Economic Summit in Houston

Columnist Alexander Cockburn (“Today’s Terms of Confusion,” Commentary, July 12) was right on when he rapped American journalists for their inability to make world events comprehensible to the public.

His case in point: the practice of characterizing those in the Soviet Union who want to go back to good old capitalism (pardon me, “the free market”) as radicals, and those who still believe in socialism (wasn’t that revolutionary yesterday?) as conservatives.

In the same day’s paper, and for a week before that, I plowed through a blizzard of babble about the Houston summit of the world’s “seven industrialized democracies.” (Isn’t that another judgmental, self-congratulatory term?) I learned of the great triumph scored by President George Bush in arm-twisting the allies to agree to begin phasing out agricultural subsidies (Part A, July 12).

Nowhere, except in one small, unexplained chart, did I read that the United States subsidizes agriculture, too. Or did the President sign that bill passed by Congress ending all price supports to American farmers one night earlier while I slept? Or better still, should we have former President Ronald Reagan explain parity again?

Cockburn was wrong perhaps on one point. It’s not just young people who are turned off by all this babble. It goes a long way toward explaining why most people are turned off and don’t even bother to vote any more.

SAUL HALPERT

Van Nuys