Pilot Kara Hultgreen

* Re Ellen Goodman’s column “Kara Hultgreen and the Codes of Prejudice,” Commentary, March 6:

It is too bad that Navy pilot Lt. Kara Hultgreen could not have been granted an equal right to fail. Any male pilot going through Navy carrier pilot training always has the option of failing. They may not be willing to admit it but they know it will not banish them from human life. Hultgreen never had that option.

Feminist ideologues, media commentators and the Navy high command had turned her into a symbol and symbols aren’t human. If she failed, she would be forever an object of shame so she had to succeed. Being an average carrier pilot would not have been good enough; she had to be among the best or to die as a result of mechanical failure. For the human being behind the symbol there were the elements of Greek tragedy. But in these later days humanity has receded into the past and ideology remains.

DON STULZ

San Diego