KLAN OF WORMS

While I have no particular comments on Barbara Ehrenreich’s review of the book “Women in the Klan” (Sept. 1), one of her asides is truly disgusting, and certainly the book editor should have excised it. Further, it had nothing to do with the review, but was a purely spiteful and nasty remark. I refer to the penultimate paragraph where Ehrenreich classifies right-wing women as spiritual descendants of the women’s KKK.

(“Our major feminist organizations do campaign against class and race oppression. And today’s right-wing women, the spiritual descendants of the Women’s KKK, are far more overtly hostile to feminists than to any racial or ethnic ‘others.’ ”)

Are the neoconservative women, many Jewish, spiritual descendants of the Klan? Are the women in the New York State Conservative Party, largely Catholic, spiritual descendants of the Klan? Are the women associated with National Review magazine, also quite Catholic, spiritual descendants of the Klan? Was Clare Booth Luce a spiritual descendant of the Klan?

Ehrenreich should be ashamed of this smear.

ARTUR ZYGMONT

TORRANCE