he does, I sentence him to a month of meals prepared by Alice Waters while he studies the language of reasoning.

LYNN SOMERSTEIN
New York, N.Y

Mr. Wolf replies:

I often read while I eat, so that there is more time to follow the ever-changing definitions of what the experts “du jour” say constitutes “proper nutrition.”

‘Ireland Proposes To Drive Its Citizens To Drink’

Concerning Louisa Nesbitt’s article, “Ireland Proposes to Drive its Citizens to Drink” [Business, “Ireland Proposes To Drive Its Citizens To Drink,” January 31, 2001], whose title made me smile at first: this problem is no joke, and I blame it on the totalitarian hegemony of the automobile and the legitimate safety requirements of our increasing dependence on this mechanical monster, which threatens rural and urban civilization alike. Public transportation, by bus in this instance, is a partial solution. A drinker then as well as now, I remember with pleasure my bicycle trip through Ireland in 1964, visiting ancestral places, rediscovering relatives, and stopping at rural pubs for refreshment and good company.

The roads were quiet, safe, and pleasant for bicycling, much quieter, I suppose, than now; my only precautionary requirement was a raincoat and galoshes.

WILLIAM CARROLL
New York, N.Y.

‘Bush Warns Wall Street on Pay’

It is nice to hear a Republican president lecturing Wall Street on out-sized executive pay, as perhaps it will lead to the sighting of a creature generally believed extinct — the cloth-coat Republican [“Bush Warns Wall Street on Pay,” February 1, 2007].

The only people who should be concerned about excessive pay are the shareholders of the businesses in question, as it is their assets which are perhaps being squandered. The rest of us need only be sure that the proper amount is being paid in income tax, and in fact should rejoice if outlandish pay results in outlandish tax receipts, as there would then be more money in government coffers to pay for worthwhile programs.

If that pay is being sheltered through any of the many deductions and credits that litter the tax code, then there is true cause for action.

Meaningful tax reform is the best way to cure much of what ails both government and the society at large.

Unfortunately, such reform is also quite unlikely, as too many entrenched interests, both liberal and conservative, benefit from the status quo.

BRIAN ESKENAZI
New York, N.Y.

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