Rep. Stark’s Comments About Louis Sullivan

Where do the editorial writers of The Times get off for citing Rep. Stark’s remark regarding Secretary Sullivan as an example of obtuse racism and overlooking the many cynical verbal ploys of President Bush and his spokespersons to coerce all citizens into accepting their proper viewpoint?

If, in Rep. Stark’s less than thoughtful remark that Sullivan was a disgrace to his race, Stark meant to imply that all blacks, to be decent, must subscribe to his political agenda, then President Bush in his carefully scripted comments on the “L” word quite clearly makes the implication that the term “liberal” is comparable to any common four-letter obscenity and that anyone designated liberal or overtly politically liberal is not only a disgrace to the human race and God, but, worse yet, lacking in good manners and unacceptable in polite, middle-class society.

“Humanist” is another label Bush cohorts are fond of bandying about. Ironically, the far right has it that humanism, a pre-eminent concern for the human condition, is a godless philosophy, a threat to free enterprise, fostering relativism and immorality.

Anyone critical of the present Administration’s policies toward minorities, education, public health, or the homeless runs the risk of being called a “humanist” or a “liberal,” i.e., a pariah.

Rep. Stark made a faux pas and has roundly been given his comeuppance.

To indicate that a race should think and behave in a particular way is an obvious no-no.

But to indicate that an entire populace should think and behave according to the strictures of the Republican Party to be considered moral and worthy of approval is evidently just good, common sense.

MARY D. DODD

La Habra Heights