Reader to Reader

Thomas E. Braun socks Ronald Reagan pretty hard, claiming, among other things, that the former actor made “a mockery of the presidency” by turning serious politics into “pure show biz” (Saturday Letters, April 15).

First of all, Reagan, like Carter and Clinton, was a governor. Of California, no less. Apparently show biz didn’t do it for him. Secondly, by any objective measure, Reagan took the Oval Office very seriously and lent great dignity and grace to it.

The key word there, of course, is “objective.” On that note, I’d like to remind Mr. Braun that when 58 historians from across the political spectrum were recently asked by C-SPAN to rate all 41 presidents, Reagan came in 11th. Not bad for “a broken-down, old, third-rate film hack to the White House.”

STEVEN FOSTER

Los Angeles

Nancy Lopez and Marcia Gonzalez are laboring under the delusion that “Don Quixote” was a Mexican novel about a Mexican hero (Saturday Letters, April 15). Actually, Don Quixote was a Spaniard, and Cervantes could easily have imagined him to be light-skinned with blue eyes. Dulcinea could certainly have been Moorish (African), since Spain had been invaded by the Moors.

DIANE SILVER

Arleta

I was surprised to see no mention of the moving performance of Nestor Carbonell in Howard Rosenberg’s April 1 review of “Noriega: God’s Favorite.” I was even more surprised reading last week’s letters that criticized Rosenberg for ignoring the fact “the main actors . . . are not Latino” and Hollywood for the “ ‘brown facing’ of Latino characters.”

How sad that even they neglected this wonderful performance by this extremely talented Latino actor. Bob Hoskins wasn’t the only actor in the film.

GARY DONTZIG

West Hollywood