]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]   LETTERS TO THE EDITOR    [[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[ 
are perhaps the MOST EFFECTIVE way to fight the crazies. Surveys 
have shown that Letters to the editor are more widely read than editorials. 
     Sometimes I get letters "The enclosed nonsense appeared in 
our local paper. Would you please answer it?" 
     No, I most certainly would not. I write AtE to give you 
facts and arguments to be used in your own words in your own 
community with your own local address. I am desperately short of 
time for AtE (and other projects) and have no time to be any-
body's secretary. If you read AtE, you probably know more about 
the subject than the editor, and you certainly know more about 
its local aspects than I. 
     Letters to the editor should be interesting, fact-filled, 
logical, witty, etc., but above all short. Short! SHORT!!!!
     A feeble and boring letter that gets published has more 
effect than a brilliant letter that does not.
     Here are some samples that got published even in hostile 
publications. Note their length!

                         *   *   *

[NEW YORK TIMES, 10/29/86]
               NUCLEAR POWER FOES SHOULD PAY COSTS
     "The Public Service Company of New Hampshire reports that 
the delay in gaining an approved evacuation plan has been adding 
$50 million a month to to the construction costs of the Seabrook 
nuclear power power plant (front page, Oct. 18).
     Why should not those who throw up the roadblocks carry the 
costs of their actions? Since the Governor of Massachusetts is 
blocking the plant, why should not the State of Massachusetts be 
presented with the bill of $50 a month? Thus far anti-nuclear 
activism has been cost-free to the activists; they put up one 
roadblock after another to construction and, win or lose, they 
win, because the bill is paid by someone else.
     Those who believe the plant is needed to meet the expanding 
energy needs of New England are paying for that belief. Let those 
who believe the opposite begin to pay for theirs.
                  Erich Isaac, New York

                         *     *     *
[ADVERTISING AGE, 4/21/86]
                    SAY NYET TO LADA
     I bristled when I saw one of the suggested print ads for the 
Soviet Lada -- "Hide a defector in your garage" (A.A. Feb.24). 
The Lada is not a Soviet defector. It is the exact opposite, 
because every dollar the Soviet Union gets from selling Ladas in 
the West helps pay for guards, dogs, barbed wire and machine guns 
to prevent dissatisfied Soviet citizens from leaving.
     No matter how funny they may make the Lada ads, sales money 
is going to be spent by the Soviet state, which isn't funny at 
all.
                             Sandy Shaw, Palos Verdes Est., Calif. 

                        *     *     *

             KEEP ON WRITING, AND KEEP IT SHORT! 
                       THE LEFTIES DO!
                        *     *     *
 

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