Friedan on Hillary Clinton

* In response to Betty Friedan’s commentary, “Stop Pillorying Hillary,” April 26:

Let me remind Friedan of one of Harry Truman’s more famous comments, “If you can’t stand the heat, stay out of the kitchen.”

The only double standard that I saw during Hillary Clinton’s interview with the media was the gentle treatment she received. Not one reporter questioned her ability to translate learning how to read a stock table at her daddy’s knee into speculating in commodities. There is no relationship. And her defense as to making investments for her family’s welfare also does not stand up. Rank speculation in commodities can hardly be equated with investing for one’s family’s welfare. Quite the contrary.

As for Friedan’s pillorying of the media for hypocrisy, double standard and immorality--nonsense. Hillary received all the accolades for the universal health care plan she submitted with able assistance of Ira Magaziner and many others. She was received with adoration by Congress and the media when she presented her plan, despite its many flaws and ill-conceived notions.

Clearly there are more important problems than Whitewater and Hillary’s still unexplained expertise in commodity trading facing the nation. If Friedan has not noticed, these problems are being addressed, perhaps not necessarily to her liking or perhaps not necessarily well, but they are being given full attention.

DORIS ESTILL

Los Angeles

* While I have a great deal of respect for the work Friedan has done in the women’s movement, I must take exception with her statement that “ . . . the American people support Hillary Rodham Clinton as an equal partner of the President.” The voters voted for the ticket of Bill Clinton and Al Gore, not Bill Clinton and Hillary Rodham Clinton. In personal matters and in family matters I’m sure she is an equal partner with her husband. In matters of government it is only Bill Clinton who was elected by the people of this country. The President of the United States has no equal partner.

GEORGIA ROBERTSON

Woodland Hills

* Strong intelligent women tend to arouse fear in insecure men and condemnation from those women who believe that women’s role is to be subservient to their men. The stronger the woman, the greater the fury which is aroused.

The commodities market is high paced and volatile. Fortunes are made and lost in brief periods. The system is set up so small cash investments can bring large returns. It is not usually a place for amateurs although amateurs with good advice can get lucky at times. Why assume that because Mrs. Clinton made money in such a market, something must be wrong?

The media make much of the Clintons’ payment of taxes and interest on those taxes for previous years. They do not emphasize that these payments were voluntary as the statuary time for review had passed. How many of us still have returns from the ‘70s available and can remember details of income and deductions of those years?

Some letters to The Times have by implications assailed Mrs. Clinton’s morals without any evidence to support their views. The media have become so invasive that they give prime-time exposure to juvenile questions relating to the kind of underwear President Clinton prefers. We have become addicted to the tabloid school of fake news. If lies are repeated often enough, we begin to believe them even though much of what we are exposed to is back-fence gossip and innuendo.

We are never going to have morally perfect people in public office (or in private life) so why not evaluate programs rather than personalities? Attack with vigor those ideas with which you disagree, but focus on the message rather than the messenger.

RAY BRACY

Tustin

* Re Hillary Clinton’s recent interview, April 23: How can she be so sure they did nothing wrong if she can’t remember most of the details?

CAROLYN ROWELL

Garden Grove

* To invest and to gain, or win, is the ethos immanent in every citizen living in a capitalist-Christian civilization. What the Clintons did is appropriate behavior under the general rules of capitalist society. To say this is censurable betrays ignorance of the ethical infrastructure of capitalism.

Further, to equate Whitewater with Reagan’s dark years while in office is nonsense and false.

PETER CATALANETTI

Murrieta