RABAN ON CLINTON

The best thing about Raban’s article is that it was way too long (let me brachiate here: Both the Clinton and Bush acceptance speeches at their respective nominating conventions were also way too long), guaranteeing that many readers would tire of Raban’s linguistic hatchet job and put it down before finishing it.

Surely in the interests of enabling your readers to make an informed choice when they go to the polls in November you are planning to offer us a similar analysis by Raban of the other major candidate in the presidential race.

I refer to the one whose tortured syntax, wandering sentence structure and rococo grammar (rivaled only by the “Great Communicator” himself) are quintessentially subsumed through the simple expedient of turning a born-and-bred New England Yalie aristocrat into an instant down-home Texan by stretching one-syllable words into two syllables. As in “I cay-ur” (care) about the victims of Hurricane Andrew.

In all fay-urness I expect to see such an analysis shortly in the pages of the Los Angeles Times Magazine.

SAUL HALPERT

Van Nuys