Chapman’s Champion

Has James L. Desper Jr. (Letters, Jan. 15) actually listened to Tracy Chapman’s “Fast Car” or is his perception so clouded by hostility that Chapman’s poignant song about an oppressed woman’s longing for freedom becomes, for him, a “male-bashing anthem”?

Desper claims an “inspection of the lyrics reveals” that the woman in the song is “not a victim but a victimizer.” Could it be that he takes umbrage at any woman audacious enough to sing “I had a feeling I could be someone”?

Nowhere in the lyrics is there any mention of the woman taking the children and abandoning her husband. Instead, she is the one who quits school, gets a job and pays the bills. Perhaps this is what Desper means by “calling all the shots.”

ROBB C. CURTIS

West Hollywood