Caldicott’s Speech at Fund-Raiser

“Speaker Stirs Sparks at McCarthy Fund-Raiser”? (Part I, April 8). More like “Latest Shot in McCarthy Campaign Fired by Loose Cannon.”

The ever-irrepressible Dr. Helen Caldicott has, it seems, lost none of her taste for her own feet during her apparently now-ended sabbatical from a career of unintentional stand-up comedy. So Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev is a “miracle” man in the mold of Jesus? Amazing! And I thought Pat Robertson had cornered the market on religious snickery.

Can it be that in the transports of dialectical materialist ecstasy accompanying her recent forays into the leftmost fever swamps of politics the good doctor has misremembered her catechism?

The way I always heard it at the First Church of Scientific Socialism--Karl Marx was God and Vladimir Lenin was Jesus. On this basis, Gorby rates on par with, say, Jim Bakker. Both, after all, are over-the-hill chirpy cherubim with snappy lines of feel-good PR patter and pseudo-theological hokum fronting decidedly unappetizing personal characters.

As for the Reaganite “war criminals,” was there a nuclear war I managed to miss? I’m sure I would have heard something; I’m a light sleeper. And besides, I read The Times!

“She can afford to be sometimes factual and sometimes not factual,” offers Lila Garrett by way of explaining the transcendental nature of Caldicott’s utterances. Such being the case, I suppose we have not seen the last of Helen of Ploy in spite of her pledge to boycott the state if we fail to elect (Democratic candidate) Leo McCarthy to the U.S. Senate come November. By that time the lieutenant governor might long more than I for the enforceability of oral contracts.

DICK EAGLESON

Manhattan Beach