READERS BITE BACK

Letters

Just Say Well, Maybe

Although I was never a great fan of Nancy Reagan's prior to reading Leslie Bennetts's article on Dr. Mitch Rosenthal ["Mitch's Mission," October], I had been an admirer of her efforts to deter drug abuse in this country. The revelations in the article regarding Mrs. Reagan's withdrawal of support from Phoenix House under the pressure of a group of hypocritical nincompoops who opposed a drug treatment center in their delicate neighborhood were appalling. The actions of the Lake View Terrace activists who threatened to picket the Reagans' Bel-Air home were contemptible, but Mrs. Reagan's surrender to their demands ("I just can't cope with the picketing") was beneath contempt.

RICHARD G. PRICE Dallas, Texas

My husband and I are among the two hundred donors to the Nancy Reagan Center. In recognition of our contribution, we were treated to a reception at the White House and to numerous parties, including the one at the Wilshire House referred to in your article. We first read in the Los Angeles Times of Mrs. Reagan's decision to withdraw her support from the Lake View Terrace site, and eventually Mrs. Reagan sent a letter to donors outlining the reasons for her withdrawal. Finally, we read of her total withdrawal from the Phoenix House program, which was confirmed by letter from Dr. Rosenthal. Her refusal to follow through certainly disappointed a great many people.

SUE TROCK Valencia, California

If I weren't three thousand miles away, I'd lead the picketing right up to Nancy's well-protected front door.

BARBARA LITTLEJOHN New York, New York

True commitment to a cause like the war on drugs requires guts, determination, and perseverance. We know that Mrs. Reagan possesses these attributes because we saw them time after time throughout the Reagan presidency. Just think how many drug addicts' lives could have been saved if Nancy had pursued the objectives of Phoenix House with as much determination and vigor as she pursued Donald Regan.

CECILIA CAMPA DON Brooklyn Heights, New York

Please publish the address where contributions can be sent to Phoenix House with no strings attached.

KATHLEEN O'CALLAGHAN West Haven, Connecticut

EDITOR S NOTE:

Contributions for Phoenix House should be sent to: Phoenix House, 164 West Seventy-fourth Street. New York, New York 10023-

Hot off the Press

I am the impartial adviser to the Allied Printing Trades Council, the umbrella association of the ten unions representing employees of the New York Daily News. I write in comment on Edward Klein's article "Front-Page Drama" in the October issue, which gives publisher James Hoge's side of what Klein describes as the forthcoming "battle of [Hoge's] life" in behalf of the News against "ten of the toughest unions in the business." Klein identifies the president of the Pressmen's Union as Hoge's "greatest nemesis."

From 1963 to 1978, a tumultuous period in the labor-management relations of New York City's newspapers due, in large part, to vast technological advances, I was the mediator in all the major disputes. With my help, they were settled on reasonable terms through collective bargaining. In 1978, the publishers of the News, The New York Times, and the New York Post made substantially the same charges against the Pressmen that Hoge is now making, and then posted terms drastically downgrading conditions in the pressrooms. The posting precipitated a strike. Because the publishers (led by Rupert Murdoch) were telling the other nine unions, who were honoring the Pressmen's picket line, that the Pressmen were resisting changes the other unions had accepted, the Allied asked me to sit in on the Pressmen's negotiations with the publishers and report to the Allied on whether or not Murdoch's charges were accurate.

I accepted that role and helped clarify the differences between the parties. In due course, I brought about a settlement of the strike on mutually satisfactory terms, significantly improving the productivity in the pressrooms of all three newspapers. In subsequent negotiations, the unions agreed to millions in savings for the News. This led Stan Cook, then president of the Tribune Company, parent of the News, to salute the unions in March 1988 for their "spirit of cooperation," which, he said, was "paying off" for all concerned.

Recently, the unions negotiated longterm contracts with the Times to clear the way for that newspaper to invest a billion dollars in new plants and equipment. The first union to sign was the Pressmen's Union. At this writing, neither the Times nor the New York Post, now under Peter Kalikow's effective leadership, is echoing the charges Hoge is making in his campaign of public relations against the unions. Nor was Klein correct in reporting that Arthur Sulzberger Jr. of the Times was "rooting" for the News to win the war against the unions in order to obtain comparable concessions. Sulzberger denied that charge in a letter he sent George E. McDonald, president of the Allied, saying that he had never spoken with Klein.

What I find difficult to understand is why the News issued a declaration of war through the media months before negotiations can even begin. Indeed, as Klein reports in his article, Hoge won't be ready to start negotiations until the end of the year. Besides, no strike can take place legally until the current contracts expire on March 30, 1990, and I am sure the unions have no wish to strike at that time.

On the contrary, I am convinced that they are ready for good-faith negotiations and that the most serious differences between the parties can be resolved, as they have been in the past, through the bargaining process. But first the issues must be framed precisely and clarified, and that can be done only at the bargaining table. There will be plenty of time next year for recriminations if the bargaining process breaks down. Since I know from personal experience that bargaining has worked in the newspaper industry of New York City in the past, I am sure it can again if the News and its parent, the Tribune Company, are as sincerely interested in keeping the News alive as the unions are. So, Kheel to Afews/Tribune: Cool it.

THEODORE W. KHEEL New York, New York

Adjani Adjustment

Regarding Joan Juliet Buck's "Unveiling Isabelle Adjani" [October]: Isabelle Adjani gives an inspired performance in Camille Claudel, and she co-produced the movie. But the director, Bruno Nuytten, and I wrote the script. Isabelle, Bruno, and I were all astonished to read otherwise in your October issue.

MARILYN GOLDIN Paris, France

Poetic Justice

Gail Sheehy in "The Ones Who Stayed Behind" [October] mocks Russian poets Andrei Voznesensky and Yevgeny Yevtushenko as "superannuated stars" who are "giddy with the male postmenopausal zest granted by glasnost. ' ' She further derides Voznesensky by saying "he still acts the part of Pasternak's child protege." At the end of the piece, on a visit to the writers' colony at Peredelkino, where Pasternak lived and died, she says, "The poetry of Pasternak hovers in the trees, eternal. . . 'Artists—go off / without hats, as if into a church / into the resounding lands / to the birches and the oaks.' " This may be an effective ending, but it is not the poetry of Pasternak. The lines in question are from the poem "Leaves and Roots," by Voznesensky.

PATRICIA BLAKE Wellfleet, Massachusetts

Letters to the editor should he sent with the writer's name, address, and daytime phone number to: The Editor, Vanity Fair, 350 Madison Avenue,' New York, New York 10017. The letters chosen for publication may be edited for length and clarity.