Ann Richards, ‘From the Heart’

The story about Ann Richards of Texas quotes the two sound bites that made her famous (“From the Heart,” by Josh Getlin, Oct. 10). She changed the names, but the facetiae were familiar.

The one about Bush being born with a silver foot in his mouth she lifted from Lily Tomlin’s “Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe.”

The one about Ginger Rogers doing whatever Fred Astaire did but backwards and in heels was lifted from a lecture by Linda Ellerbee, who says she overheard it on a bus.

But would you believe she could have heard it in a well-received political address in Baltimore (10/15/86) by, you guessed it. Ronald Reagan.

P. M. ZALL, South Pasadena