Linda Tripp

Oh, please! Linda Tripp’s contention that Monica Lewinsky forced Tripp to listen to her confidences about President Clinton is laughable (Feb. 13). What did Monica do, tie her to a chair? Hold a gun to her head?

If she didn’t want to hear about Monica and Bill, all Tripp had to do was hang up the phone or walk away. Having worked in the White House and having viewed what she has called “illegal” activity, one would think that Tripp would want nothing to do with anyone or anything connected to this den of iniquity. But instead, she cultivated a relationship with a young woman with an incredible story to tell. Then what did Tripp, the innocent victim and reluctant participant, try to do? Sell her story to her good friend and partner in surreptitious audiotaping, Lucianne Goldberg. Yep, that’s what friends are for.

SHARON JOHNSON

Valley Village

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Tripp defends taping her conversations with Lewinsky and turning her over to the FBI by claiming she, Tripp, was like a surrogate mother to Monica and that Tripp hopes that anyone else would do the same for her daughter in a similar situation. Tripp’s right-wing defenders applaud her actions.

Most Americans love and treasure their children and ardently care about making the right decisions in raising them. We recoil in horror from the concept of taping intimate conversations with our daughters and turning them over to law enforcement.

Could the extreme right explain its distinction between a mother-daughter relationship and a police state?

JUDITH S. JORDAN

San Bernardino