A FINE ROMANCE

LETTERS

Reagan's complex legacy; James Lipton probes Ali G; Hitchens's swipe at A. A.; the legends of John Dillinger; survivors step into the light

It was with election-season fervor that I tore into "Ronnie & Nancy" [by Bob Colacello, August]. Thank you, Vanity Fair, for letting me forget for a while my rancor and disdain for Reagan the politician and allowing me to wallow in a timeless love story.

STACEY CROCKETT Bellingham, Washington

I WENT TO MY POST-OFFICE BOX this morning to get my mail. I retrieved my stack of mail and went to my car. Imagine my surprise when I turned my favorite magazine over and saw Ronnie and Nancy Reagan, my two favorite people in the whole wide world, on the cover. I almost had a car wreck.

I immediately headed for home, with tears in my eyes, to get my reading glasses. Reading about the Reagans in Bob Colacello's article was wonderful. Y'all brought Ronnie back to me, if only for a few minutes.

ROBIN CHISWELL Houston, Texas

DURING THE 1980S, I spent a lot of time in Central America, so my memories of Reagan are mainly of the thousands of murdered civilians whose deaths Mr. Reagan caused. So when I saw the Reagans' smiling faces on the front cover, I threw my Vanity Fair in the trash. See you next month.

JONATHAN E. DAVIS La Mesilla, New Mexico

RONALD REAGAN will go down in history as one of our greatest presidents. His steadfastness in standing up to "the evil empire" freed millions of people from the shackles of Communism. He ended the Cold War and made peace with the U.S.S.R. by saying "Trust but verify" in regard to the nuclearweapons supplies of both countries. He gave us comfort and hope when we lost our seven brave astronauts in the space-shuttleChallenger tragedy, in 1986, saying, "Sometimes, when we reach for the stars, we fall short. But we must pick ourselves up again and press on despite the pain."

RICK SCHREINER Pasadena, California

I FIND IT REPULSIVE that America should mourn the death of Ronald Reagan, under whose callous and insensitive leadership I witnessed the slow, excruciating demise of dozens upon dozens of friends and relatives to the AIDS virus. What a repressive monster, to allow the widespread and cataclysmic suffering of scores of men, merely because they were gay.

I can only hope that in the end Mr. Reagan didn't suffer as much as they.

ALAN CHAMPION

New York, New York

I HAVE LONG ADMIRED Jane Wyman for both her unforgettable screen portrayals and the class and dignity she displayed by never publicly discussing her early marriage to an actor who would become president. She gained my renewed respect with the simple but eloquent statement she issued upon his death: "America has lost a great president and a great, kind and gentle man."

Yes, Nancy worked hard to become Ronald Reagan's soul mate and the great love of his life. But that previous marriage to a beautiful, brilliant actress—which produced two outstanding children—can never be as easily dismissed as the second Mrs. Reagan might wish it to be.

MICHAEL BURNS Lebanon, Indiana

I THOUGHT it was quite curious that Bob Colacello's presumably well-researched article about the love affair of Nancy and Ronald Reagan omitted the important fact that Nancy was pregnant at the time of her marriage. (As Nancy alludes to in her memoirs, Patti was born seven and a half months after the wedding—at a healthy seven pounds.) Maybe this helped Ronnie to overcome his apparent reluctance to commit?

MARY GARDNER Stamford, Connecticut

BOB COLACELLO REPLIES: As I explain in my forthcoming book on the Reagans, which was excerpted in the August issue, a close study of the three-month period preceding the Reagans' marriage indicates that Nancy probably did not yet know she was expecting a child when Ronnie proposed. For the record, she has never acknowledged being pregnant to any of her biographers, including me.

DA MEANING OF ALI G

SO, SAM DONALDSON and some conservatives are angry because they got suckered by Sacha Baron Cohen (a.k.a. "Ali G") ["Ali G for Real," by Jim Windolf, August]? Who are they kidding? First off, last time I checked, Sam Donaldson called himself a journalist. Wouldn't a journalist spend five minutes checking out a TV production company? The producers say Da Ali G Show is an educational program aimed at young people. True, I'm educated every time I watch. For example, I've always disliked Pat Buchanan. But thanks to Mr. Cohen, now I know why! Lastly, to blame Mr. Cohen for the stupidity of his interview subjects is ludicrous. By that measure, Mike Wallace ought to be in Sing Sing. This guy is funny—way funny.

BRIAN BARTON New York, New York

IN JIM WINDOLF'S INTERVIEW with Ali G he refers to me twice. In the interest of an accurate account of Ali G's M.O., I'd like to correct his assertion that "James Lipton, the trim-bearded host of the Bravo Channel's Inside the Actors Studio, made an enraged phone call to Da Ali G Show s offices the next day, according to one of the producers."

The call to the producer was simply a request for an address for Ali G, so I could write him a letter that was anything but angry, and may explain to your readers how Da Show worked in my case, and, I suspect, in others.

When I arrived at the shoot, I found two things: a fellow in a yellow tracksuit in my living room, surrounded by his crew, and a producer asking me to sign a consent agreement that was, to put it mildly, unlike any I'd ever seen. As I said to Sacha Baron Cohen in my letter:

Obviously, the contract that was handed me when I arrived home, beginning with the ominous, but I suspect unenforceable, mandate against "lawsuits against the program," alerted me to the fact that something was afoot. I'm familiar with such television contracts since I also ask my guests to sign an assignment of rights to the Actors Studio, but of course there's nothing in it equivalent to United World Productions' Paragraph 4 with its claim to a right to "offensive behavior or questioning or any invasion of privacy" ... "false or misleading portrayal of the Participant" ... "infliction of emotional distress" ... "deceptive business or trade practices" ... "copyright or trademark infringement" ... "defamation" ... "violations of Section 43(a) of the Lanham Act" ... "fraud," etc_The contract went on to adjure me not to rely "upon any promises or statements made by anyone about the nature of the program or the identity of the interviewer or the host of the program." So—there was no clue as to the identity of the "interviewer," but, on the other hand, no mystery that he wasn't who he purported to be.

If Mr. Windolf had ever asked to see, or was shown, the standard Ali G consent agreement, which must be signed before the shoot begins, he would have to know that no sentient person could fail to be alerted to the plain reality of the situation.

So, why did I, who am at least functionally sentient, sign the contract and proceed with the "interview"? Because whoever this fellow was, he was a stunningly gifted improviser, and the first rule of improvisation is "Yes ... and," which is to say I must accept without question or hesitation whatever my partner is offering, and take it forward to the next step.

My purpose in writing to Ali G was simply to remind him of the promise he and his producer had made to me immediately following the "interview" not to use the editing process to make me seem complied with Ali G's misogyny and homophobia. They kept their word.

Mr. Windolf expresses the opinion that "white liberals ... [are] so eager to be accepted by Ali G, this supposed creature of the hood, that, at his behest, they will often agree to do the most embarrassing thing a white person can do: they rap. Lipton did it. So did Nader." Apart from the fact that, in order to make a dubious case, Mr. Windolf CONTINUED FROM PAGE 122 elected to lump me with Ralph Nader and other "white liberals" (a cheeky assumption, though I have no choice but to admit at least to being white), he has, in so doing, missed the point once again.

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I rapped—to my own lyric, not Ali G's—because I was having such a good time with this intriguing guy (remember "Yes ... and"?) that I wanted to continue the game (once you say, "Look, we both know what's going on," the spell is broken and the game is over). And, since I'm not unfamiliar with the pleasures of improvisation, I didn't want that to happen. Neither, it turned out, did he. After his show had aired, we met a second time, at the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences dinner when his show and mine were nominated for Emmys. We greeted each other as comrades-in-arms, and, like Jim Windolf, I found him as beguiling in life as he is in his three inspired personae.

My only regret is that so many of his hilarious bits ("So, why is the Actors Studio Methodist?") wound up on the cutting-room floor. That was my sole complaint when we greeted each other at the A.T.A.S. dinner. I hope someday we'll all be able to see the hour and 20 minutes that didn't make it to air. We were both working hard, and nobody was duping anybody.

JAMES LIPTON New York, New York

AS AN AFRICAN-AMERICAN stand-up comic and actor, I was surprised to discover that Ali G had received criticism from certain black British comics accusing him of minstrelsy for creating his Ali G character. Not once have I ever felt personally offended by this character. Maybe it was because I was too busy laughing my ass off. "Ali G" is a parody of the hiphop subculture. That culture has rapidly transcended the ghetto and made its way across the globe, which makes it open to global interpretation. It's also a culture that is ripe for parody, from the garish "bling" to the boisterous posturing, to the slang that is rapidly becoming standard English.

GREG EAGLES Los Angeles, California

I AM THE OWNER of a skin-care business in Los Angeles which caters to the Hollywood entertainment community. I have grown accustomed to the media interviewing me from time to time and profiling my skin-care technique.

On April 7 of this year, a rather strangelooking individual, purporting to be a highprofile Austrian TV personality named Bruno, materialized on my doorstep with "Realtor to the Stars" Elaine Young in tow. As I recently learned only from reading your article, this flamboyantly attired character was none other than the renowned Sacha Baron Cohen.

Elaine Young, who is a friend of mine, had been approached weeks prior to our encounter with Bruno by a producer named Will Reiser. Mr. Reiser requested that Elaine locate a beauty purveyor who would be willing to provide her with a televised facial treatment. Since Ms. Young is familiar with my skin-care method, she approached me about doing this show for Austrian television. In the process, I was chosen as an unsuspecting target of Mr. Cohen's lunacy.

From the moment Bruno/Sacha sashayed into my clinic with his red, lacy thong visibly protruding from above his low-rise jeans, Elaine and I knew we were entering a twilight zone of surrealism and insanity.

Throughout the "interview" Bruno proceeded to ridicule, slander, and malign Americans.

"Do you believe that the events of 9/11 would've occurred if the terrorists had received face-lifts?" he asked during Elaine's videotaped facial treatment. "Wouldn't they have felt better about themselves after receiving plastic surgery?" He later stated that he believed euthanizing ugly people, or even plastic surgery given upon birth, would ward off a population of "ugly people" who don't deserve to live.

After three hours of Bruno/ Sacha careening recklessly around my clinic (knocking over a pot of hot wax in the process), this whirling dervish finally took flight, leaving Elaine and me to—literally—pick up the pieces left in his wake.

My irate calls to the producer, Will Reiser, went unreturned. However, this bell cannot be unrung, and Elaine and I will have to hold our breath hoping this humiliating debacle does not pop up on a future edition of Da Ali G Show.

DAWN DaLUISE Los Angeles, California

BETWEEN THE ARTICLES on Sacha Baron Cohen and Jessica Simpson ["Girl Meets Fame," by Krista Smith], I have never laughed so hard at a magazine. Vanity Fair should plot to get these two together—Bruno would be perfect to sic on Ms. Simpson.

JILL BURGESS-GRIDER Brooklyn, New York

BUSH'S MORNING AFTER

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS'S rambling harangue about our writings on George W. Bush's past relationship with alcohol ["The Teetotal Effect," August] was the prose equivalent of a barroom brawl, a flurry of wild swings that did more damage to him than to his intended targets.

The swipe at A.A. (calling it a "quasi-cult" filled with "church-basement babble") was particularly egregious. It's clear that Hitchens has never attended an A.A. meeting, though doing so might be instructive. For the record, A.A. has been saving lives for the past 69 years. It is not for everyone who needs it (or else football stadiums would be required for the meetings). It is for anyone who wants it. The only requirement for membership is "a desire to stop drinking." There are no dues or fees, no prescribed religion, no "leaders," only trusted servants. People can come or go as they see fit.

George W. Bush at age 40 announced his alcohol problems to the world when he admitted that he had to stop drinking or risk the loss of his wife and family. We did not lay this burden, or label, on him. We are all too aware that alcoholism is a potentially fatal disease if it goes untreated. If President Bush had had cancer, AIDS, schizophrenia, or clinical depression, the American people would have the right to be informed of the ongoing treatment, diagnosis, and prognosis of the disease. We are still waiting for an honest and mature leveling with the American people about Bush's long history of drinking and the cognitive impairments it may have inflicted. Instead of addressing this, Hitchens chooses to spike the punch with a bunch of tomfoolery about "physical vs. metaphysical hangovers" and "piss-artists" and other meaningless intellectual contortions. The stakes for all of us, including Hitchens, are simply too high to play such semantical games.

ALAN BISBORT Cheshire, Connecticut MICHAEL O'McCARTHY Greenville, South Carolina KATHERINE VAN WORMER

Cedar Falls, Iowa (Authors of the forthcoming book George W.

Bush, Alcoholism and the Dry Drunk Syndrome)

MR. HITCHENS MIGHT FIND IT of interest to take a look at tapes of Bush as a gubernatorial candidate and more recent ones of him as presidential candidate and White House occupant. The contrast is striking; either he developed dyslexia late in life or he lost control of his material as it became more complex, or he is, as some would say, a "dry drunk."

ANN DAVIDOW Old Greenwich, Connecticut

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS REPLIES: I think perhaps I won't do "semantical games"— usually known as "semantics"—with Bisbort and company Semantics is the close study of the relationship of words to meanings. Thus, the term "for the record' is meant to introduce a statement of fact, not a mere airy claim. Thus, also, the word "egregious" derives its meaning from "outside the flock" or "outside the herd." I'm quite happy to be outside the flock that's bleating here.

Ms. Davidow's letter conjures the marvelous and novel idea of a lost world of previous Bush eloquence, and does at least consider some alternatives to its own theory But Bush had quit the sauce before he ran for the governorship, as I began by pointing out.

WHEN HOOVER MET DILLINGER

BRYAN BURROUGH'S excerpt from Public Enemies ["Dillinger's Last Run," August] is just another thinly veiled effort to diminish the EB.I., but now at the expense of the reputation of one of its icons, Melvin Purvis.

Burrough nearly gushes over the bad guys, referring to the murderous John Dillinger as the "Muhammad Ali of Depression-era crime." Hardly an intelligent or realistic comparison: in a very real sense these gangsters, even given the tenor of the times, were the equivalent of today's domestic terrorists. Dillinger should be likened more to Timothy McVeigh.

When Little Bohemia-type police incidents happen today they are replayed countless times on every network and on popular police-video programs. News helicopters circle repeatedly overhead, capturing the gunplay as black-uniformed SWAT teams cordon off the area, set up roadblocks, and move in for the final confrontation. That's the standard Burrough holds Melvin Purvis and his men to in 1934, forgetting that even the very first SWAT team was more than three decades in the future. Federal law-enforcement and police tactics in general had a long road ahead, yet Burrough all but ignores that America was barely out of the Old West.

Burrough's reporting distorts the demise of Dillinger: Purvis was outside the movie theater with Dillinger as he was shot several times, and true to his strong character had instructed his men that none of the agents involved would claim credit for getting Dillinger. Purvis did not like sensationalizing death—he wanted to see criminals in prison. Burrough also ignores the countless other bank robbers and kidnappers who were brought to justice as a direct result of Purvis's bravery and leadership, not the least of whom was another mostwanted killer, Pretty Boy Floyd. Purvis was the quintessential G-man.

ED WOODS Cincinnati, Ohio

BRYAN BURROUGH did a corking-good job in writing the article on "Dillinger's Last Run." I remember well when Dillinger was killed outside a Chicago theater. As a 13-year-old boy, I hustled sales for the "extra" published by The Paducah SunDemocrat (Kentucky), the only extra of my newspaper-delivery career, in my hometown, Smithland, population 616.

Many years later I wrote an article for Louisville's Courier-Journal Magazine on the Lyon quintuplets, born in Mayfield, Kentucky, in 1896. Some people reported seeing their bodies in the Smithsonian Institution. They were mistaken; the babies were in the nearby Armed Forces Institute of Pathology.

My research for that piece led me to an article in Playboy. The Smithsonian, many Washington visitors believed, became the repository for John Dillinger's penis, and the pickled organ was supposedly seen in a display case there. (.Playboy commented that "the gangster's penisreported as 14 inches flaccid, 20 inches erect—was supposedly amputated by an overenthusiastic pathologist") Tour guides at the Smithsonian believed this story began when people mistakenly entered the building next door, the medical museum, which once housed gruesome displays of diseased and oversize body parts, including penises and testes, as well as pictures of victims of gunshot wounds. This strange collection was moved to the Walter Reed Army Medical Center, where operators denied that Dillinger's organ had ever been one of its displays.

GEORGE T. WILSON Memphis, Tennessee

SURVIVORS IN THE CROWD

I WAS EXTREMELY MOVED by the August Spotlight "Hidden from Hitler" [by Jacques Menasche]. I looked into the faces of these extraordinary people and I had to look inward. They appeared so average and untouched by their traumatic experiences, and I had to ask: If you knew what horrors they have endured, could you ever, say, grow impatient with them in a grocerystore line?

I was particularly moved by the story of Charlene Schiff, who survived, alone in the forests of eastern Poland, for three years. I live in San Diego, and every once in a while at the mall I will see a car with PEARL HARBOR SURVIVOR plates, and I want to find and hug that old hero and tell him that someone remembers and has regard for his trauma and sacrifice, as I have for the brave child survivors described.

JEANNE LEFKO San Diego, California

IT IS TRUE that Holocaust survivors are "stepping into the light." The Loudoun Campus of Northern Virginia Community College offers history courses on World War II and the Holocaust as part of its curriculum. The college was honored to have Charlene Schiff tell her extraordinary recollections to a classroom full of rapt students, many of whom had little previous knowledge of the Holocaust.

MARYLYN HASPEL Public information officer Northern Virginia Community College Sterling, Virginia

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