Cover Letter

A week after the Million Man March, and with the O.J. Simpson verdict having split the races even further, why a cover story about the star of PBS’ version of “Cagney and Lacey”? Cornel West and Michael Lerner (“Reaching Across the Divide,” by Itabari Njeri, Oct. 22) are trying to heal the racial divisions that plague us by creating a dialogue in a forum of mutual respect. I do not mean to slight Helen Mirren, but I’m sure even she would agree that trying to find common racial ground at this point in history is just a little more important than a Mirren career retrospective.

Dode B. Levenson

Marina del Rey

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Outraged does not begin to describe my reaction to the interviews with Lerner and West. As a Jew, I was particularly indignant at Lerner’s sanctimony. His repeated mouthing of the vacuous mantra “the ethos of selfishness and materialism,” along with countless references to the “pain,” suffering,” “alienation” and “despair” of most Americans, struck me as little more than recycled Marxism, though far more mawkish in tone. There are Jewish intellectuals in this country whose thinking, irrespective of ideology, is far more sober, empirical and rigorous.

Lerner and West declaim at length about the “unfairness” and “injustice” of our essentially capitalist economy, yet there is nothing fair or just about the forced “redistribution” of wealth, West’s favorite nostrum. The end result of such coercion is not only unfairness and injustice, but economic and cultural collapse.

Nicholas Spinner

Los Angeles