Getting Winged on a Few Issues

Well, here we are again, like old times, celebrating TV criticism of unparalleled greatness. In the cross hairs this time are columns about the recent capital punishment episode of NBC’s “The West Wing,” ABC’s “Mary and Rhoda” reunion movie and 6-year-old Elian Gonzalez.

I found the condemned man in “The West Wing” curiously abstract, “Mary and Rhoda” flat, and Elian coverage a shrill, manipulative spectacle. I must say, with all objectivity, that letters supporting me were enormously wise and perceptive, even moving me to tears. And you’d be reading them here, except for a Times policy against running mail from close family.

‘The West Wing’

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You find fault with the “West Wing’s” death penalty episode because you feel the only thing missing is a personal face on the man on death row. How typically liberal. How about a personal face for the people the murderer killed? Or a personal face for the victims’ families and their loved ones?

It is typical among the anti-capital-punishment crowd to fret about the feelings of the condemned murderer, but never to give a thought to the lives he devastated. That is why it is easy for them to oppose capital punishment.

In their view, the murderer didn’t really do anything. It’s the government that’s doing something.

How typical of “The West Wing,” which could just as easily be called the Left Wing, to have the victims of this murderer be bad-guy drug dealers, rather than an innocent mother and her child. Let’s don’t run the risk of creating any emotions on behalf of the murdered. Just for the murderer.

Capital punishment is not simply for punishment, nor is it just to deter and prevent future crime, although those are all excellent reasons. It is a vehicle for justice. The immoral killing of an innocent life requires that the killer not be allowed to continue living. It balances the scales.

The idea that Charles Manson rises every morning, smiles and laughs, has a Web-page following, enjoys eating and watching television and no doubt gets high on smuggled drugs is an affront to every life ruined by his murderous rampage.

MARK LANDSBAUM

Diamond Bar

To suggest that the condemned prisoner should be a visible character is your most boneheaded criticism yet. It is precisely because the man sentenced to die is faceless that the episode can so powerfully explore the ways that the characters’ emotional, spiritual and political needs all come into conflict over the heart-wrenching issue of capital punishment.

If the death row inmate were visibly portrayed, the audience would feel sorry for him or loathe him--and the story could no longer examine the objective distanced reaction to his situation that the president and his staff struggle unsuccessfully to maintain.

Without preaching or diluting their own point of view, Aaron Sorkin and the writers of “The West Wing” have again presented a wonderfully emotional, entertaining and uplifting drama.

Your failure to recognize this again proves The Times should let you be what you really want to be--a television news critic--and hire someone else who knows and loves good stories to review episodic television.

MICHAEL HAUGE

Sherman Oaks

I think maybe you missed the point. The morality of capital punishment doesn’t depend on whose life is at stake, says this episode, because all state-sanctioned killing is wrong. That’s why the teleplay is so brilliant. The president is paralyzed by his position; he worries whether the public will accept clemency, whether it’s an interference with the separation of powers, whether his successor will have to deal with inconsistencies.

He wants God to answer his prayers and get him off the hook. Yet his priest points out that God has already sent the answer, via the priest, a rabbi and Jesus himself. But the president doesn’t act, the prisoner is executed and the last scene is of the priest hearing the president’s confession.

The priest and the rabbi articulate the views of their respective faiths, that the state has the right to self-protection and to punish, but not to kill. Yet 71% of the people favor capital punishment. So much for the Judeo-Christian conviction in America.

KIRT THIESMEYER

Glendale

I certainly agree that there are better arguments than the spiritual against the taking of life by the state, but introducing the condemned man does not lead to them . . . it merely makes it easy for the nonthinking audience to choose sides.

LEE HAHN

Laguna Woods

Did you have trouble filling the allotted number of column inches? That, frankly, would be an understandable--if not excusable--reason for the kvetching you did about “The West Wing.”

You know better than I that these shows only stay on if they keep their ratings up, and they only do that by (mostly) entertaining people. Please take a step back and ask yourself whether you would be doing public discourse (and television content) a greater service if you lauded “The West Wing’s” efforts to present these issues in an entertaining way.

ED COSTELLO

Santa Monica

‘Mary and Rhoda’

You laid an egg with your way-too-soft review of the “Mary and Rhoda” TV movie. A wonderful opportunity for millions of viewers everywhere to catch up on Mary and Rhoda was squandered when the producers and so-called writers produced a turkey that was dead five minutes into the show.

Clearly, you have a soft spot for the great old series and MTM, because the movie should have been blasted as a piece of dreck. Even more baffling was that a brilliant talent like Mary Tyler Moore would have green-lighted such an abomination of a script.

JON LEONOUDAKIS

Northridge

The movie gave those of us who grew up on MTM a great sense that it was OK to get to be 50ish and 60 and tell those snot-nosed thirtysomethings a thing or two about values and standing on our own two feet. Just like Mary and Rhoda, I have weathered the ups and downs of corporate life, run the mill of a few divorces and landed in my true space with a wonderful man, a satisfying art career and a beautiful daughter.

Perhaps you don’t get it because you can’t. You’ve never been there and never will. Sometimes a gender-specific movie should be reviewed by the same gender.

ANNE WEILER

Laguna Beach

Elian Gonzalez

I did not enjoy your little article about Elian Gonzalez. You seem to be having a lot of fun with the tragedy of the Cuban exiles--maybe because we’re not liberals like you?

You see, Cuban exiles hate the extreme left wing, communism and Castro as much as Jews hate the extreme right due to the Nazis’ Holocaust.

I’m sure you wouldn’t think of writing a similar article poking fun at what Jewish children like Anne Frank endured during the Nazi occupation of Holland, would you? OK, maybe Hitler was worse than Castro, but look, after 41 years Castro is still causing a lot of tragedies and death to the Cubans. Give us a break, please!

RAY I. RAVELO

Irvine

Howard Rosenberg’s column appears Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. He can be contacted via e-mail at calendar.letters@latimes.com.