"What Drives China": Readers for the most part didn't subscribe to Orville Schell's thesis that because China suffers from a history of humiliation the Olympics should not be marred by political protests. One said, "The Chinese government's serious human-rights violations, against its own people and Tibetans, need to be addressed vigorously without moral cowardice." Another considered China's driven athletes and posited, "No nation suffering from an 'inferiority complex' can succeed in firing up its athletes with that kind of self-confidence."
Pride, Protest and the Olympics
China scholar Orville Schell's "China's Agony of Defeat" (Aug. 4) was interesting and informative. However, one need not look back 100 years to know that those choosing the Beijing Olympics as an opportunity to protest are in the wrong. The purpose of the modern Olympic Games is to promote competition as an alternative to confrontation as a model for relations among nations. Furthermore, one does not accept an invitation with the intent to be disruptive and insulting to one's host. Such behavior is simply rude.
Betty Jo Chang
Douglas City, Calif.
Orville Schell suggests that the Olympic Games are not the proper arena to address the Chinese government's derelictions. Why? Because the bully might hit you with more force than if you did nothing. What a cowardly view of the situation. The Chinese people are continually being humiliated, as Schell states, but it is the government doing the humiliating. It is time for the global community to say stop. And what better venue than the Olympics? Stop persecuting your people, stop censoring the masses and journalists in particular. Stop funding the aggressors in the Sudan by supplying them with monies. Stop the persecution of anyone who disagrees with your inhumane tactics. One doesn't stop a bully by ignoring him, but by standing up to him. Thank God Gandhi and others like him did not share Schell's philosophy.
Raymond Westbrook
Pittsburgh, Pa.
I cannot find any sympathy for the Chinese "humiliation." The humiliation should be for following a leader who took them backward in time, enslaved and subjugated them, and turned the country into a big prison camp. They were dominated mentally and physically by one of the most regressive and totalitarian regimes in world history. Only when they started to adopt foreign ideas like capitalism that their leaders had demonized did China start progressing economically. The Chinese people should feel humiliated but not for the reasons listed by Orville Schell. Their leaders failed them and the populace didn't have the wherewithal to recognize it.
Jeff Cohen
Canfield, Ohio
Need McCain Be Tech-Savvy?
Anna Quindlen says we live in a time of peril and under the shroud of war upon war ("The Techie in Chief," Aug. 4). To stretch her thesis to meet her liberal bias, she then says since McCain is a neophyte, technologically speaking, he can't possibly be a competent and forward-thinking president. For goodness' sakes, she points out the man can't even use a BlackBerry. Odd; when I employ her thesis, I imagine that in times of peril and war, we can't possibly have a president who hasn't seen battle and understood the implications and tragedies connected to war.
Lyla Fox
Kalamazoo, Mich.
John McCain's inability "to use the most sophisticated means of communication available," the Internet, is the least of his inadequacies. He has a twisted sense of humor that found it funny to amend the Beach Boys' song "Barbara Ann" to "Bomb Bomb Iran." The increase of America's export of cigarettes to Iran inspired him to playfully contemplate that it might be "a way of killing 'em." There is nothing amusing about collateral damage; there is nothing amusing about killing. Do we really want a leader who could play "follow the leader" and plunge our country into further world disaster?
Celine E. Riedel
Avon Lake, Ohio
Anna Quindlen's "The Techie in Chief" reaches a new low in sarcasm and nitpicking, even for one who has been called "a left-wing idiot." True, the telegraph did help President Lincoln with his prosecution of the Civil War, but he also traveled to review the situation. The fact that John McCain has not taken the time to master the Internet shows that he is not given to spending time being frustrated by this machine, which I still waste lots of time on. I am 76 and "learned" how to use it 10 years ago. The fact that McCain lets others handle the electronics testifies to his good use of time. John McCain probably cannot shoot three-point baskets as well as Barack Obama, either, but neither of these skills will solve the problems of our country.
Richard Murray
Sturgeon Bay, Wis.
Measuring Grief
My husband passed away this year. We were married for 51 years. So "Inside the Grieving Brain" (Aug. 4) was of great interest to me. I've always believed that when a loved one dies there should never be a limit on how long to mourn, since we experience loss in different ways. Am I now to understand that if we mourn longer than six months, we're candidates for inclusion in DSM-V, the next edition of the standard textbook on mental illness? Perhaps researchers, in scanning the brain's nucleus accumbens, should look to the heart as well. My sorrow comes from there.
Louise R. Travis
Northville, Mich.
Clarification
NEWSWEEK's Aug. 4 story "A $16 Billion Problem" contained an imprecise statement about Chevron's disclosures to shareholders regarding a lawsuit against the company in Ecuador. The story should have said that a recent court recommendation prompted Chevron in May of this year to include details of the suit in a quarterly report, marking the first time the potential liabilities were disclosed to shareholders in a document filed with the SEC. Chevron had previously referenced the suit in proxy statements to shareholders.
Correction
In the Aug. 4 item "When We Were Kings" in "A Viewer's Guide to Beijing," we reported that the last American Olympian to win a gold medal in boxing was Oscar De La Hoya in 1992. Two Americans—David Reid in Atlanta in 1996 and Andre Ward in Athens in 2004—have won boxing gold medals since De La Hoya. NEWSWEEK regrets the error.