MCA Buyout by Japanese

The allusion, in your editorial “There They Go Again, Blaming Foreigners” (Nov. 28), to Ronald Reagan’s oft-spoken lament is all too appropriate. If, as you suggest, Americans’ credit binges and poor savings habits have fostered foreign incursion into our economy, there are also several other contributory mistakes we have made as well. Two major ones have been the nation’s past two presidential selections.

At a recent Town Hall Meeting in Los Angeles, T. Boone Pickens remarked, “Japan must abandon its keiretsu business practices before it can become a welcome participant in the global economy. Until that happens, these anti-competitive cartels are a wedge threatening to drive the U.S. and Japanese people apart.” Pickens drew this conclusion after being insulted with epithetical references to the attack upon Pearl Harbor and being shouted down during the shareholders meeting of a Japanese manufacturing firm in which he holds a 26% interest. In order for our nation to compete, equitable rules must be negotiated and enforced by those “leaders” who shape our foreign and trade policies.

If we Americans should not like what we see in the mirror, we similarly should be disgusted as we watch the former President accept millions as a mouthpiece for Japanese interests, and the current Administration prostrates itself along the Pacific Rim in order to keep the recession under wraps until after the next election.

But far more unsettling is the specter of foreign dominance of one of our most important outlets for sociocultural expression, the motion picture industry. Perhaps it is not the film companies themselves over which control has been ceded; it may well be part or all of the First Amendment.

RICHARD NEWTON MEYER, Los Angeles