Sir: It is a curiosity that the 15 persons whose
names appear above the rubric of the Motion Picture Association of America in your issue of 26 November, who are among the key players in the creation and propagation of contemporary American popular culture, are unable to compose a coherent three-paragraph letter.
Collectively, these ladies and gentlemen have spent hundreds of years immersed in the world's literature in their roles as thes- pians and impresarios, the culmination of which is a sentence like, 'We have seen the results of hateful scapegoating, of ascribing group traits, of baseless charges of exclusionism.' This literary incapacity could be forgiven if the writers dared venture beyond the comforts of the Hollywood hills to even once have confronted the forces of reli- gious and racial hatred to which they allude. They condemn stereotyping; yet that is their trade. They cringe at bloodlet- ting; yet they profit hugely by their simula- tion of human misery. They gratuitously refer to the Holocaust; yet ask them where they were at several critical hours since 1948, when Israel's existence hung in the balance. The answer is obvious: at their swimming-pools, fantasising how genuine human horror could be transmuted to the aesthetics of a lucrative film script.
William Cash's article was as malevolent as a gefilte fish, and, as a Jew, I'd rather do a horo with the landsman that prepared it, than get within a hundred miles of these mountebanks of make-believe.
Ted Joffe
American Mineral Inc, Metrobank Plaza, Manila, Philippines
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