Ad Campaign and Lennon Song

If Robert S. McElvaine is as indignant as his article, “Blessed Are Those Whose Charity Is Not Plastic” (Commentary, Dec. 20), professes, he’ll do as I did: cut up his card and send it to American Express and actively protest the “hype and hypocrisy” that he condemns. A 13-year cardholder himself, McElvaine can put his money where his mouth is by augmenting the power of the pen with that of the scissors.

I wonder how many others, who grew up with John Lennon’s words and understood their true meaning before they were corrupted by American Express and the modern revisionist commercialism that has transformed so many of the anthems of the 1960s and ‘70s into tools for selling everything from nutritional supplements to telephone services, would have the courage to undertake this same act of economic disobedience. Some of them burned their draft cards in the ‘60s; let them cut up their credit cards now.

ERIC J. MALSTROM

Ontario

* American Express hypocritical for using Lennon’s “Imagine” to push its plastic? That hugely idealistic anthem isn’t itself exactly a paragon of sincerity. Lennon may have been able to “imagine no possessions” but he certainly had trouble turning it into reality, considering he left an estate of a cool 50 mil.

EARL EAGER ALBERT

Temple City