Frum Takes Issue With ‘Axis’ Story

Donna Perlmutter’s story about me (“Writer Still Has ‘Axis’ to Grind,” May 17) insinuates that I was fired from the Bush administration because a private e-mail of my wife’s discussing my role in the 2002 State of the Union address was intercepted and published.

In fact, as reported in the Washington Post and confirmed by the administration, I resigned in writing two weeks before the e-mail was intercepted. My departure from the administration was entirely voluntary and amicable.

Perlmutter puts words of her own inside quotation marks in such a way as to deceive the reader into thinking them mine. I did not, for example, tell her that I believe “might makes right” in international relations. I repeatedly and unavailingly stressed that I believe exactly the opposite.

At other times Perlmutter breaks up and reassembles quotes to alter their meaning in offensive ways. Thus, I did not say that the politics of my “Left, Right and Center” co-host Bob Scheer resemble those of Jean-Marie Le Pen. Instead, when Perlmutter posed a question that insultingly linked Le Pen’s views to mine, I replied in a joking tone that the Frenchman’s anti-globalization economics resemble Scheer’s: an important difference.

Finally, it is somewhere between amazing and appalling that Perlmutter would imply that “the axis of evil” speech bears responsibility for the arrest of an Iranian dissident on treason charges. The Iranian government has been arresting, torturing and executing dissidents in the thousands for more than two decades. The odium for these acts belongs to those who commit them--not to those who attempt to draw the world’s attention to them.

Your readers have been ill-served by this article.

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DAVID FRUM

Washington, D.C.

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Turf Battle Is Ludicrous

to Out-of-Towners

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So from the perspective of the Westside it can claim superiority because it has more A-list actors (“Passing Fame in the Valley,” May 20)? Not scientists, doctors, intellectuals or other great minds, but actors!? My friends who visit from New York City just laugh and shake their heads at the Valley/Westside rivalry because from their perspective they don’t see much of a difference at all. The shallowness of L.A. continues to astound.

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R.G. MCMAHON

Thousand Oaks

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Were Clunes Whiners or Role Models?

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If I were to be faced with the challenge of homesteading on the frontier, I want to be part of the Clune family (“Attack on the Clunes,” May 21). Gordon Clune did a masterful job of providing for his family and would have done even better had not some nonsensical rules been in place. Real homesteaders would not have been prevented from killing game, and fishing would not have been off-limits anywhere. He was inventive in brewing “tonic” for profit, and I’m sure there was more than one still among real homesteaders. I liked Gordon’s rope beds, and it’s absurd to think they “smuggled” in a box spring. How would that have been possible? I believe the Clunes when they say they found the spring in an abandoned cabin.

Of course the Clunes would have survived the winter. The marriage was strong, and the family was united. We liked it that they were “romantic.” Had the homesteaders been told that dry hay was not nourishing enough to sustain the animals, I’m sure the Clunes would have harvested sooner and stockpiled green hay. So they didn’t have enough wood cut. I’m betting Gordon would have taken some of the profits from the sale of his “tonic” and found a hired man. I do wonder, however, why everyone didn’t immediately start making underground shelters for their families after that snowstorm gave them a foretaste of winter.

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NIKKI ANTOL

Venice

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Our lives are always edited, and not in the way we would like. In the spirit of the old frontier: “Quit yer bellyaching!”

Hardship makes or breaks us. That five-month period of hardship gave the children something money could not buy: imagination.

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GWEN FRANCIS-WILLIAMS

Inglewood

Somebody should send these whining, supercilious, overbearing clods back to the wilds of Montana and let them spend the winter there ... at least then natural selection could take its course and the world would be a better place. It’s true what they say: The rich are different from you and me. They are about as deep as a birdbath and twice as scummy.

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MICHAEL ALBO

Los Angeles

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What’s Really at the Root of Meanness

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I take issue with the idea that mean-spiritedness has anything to do with age (Letters, May 15). I’d agree that it is culturally based, though. Part of the problem is that children in our culture are institutionalized from ages 5 through 18 and segregated into large groups based on their ages. Those groups receive very little interaction with people of other ages. Coupled with our culture’s obsession with looks, achievements, and material possessions, competitiveness develops, which leads to a whole lot of insecurity. Insecure people develop meanness as a protective strategy and a way of coping.

There are those few, however, who choose to spend more time as a family. Perhaps letter writer Margaret Sagarese could do a study on kids ages 10 to 15 who have grown up in families that practice home-schooling. We have found that no such age-based meanness exists.

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LIZ IRONS

Chino Hills

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Comics Problems Are

Nothing to Laugh At

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What happened to all the nice characters in Get Fuzzy (comic strip by Darby Conley)? What’s with Bucky’s tooth? The ferret? Satchel’s malapropisms? We miss them. First the vacation, then the astrology series and now the rejected characters file.

Enough! Bring back Rob’s family! And Cathy! Enough already with the shopping jokes. More Electra. Whatever happened to Vivian? And where is Calvin & Hobbes when we really need them? (Sob.)

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RACHEL ROSENTHAL

Los Angeles

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