The Pros & Cons
Sir:
Your very informative article on professional football [Dec. 21] has completely changed my idea of the game. I had thought of it as a mad free-for-all, not realizing the skill and brilliance.
If you publish any more such excellent articles I may convert from our Australian Rules football to your American game.
HUGO N. J. SCHOUTEN Clarence Park, South Australia
Sir:
I can only agree with you in expressing my admiration for a fine coach and a fine team. This, you will note, is quite a concession on my part, since my team of walking idols is not the Packers but the Detroit Lions. The Lions were great this year. Unfortunately, the Packers were greater.
STEPHEN L. WASKIN Ann Arbor, Mich.
Sir:
Christmas baking, cleaning and present wrapping were forgotten when the mailman delivered Coach Lombardi on the cover of TIME.
As former Green Bayites and avid Packer backers (180 miles round trip for every home game), we feel that your cover story was the best unexpected Christmas present my husband and I could possibly have received.
(MRS.) JACKIE SIMONAR Wausau, Wis.
Sir:
Can't you guys ever praise anybody or anything without running down somebody else? This time, via the Lombardi story, you overinflate football by the glib expedient of deflating basketball, tennis, hockey, boxing and baseball. Talk about a slow-motion bore: huddle, slap, squat, shift, squat, pass, incomplete, whistle, penalty, time out, substitution, huddle, slap, squat, shift, squat, pass, incomplete, whistle, penalty, substitution, huddle, slap, squat, shift, pass, fumble, gun, final score: 0-0--and the fans could be all the way to Chicago by jet, and return.
The only football you guys watch must be the newsreels.
EARLL BRIGGS Hollywood
> The last o-o N.F.L. game was on a very old newsreel indeed--1943.--ED.
Sir:
If football's pros are shrewder by scheduling only 14 games, how is it that Paul Hornung tops the Green Bay Packers' player payroll with a mere $25,000, while baseball's 162-game season enables the San Francisco Giants to pay Willie Mays $90,000 a year. If the cost of a National Football League franchise is $550,000 today, the growth of the pro grid is decades behind major league baseball, which recorded a $2,800,000 sale of the New York Yankees in 1945.
FRANK HURLEY Yonkers, N.Y.
>Cleveland's Jimmy Brown, highest-paid player in the N.F.L., got $40,000 for playing some 420 minutes of football this year--the length of two baseball games.
The cost of a new franchise is irrelevant. The N.F.L. is not issuing any. Last week the last place Los Angeles Rams were sold for more than $7,000,000.--ED.
Sir:
I found no difficulty in convincing students in my class that you had chosen Packer Coach Vince Lombardi as your "Man of the Year." It was a logical, sensible choice.
GEORGE JOHNSON History Department Senior High School Wausau, Wis.
> Students, see cover.--ED.
What Plans?
Sir:
Your well-written, concise account of the Murchisons' sellout of their holdings in AIleghany Corp. (Dec. 21) gives as the reason that I would "block all their plans to revamp Alleghany."
What plans? The only one I know of was their proposal to recapitalize Investors Diversified Services. That plan would have taken control of I.D.S. away from Alleghany and given it to the Murchisons.
This is hardly the type of "revamping" of Alleghany that anyone with the interest of the corporation at heart could be expected to support. Naturally I opposed it.
Any other plans the Murchisons had for Alleghany before they threw in the sponge are unknown to me.
Their statement that they sold at least part of their interest in Alleghany to Mr. Gamble in order to bring peace to the corporation is just so much hot air. If that was their motive, they would have at least asked me whether the sale would accomplish that objective, and this they did not do in any way, shape or form.
ALLAN P. KIRBY Morristown, NJ.
Dashboard Dazzle
Sir:
Three cheers for Optometrist Merrill J. Allen [Dec. 21]. He has made clear what I tried in vain to explain to the dealer who sold me a new car last June.
When there is bright sunlight on the top of the light-colored dashboard and one side of the road is in deep shade, it is difficult to see through the glare into the shady area.
When I drive under an elevated railroad or under shade trees, bright sunlight flashing in rapid intervals through the gaps between the ties of the railroad or the leaves of the trees creates an intolerable succession of bright and dark reflections. When I wrote to Detroit about this, the manufacturer replied ". . . We hesitate using darker colors on the dash because they do not complement the decor of the other trim on the car."
ISRAEL KORAL Long Island City, N.Y.
Sir:
When I bought my '55 car (one of the Big Three), resplendent in chromium and sea-mist green, I covered the shiny part of the steering wheel with masking tape and painted the wiper arms flat black. A friend told me how to use wet sandpaper to eliminate the glare from the hood over the instrument panel.
My changes in the design are still there, making my daytime driving pleasanter.
PAUL J. SMITH Gouverneur, N.Y.
Sir:
Engineers have known for years that reflections inside the windshield could be cut by a dark-painted dash. But Detroit's executive-level decision (on record at a 1955 congressional hearing) was to keep the shinier surfaces and bright colors they claimed were "acceptable to the people."
Actually, the customer has never had an alternative to select. Having advanced the shiny hazard, could a manufacturer offer a fitted black cloth as an accessory without open hypocrisy ?
Now Dr. Allen, an optometrist, has made good the ethical duty of the professional auto engineers by advising the public customer that a hazard exists.
HENRY H. WAKELAND New York City
The Protestant Sisters
Sir:
Thank you very much for your article on the Protestant sisters [Dec. 28]. In 1963 the Methodist deaconess movement in the U.S. will observe its 75th anniversary. Your article was timely for the launching of our year's observance.
MARY Lou BARNWELL
Executive Secretary Commission on Deaconess Work
of the Methodist Church New York City
Who Is a Jew? (Contd.)
Sir:
The violence of the reaction of Jacob Gartenhaus, president of the International Board of Jewish Missions [Dec. 21], to the decision of the High Court of Israel in the case of Brother Daniel strongly contrasts with the attitude of Brother Daniel as quoted in the Jerusalem Post: "The profound earnestness in which the Justices have dealt with the case and their intentness on being just have given me deep satisfaction . . . My rights as a future subject of Israel have not been affected in the least by the outcome of the case, and to exploit the occasion for vilifying the State of Israel is unwarranted."
Brother Daniel will become a Christian citizen of Israel, with equal rights under the law. The basis of the decision of the High Court of Israel denying him the right to claim citizenship as a Jew is the common-sense observation that a Christian is not a Jew any more than a Jew is a Christian. The word Jew has a specific spiritual and cultural connotation historically distinct from the word Christian, though no one would seek to deny that the two great faiths have profound convictions in common.
Israel's "Law of the Return" is not a restriction of immigration on religious grounds, comparable to our own restrictions on the basis of country of origin, so much as an unprecedented liberalization of immigration laws to meet the special tragic need of the Jewish people. Israel has never faltered in the fulfillment of this responsibility, taking in the sick, the lame and the aged, and jeopardizing its own survival by doubling its population in the brief span of 15 years. RABBI DAVID GREENBERG Scarsdale Synagogue Scarsdale, N.Y.
Sir:
It is about time that certain Christian theologists stopped bartering their Christianity as "Judaism with a 'plus.' '
There are many very basic differences between the two religions, one of the most important being the responsibility of man to live with meaning and value in this world. When man takes upon himself the challenge to create his individual meaning, he, and he alone, knows himself for what he is.
The beauty of Judaism is that it gives man complete freedom to decide what he wants to be, asking only for an affirmation in the form of recognition: "I am a Jew."
Brother Daniel, at one point in his life, called himself a Catholic. In that moment he went contrary to all Jewish tradition and ideology, denying that he was a Jew, and accepting himself as responsible to a completely different philosophy.
The Jewish people deny Brother Daniel not as a man but as a Jew, for it is in that realm that he has denied himself.
MIRIAM DANN Jerusalem
Fractured French
Sir:
Quoi?
Deux fois
Je vois
Pourquois!
The last time I saw the word (which was last week while grading 22 freshman French exams), it had no 5--as it does twice in your article [Dec. 21] on TV French.
So I ask you, "Eh bien, POURQUOI?"
BARBARA G. MITTMAN Morton Grove, Ill.
>Comme il ne faux pas.--ED.
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