‘I’ve Got This Script, See . . . ‘

In your article about director Martha Coolidge (Sept. 15) you mention her marriage to a “screenwriter and computer graphics consultant.” In the press in the past decade or so this particular debasement of language--and cruel encouragement of the terminally misguided--has been a staple more prevalent than staples.

It’s time to stop it. Please. It’s unbearable. Enough is enough.

Screenwriters have always been “schmucks with Underwoods” to some, but now it’s beyond question that screenwriter has become an accepted euphemism for jackass . Not everyone in the world is a screenwriter.

And your constant pandering to these teeming millions of firemen-screenwriters, screenwriting podiatrists, screenwriter-rug salesmen is not only an insult to the few remaining professional screenwriters (who actually do it for a living) in these dark days of dilettantism, but also a disservice to the schizophrenic--who aren’t steered any closer to reality by having their delusions legitimized in print.

Newspapers used to be in the business of reporting the facts of people’s lives, not their fantasies. But, of course, that was when a journalist was a journalist, not, as now, a journalist-screenwriter.

HAROLD MOSEBY

Beverly Hills