‘Joan Kroc Should Stay in the Kitchen’

Cal Thomas’ most recent dose of toxic pap (Editorial Pages, Oct. 31), “Joan Kroc Should Stay in the Kitchen,” demands a response.

To establish the theme of his profound essay, he cleverly refers to Joan Kroc as “McNut.” The premise we are supposed to accept is that, since Joan is the widow of McDonald’s founder Ray Kroc, she should tend to her area of expertise--”two all-beef patties, special sauce,” etc., and leave such weighty matters as nuclear war to the experts. (Unfortunately, the experts Thomas has in mind are expert in planning for nuclear war, not in finding ways to prevent it.)

In a piece studded with such illogical premises and conclusions, Thomas criticizes Joan Kroc for contributing $1 million to distribute 500,000 copies of “Missile Envy,” authored by Dr. Helen Caldicott. He approves, however, of her other philanthropic donations to “zoos, children’s hospitals, and famine relief” because in those cases she “gives money to people who are experts in dealing with their respective fields of study.” Although it is probably not general knowledge in the circles in which Thomas is accustomed to traveling, Helen Caldicott, a physician, is an expert on the medical consequences of nuclear war, and is so acknowledged by people better able to judge that than he is.

Thomas next attacks Kroc for quoting President Eisenhower’s indictment of swollen defense budgets as “a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed.” However, this most amazing insight by the general who was supreme commander of the Allied forces in Europe during World War II passes unnoticed by Thomas. It is Joan Kroc he attacks, wondering “whether she has noticed that there are far more hungry, cold and unclothed human beings in Communist-dominated countries than in the free ones.” This kind of thinking gives non sequitur a bad name!

Thomas’ brilliant tour de force deteriorates rapidly as he takes leave of both logic and reality. In the coup de grace intended to demolish Kroc, he accuses her of having “fallen into the canyon or moral equivalency,” thereby “submerging the distinction between the United States and the Soviet Union.”

Quoting that great moral thinker of our time, Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger, Thomas argues, in effect, that because of the “moral superiority of liberal democracy over Communist totalitarianism” anything that might cause citizens to lessen support for defending the Western democracies against the “reprehensible” enemy is in itself immoral.

An example of this immorality is Joan Kroc’s belief that the United States should have accepted Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev’s offer to declare a moratorium on nuclear testing and to reduce nuclear stockpiles by 50%. Given a choice between “Gorbachev’s offer” and “defending democracy” in a nuclear war, need we guess which Cal Thomas would choose?

Thomas uses the word “moral” a lot. His rise to mediocrity was as a leader of the Moral Majority, and now that his (ho-hum) fame is established, he downplays his past Moral Majority connection in an attempt to broaden his constituency. Thomas’ mission is to bring his and the Moral Majority’s simplistic “morality” to the uninitiated millions, but I don’t think it will work. Truly moral people, truly religious and spiritual people, value the gift of life and of this breathtakingly beautiful and fragile planet. They are filled with a sense of awe and wonder when they look into the innocent faces of their young children, and feel love, not hate; joy, not anger. They know that to treat these gifts carelessly, to allow the destruction of this heaven on earth, is the greatest sin, the greatest abomination, the greatest obscenity of all.

MURIEL LUSTICA

Culver City