Portrayal of Advocate Unfair and Unfounded

To the editors:

I was intrigued by Jacqueline Newmyer's assertion that the "The Devil's Advocate" (FM, Oct. 7) was a "representative" account of the "power-plays" and "real-life drama" that take place on Harvard's extracurricular terrain. It is no coincidence that the manner in which FM went about writing the article was as "representative" of the extra-curricular "power plays" and "drama" which it ascribed to the Advocate. I and other members of the Advocate Executive Board declined to comment.

Having only access to the basic outline of the events she purported to describe Newmyer chose to compensate what her article lacked in substance with defamatory sensationalism: "at one point last spring, a flash-flood of resignation offers almost washed the Advocate away." Since Newmyer herself writes in the article's postscript that everybody privy to the Advocate Executive Board's proceedings last spring declined to comment it is hard to see how Newmyer is justified in fabricating fictitious renditions of those proceedings based on the bogus authority of "sources", "observers" and "veteran Advocate editors." Newmyer even has the audacity to invent psychological insights for her protagonists:

"Soudavar emerged repentant and still convinced that the Advocate needed his leadership. Humbled but not disheartened, he would retain his post at the helm." Some of Newmyer's speculations arise from her own imagination without even throwing so much as a glance askance at the standards of responsible journalism.

FM accuses the Advocate of a kind of collective artistic pretension. It seems that FM's hell-bent desire to be sensational at the expense of objectivity has blinded it to the fact that the faults we find in others are often are own.

Saadi Soudavar '00

Oct. 13, 1999

The writer is the president of the Harvard Advocate.

Lee Lacks Definitional Rigor

To the editors:

In his editorial "The Veritas of Irony" (Oct. 13) Richard S. Lee has embraced features of Jedediah S. Purdy's thinking that do not point to a very complex view of human relationships or how the world works in general. His discussion of the effects of irony on Harvard life amounts to reductive oppositions such as ironic/serious, inside/outside, true/false and superficial/deep.

The first exercise in definitional rigor I would invite Lee to undertake is that between "irony" and "cynicism." In referring to "students who incessantly ask questions in lecture" who are wrongly labelled as "brown-nosers," Lee is talking about cynicism, not irony. Somehow Lee's commentary does not make me fear the breakdown of commitment in America, but the breakdown of the ability to think rigorously at one of America's universities.

Adam Christian '01

Oct. 13, 1999

Tobacco Risks Widely Known

To the editors:

In 1958, at the age of 11, I began smoking. I had been warned, and believed, that cigarettes caused lung cancer. My friends and I also believed that, in addition to cancer, cigarettes stunted your growth, shortened your breath, and were in general bad for you.

Retired New York Times columnist Russell Baker recalls that in 1933, when at about the same age as I, he picked up the habit, cigarettes were referred to as "coffin nails." For as long as anyone can remember, smoking has been thought to be very harmful.

The claim of President Clinton and Attorney General Reno that for the last fifty years or so cigarette manufacturers have succesfully "hidden the truth" from the public is patently untrue. The president and the attorney general know that what they say is false, but they say it for political and legal reasons.

It is unfortunate that The Crimson supports this new government anti-smoking litigation. The editors are either ignorant of-or, like the president and the attorney general, have no respect for-the truth.

Stephen Helfer

Oct. 8, 1999

The writer works at the Harvard Law School Library.