Man of the Year To the Editors:

Teng Hsiao-p'ing [Jan. 1], an inspiring statesman of ability, insight and decisiveness guiding a vast modernization program for one-quarter of the world's humanity, is certainly the right choice as Man of the Year for 1978.

Francis K.S. Koo

Mayaguez, P.R.

Great selection! It's time. Teng has demonstrated that he is a foxy guy, but then, what world leader has not revealed some characteristics of the fox?

Richard D. Davis

Ventura, Calif.

Teng is not the man of this or any year. The world would be far better off if genocidal Asian despots found more worthwhile projects than propping up the sagging careers of inept U.S. Presidents.

Tom Brewer

Atlanta

As a prisoner of the Red Chinese in North Korea (1951-53), I would never have believed that I would see one of them as TIME'S Man of the Year.

J.B. Smith

Colonel, U.S.A.F. (ret.)

Denver

Your selection of Teng Hsiao-p'ing as Man of Anything is a disgrace. You folks need to go outside for some air to clear your heads.

John P. Stieb

St. Charles, Mo.

Is Teng Hsiao-p'ing Man of the Year for realizing that Communist "peasant" ideology is bankrupt?

James I. Faison

Oakland, Calif.

Your selection of China's Teng Hsiao-p'ing is certainly to be applauded. However, were it not for the political insight and admirable leadership on the world scene of our own Jimmy Carter, Teng would never have been in the running.

William S. Daniel

St. Louis

Tragic Image

Naturally, Images [Jan. 1] could not have included every event of this sort, but the violence in Lebanon that has caused immense devastation and misery, and threatens to attain wider and more sinister proportions in the region, was absent from your account. A tragedy of this order should have been included.

Habib Malik

Cambridge, Mass.

In regard to your incredibly unenlightened and sexist remark that Golda Meir "could be as unbending as any man": I deeply resent your identification of inflexibility as a male trait. What you want to say, I'm sure, is that when she felt it necessary to be so, Mrs. Meir could be as hard-nosed as any international politician, most of whom happen to be male.

Douglas Barber

Oak Ridge, Term.

Really. Comparing Golda Meir with a man is like comparing a shark with a tuna.

Barb Quade

Nancy Ogle

Hastings, Minn.

Mexico's "Mystical" Oil

Yes, as you say in your story on Mexico's oil [Dec. 25], Mexicans are mystically attached to their resources, suspicious of their gringo neighbors. Yet, when you look into Mexico's past and see how the country's resources were exploited, mostly for the benefit of foreigners, you wonder if the xenophobia is not justified.

Eduardo Wehner

Mexico City

State of the Language

I found myself in total agreement with Mr. Kanfer's Essay on the dubious state of our language [Jan. 1]. Though I'm only 25 years old, I find it almost impossible to communicate with my 19-year-old brother, who spouts forth such unintelligible phrases as "icked out" and "icked up." (Yes, he says there is a difference between them.)

Now, thanks to TIME we have a new "ism" to haunt our hopefully liberal conscience. You've given us "ageism."

Robert Mark Penna

Boston

How is it that in the same issue as your delightfully acerbic Essay on "neologisms, coinages and other abuses" of the English language, men like Ibsen and Nietzsche were "astrodomed," Frank Wedekind "psychographed" his subject. Von Karajan makes Mahler "more immense" (less immense? a bit more immense?). Midnight Express is "hyped-up" (hyped-down? hyped-over?).

Perhaps editors who throw stones shouldn't be glasshoused.

Stan Crowe

Tallahassee, Fla.

Will you also take aim at editorial writers and radio and TV people who repeatedly say. "Last night at 8 p.m.." "Tomorrow morning at 11 a.m.." "Revert back." "Raise up." "Round circle." and soon?

(Mrs.) Cecelia Connelley

Babylon, N. Y.

To the list of boobisms add this by a TV newsman: "another fatal killing."

W. P. Earley

West Brookfield, Mass.

Now that loan

As a verb so often appears.

I expect soon to read

"Friends, Romans, countrymen.

Loan me your ears. "

Richard S. Meeks

North Plainfield, N.J.

I was surprised to learn that the acronym ECAR stands for East Central Reliability Council. While visiting Pebble Beach, Calif., I was informed that the Monterey Peninsula was peopled mostly by ECARs: Elderly. Conservative. Affluent Republicans.

Tina Powell

Minnetonka, Minn.

The Calm '70s

You mentioned the '70s as being a time when "nothing disastrous is happening" [Dec. 25]. Have you never heard of "the calm before the storm"?

Juanita Orvin

Charleston, S.C.

With all due respect to Stanford Sociologist Seymour Martin Lipset, may I take the liberty of amending his quote to "nothing disastrous appears lobe happening." Changes are happening at the blink of an eyelash, too quickly for the human mind to perceive.

Eileen Rice

St. Louis Park, Minn.

There is no mention whatever of the Supreme Court's 1973 decision that deprived our unborn of the right to life. Yet TIME'S Essay concludes with the remark that during the '70s "nothing disastrous is happening."

Oliver L. Kapsner

Collegeville, Minn.

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