American trait?
Sir: As an American (and a Democrat who Will reluctantly vote for James E. Carter on 2 November), [should like to take issue with Nicholas von Hoffman (10 July) on several Points.
Were 'Sitting Bull and his ... colleagues' not in fact as 'American' as Custer and his? 'America's least-loved city', as recent events have amply demonstrated, is New York and not Washington. I can conceive of nothing that would now make the 'agnostic segment of the electorate' (or any other, for that Matter) 'yearn for Richard Nixon and his famous expletives deleted'.
Finally, I am curious that the Spectator should have seen fit to inform us that Mr Hoffman is an American, when it was so blatantly obvious. Belief in the ultimate perfectibility of everything is, we are told, an American trait. How unfortunate, therefore, that what many Europeans think of as the American art of badmouthing everything—even, and especially, America— should have been carried to as yet unscaled heights by an American in a British magazine!
Susan H. Llewellyn 41 Terenure Road, West Dublin 6
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