To the editors:

I find the article by Luke Smith ’04 (Comment, “A Harvard Boy in Love,” Feb. 26) tasteless and embarrassing. I feel sorry for Harvard women that they would have to be compared in whatever sense to the heartless, empty person that is called Ann Coulter. Smith or any Harvard “boy” should look closer at Coulter’s website and realize that she is not a person that women or men should emulate.

Her “loud and bold individual character” has besmirched the American military and its fine men and women. In her recent column “Cleland Drops A Political Grenade,” she has the audacity to call the heroism of Max Cleland into question. Senator Cleland lost three limbs in a grenade accident while serving in Vietnam. Coulter’s moment of “candor” states that since Cleland did not lose his limbs while taking enemy fire he does not deserve the title of hero. She fails to mention the fact that he had already earned the Silver Star for previous action, and that the “non combat mission” was preparing the hill for an upcoming battle.

I would like Coulter and any of her supporters to tell families who lost loved ones in non combat deaths that their sons and daughters are not heros. Please tell that to the mother of Lance Corporal Brian Anderson, (USMC) who died in a vehicle accident. Go to Walter Reed Hospital and tell the men and women there what your view on heroism is. Our men and women in the military are not only heros because of the blood they shed for this country. They are heroes because their sacrifice allows us to live in comfort. They are heroes because they make an oath to protect the Constitution of the United States, even the hate speech that Coulter blows out. They are heroes because in the dark moments when most people would shrink in the face of danger they put themselves on the line for us. Maybe one day Coulter will get this. Maybe when Smith becomes a “Harvard man” he will understand this.

Ruben Marinelarena ’02-’04

Feb. 26, 2004