FREED AT LAST

Oh those rotten stinking liberals! They did it again this time, by organizing to save an innocent Mexican field hand from wrongful imprisonment (“What Becomes of the Resurrected?” by Peter Carlin, March 8). In Carlin’s otherwise excellent report on how Santiago Ventura Morales was reborn from a poor, illegal, semiliterate Mixtec to a potential American law student, the reporter gets off some shots at the small group of Oregonians who rallied around Ventura. Every few paragraphs Carlin changes into the Wolf Man, governed by the terrible moon tides of Jesse Helms and Pat Buchanan. Hence, the most awesome buzzwords known in the redbaiter’s vocabulary--”chic,” “nice Oregon Riesling,” “left-leaning political slant,” “middle-aged intellectuals,” “causes,” “leftist gentry,” “feminist,” “activist”--are slapped on the heroines and heroes to make sure their passion and personalities are marginalized.

It seems that the crime the Slepacks and Linders committed was to sacrifice several years of their lives, and their money, to correct a major injustice, and to stick around to make sure that Ventura wasn’t hung out to dry when he emerged from prison. The trouble with these “left-leaners” is that they swill all this un-American Riesling instead of honest-to-goodness American Bud.

Where will it all end, I ask you?

CLANCY SIGAL

Los Angeles