Objects of Sex and Violence

The appearance of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition has given rise to some serious discussion among the women I work with. A co-worker pointed out that not very long ago the cover was a grainy picture of Mike Tyson with the word "GUILTY" across the front.

Does anyone else find this ironic? The same magazine which devotes an entire issue to the gratuitous portrayal of women as sexual objects also frowns upon men who treat women as such && objects.

Does anyone at Sports Illustrated think about the connection between attitudes such as those of people like Mike Tyson and their own depiction of women as less than people?

Women are given the message through the media that they should be sexy and attractive. However if those same women are assaulted they must have been asking for it because of the way they looked.

Relationships between the sexes are difficult enough without these mixed messages.

If the people at Sports Illustrated respond that they are only portraying the glories of perfectly fit athletic bodies, then I would ask, where are the men? Why are there no shots of healthy male bodies in thong bathing suits?

The answer is of course that the issue has nothing to do with health and everything to do with sex. The bottom line is to make a profit. Sex sells. Women as sex objects sell big.

As long as it is acceptable to portray women in this manner we will continue to have grainy black and white photos with the caption "GUILTY."

Mary R. Gunther

Baltimore

BWI's Future

I want to commend you for your balanced, perceptive March 13 editorial, "Sell BWI Airport?". It raised important issues that state officials must address before letting go of this valuable public asset.

There is one thing you did not mention, however, that is of great concern to the airlines: The tremendous debt such a sale could place on the airport and the effect that debt could have on the level of air service at BWI and the cost of traveling and shipping through that airport.

Mayors and governors across the country are being told they can reap hundreds of millions of dollars -- in some cases billions of dollars -- by selling their airports to the private sector. Naturally, such talk captures their attention. But state officials need to bear in mind that the buyer likely will be borrowing that money and will need to substantially raise landing fees, parking fees and rents to service the debt. The deal might be the ultimate leveraged buyout.

As you pointed out, BWI is an important economic engine for Maryland. The state should not jeopardize the airport's economic viability. Nor should it burden Maryland air travelers and shippers with excessive costs, which is exactly what would happen if BWI became a debt-laden, high-cost operation.

Robert J. Aaronson

Washington

The writer, president of the Air Transport Association of America, was the Maryland Aviation Administrator from 1972 to 1978.

House Overboard

Members of the Maryland House of Delegates have abdicated their responsibility to the state, to its citizens and to the future economic health of both. They passed a $500-million dollar tax bill for the state which allows for another $300 million for local governments through increases in the local "piggy-back" income tax.

The increase in the local "piggy back" income tax is the largest single tax increase this year and surpasses the total tax increase passed by the Senate. Yet, it has received almost no coverage.

With all but one county at the maximum 50 percent rate for the "piggy-back" tax, with more than 95 percent of the state's citizens paying the maximum rate and with support for the increased rate to 60 percent by delegates from the populous counties, most Marylanders will see a drastic impact from this hidden tax increase.

Are Maryland citizens prepared for nearly $1 billion in new taxes as proposed by the House? This citizen, as an economist and a Democrat, surely is not.

Frederick W. Derrick

Columbia

Dragon's Breath is Potentially Lethal

I am appalled that The Sun would allow the opinion of its movie critic to be portrayed as a factual news article.

Dragon's Breath, the subject of S.B. 364 which bans the sale of incendiary material, is potentially lethal. I introduced this bill at the urging of an unusually united law enforcement community that generally does not support bans.

Had Stephen Hunter, who does not cover Annapolis, contacted the bills' sponsor or any law enforcement group, he would have known the following:

1. The Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (BATF) has tested Dragon's Breath. According to the director of BATF's testing division, this material, when shot from a regular 12-gauge shotgun, emits a 4,000 degree fireball which burns very hot. It will torch whatever it hits.

2. BATF tested the material at 30 feet on a mannequin dressed in a police uniform covered with a bullet-proof vest. It melted the vest and burned the mannequin.

3. BATF is very concerned about incendiary material. The only reason BATF has not banned this material is that its regulations are not broad enough to cover it.

4. It is presently banned in California and Florida. The Florida National Rifle Association affiliate did not object to the ban.

5. Dragon's Breath has already been used in criminal activity in Florida. A car was torched. Both the car and the left front tire were set on fire.

Our law enforcement officers and citizens have enough to fear. I sincerely doubt that anyone caught in the path of Dragon's Breath, or any incendiary material, would be laughing.

Janice Piccinini

Annapolis

D8 The writer is a state senator from Baltimore County.

South Africa Vote

The decision of the white electorate to ratify the referendum put forward by President F. W. de Klerk sets in motion a process for dismantling the atavistic, racist and heinous system of apartheid.

Mr. de Klerk's sedulous, steady and arduous efforts to have the system of apartheid extirpated, in the face of a vociferous and determined core of supporters of the old order, merits commendation.

President de Klerk and other rational and fair-minded white South Africans, to their credit, understood that the long-standing push of the 30 million black South African population, an overwhelming part of South Africa, was ineluctable and could not be deterred indefinitely.

The vote of the white population provides a basis for joint cooperation between black and white South Africans to move forward together in pursuit of prosperity, unity and stability.

Nelson Mandela, leader of the African National Congress, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi closed ranks admirably and inspirationally in support of the referendum.

The extent to which they maintain open lines of communication and solidarity as they work with de Klerk's government will be immensely important and pivotal in accelerating the pace and range of black South African participation in the total socio-economic, political and educational fabric of South Africa.

The current directions of South Africa in support of fundamental fairness and political equity is deserving of a lusty huzzah. I hope that the process will continue with a minimum of delay, circumlocution and obfuscation.

Samuel L. Banks

Baltimore

Public's Right To Know

Your March 21 editorial, "Witch Hunt in the Senate," deplores the efforts of Senate investigators to learn the identity of those who leaked Anita Hill's charges against Judge Clarence Thomas to reporters Nina Totenberg and Timothy Phelps. You point out that these reporters were making public information the American people had a right to know.

I can't help but wonder why the American people don't also have a right to know who originated the leak and tried to embarrass the administration.

R. H. Greenlee

Baltimore

Birds of a Feather

I can truly sympathize with Carl T. Rowan in his March 20 column on the Senate's intrusion into the media's First Amendment rights.

You see, I am a gun-owner and the government has been gnawing at my Second Amendment rights for years.

The people should not put up with any erosion of the Bill of Rights.

The media and the National Rifle Association should not be at each others' throats. They should be working together to keep the Bill of Rights intact.

Chester J. Whitten III

Owings Mills

Redistricting Plan Met Federal Goals

The March 21 letter ("Does Redistricting Plan Violate Constitution?") from Bruce N. Harris, president of the Colonial Village Neighborhood Improvement Association, decries the new legislative districts that cross city-county boundaries.

Redistricting following the decennial census must meet the tests of both state and federal laws. This was the foremost consideration in developing the governor's plan. The boundary crossings that Mr. Harris objects to addressed the objectives of the federal Voting Rights Act.

While the state constitution calls for due regard to be given to boundaries of political jurisdictions, federal law requires that the state avoid diluting minority voting strength. The governor's plan for the Baltimore region was the only plan introduced in the legislature that addressed both the state and the federal requirements for redistricting.

Aside from the legal requirements for redistricting, Mr. Harris acknowledges the imperative for regional cooperation. He calls upon local government to solve regional problems while diminishing the role of state government in addressing such concerns.

The economic and social well-being of the Baltimore region inextricably links Baltimore city and Baltimore County. Ironically, Baltimore city has been the only jurisdiction in the state not heretofore involved in shared legislative districts.

Neal Peirce's column in the March 23 Sun, "High Cost of Suburban Separatism" lists the Baltimore region among those metropolitan areas suffering the most economically.

Based on findings released by the National League of Cities, the greater the income disparity between the poorer inner cities and their affluent outer suburbs, the greater the loss in regional employment from 1988 to 1991. Economic segregation leaves the Baltimore region less attractive than those city-suburbs where income differentials are less.

The price for the "new American apartheid" falls heavily on the state as our economy is increasingly dragged down by costs of failing welfare, criminal justice and education systems.

The Baltimore region has a choice. We can continue to build walls that separate the city and county along political boundaries. Such walls intensify our prejudices and weaken us economically.

Alternatively, we can build bridges. This offers an opportunity to allay our anxieties about our neighbors and improve our social and economic competitiveness.

The redistricting plan is a step toward building bridges. It supports state governance through state and regional solutions.

Instead of polarized districts along economic divisions between the poor and the well to do, shared legislative districts provide increased opportunities for moderation and consensus-building.

Isn't it time we see our new legislative districts as providing opportunities for positive change?

' Ronald M. Kreitner

Baltimore

The writer is director of the Maryland Office of Planning.

'What's Bad About Tea, Cookies?

Jean Marbella's article "Cookies vs. Career" (March 23) looks at the remark Hillary Clinton made about staying home, baking cookies and having teas. She examines the work versus home ethic within the 1990s.

Hillary Clinton's remark is degrading to women who choose to stay home, but unfortunately so is the article. Even the title of the article uses the derisive metaphor of "cookies" and contrasts it with the pretentious term "career" when we are really referring to employment in general.

Likewise the photos of Hillary Clinton clinging to her candidate husband, smiling and fulfilled in her "image with a law career" and of Barbara Bush, alone, unsmiling humbly "fills a more traditional role."

Ms. Marbella talks about how "many women have arranged for flex-time, part-time or work-at-home jobs that put them in both DTC worlds simultaneously" and that many more women are doing both work and home.

There are misconceptions with the "work" side of the feminist movement: That a person can be two places at one time, or concentrate on two things at one time without a loss of quality to either, that material gains from additional income will counterbalance the loss of time in nurturing family, self and home, that a relationship between parent and child will be just as close in the long run regardless of the time invested along the way, and that the frustration of discovering first-hand that these misconceptions exist can be eradicated by corporate advancement without any transferal of stress to family members or self.

And the biggest misconception is that staying home is as simple as baking a batch of cookies and inviting friends over for tea. The woman who makes home a career in the 1990s must have multiple talents to succeed. She needs creativity, self-motivation, satisfaction from serving and caring for family. Often she must find it in a lonely environment as fewer women stay home. She also needs resourcefulness as she attempts to keep pace with peer families enjoying dual incomes, as well as an ability to rise above the thinly-veiled humiliation of her vocation handed to her by women like Hillary Clinton and the admiring images of career women created by biased journalists who are themselves working women.

Georgia Corso

Baltimore

It's 9 Counties in Ulster

On March 17 The Sun carried an article entitled "St. Patrick's Sad Division," by James F. Burris, a University of Florida professor. He constantly refers to the six counties of Antrim, Down, Armagh, Londonderry, Tyrone and Fermanagh as Ulster.

This is historically incorrect, as Ulster has been recognized, even by the English government, since 1608 as consisting of nine counties.

If the professor will check the 1990 edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica on Ulster, Vols. 8 and 12, pages 789 and 117, he will see that when the British government in 1920 assigned the name of Northern Ireland to those six counties, it specifically referred to the counties of Donegal, Cavan and Monaghan as part of the province of Ulster.

The professor also constantly refers to Ireland as consisting of two parts, the north and the south. It is too bad he did not look at a map of Ireland before he wrote his article.

Any map of Ireland clearly shows that County Donegal extends further north than any of the six counties named by England in 1920 as Northern Ireland.

There are many contradictions of geography and history relating to Ireland. But there is no logical way to call the northern-most county of the 32 counties of the island of Ireland to be in the south of the same island.

Thomas E. Bracken

Baltimore

'We Can No Longer Do It Alone'

I am a Baltimore County school teacher, and I called in sick on March 17. My anger over the current crisis in the Baltimore County public schools has less to do with the money missing from my next paycheck than the accumulated frustration of a life spent in public education and the public's refusal at a local and a national level to recognize the significance of a teacher's work.

I am an excellent teacher. I know this because my principal, my supervisor, and my department chairperson tell me so. I know this because my students tell me so.

But I do not know how much longer I can stand the strain, both financial and emotional, of being an excellent teacher. For the past twenty years, I have subsidized and underwritten public education with my own time and money.

I have paid for bulletin board materials, posters, transparency pens, videotapes, computer programs, disks, staplers and marking pens out of my own pocket. I have spent whole weekends reading compositions, writing lesson plans, marking quizzes, and computing grades. I will not do it any longer.

I am asking the taxpayers of Baltimore County to pay an average of less than a dollar a week to insure a decent education for my students. I am asking my students' parents to spend considerably less money in additional taxes for their children's classroom instruction than I have spent on supplies every year that I have taught. I am asking senior citizens to contribute their share to the education of future generations as past generations did for their children.

Four years ago I underwent major surgery that was performed by former student. She told me that the years she spent in the school where I teach were a turning point in her life, that she became a doctor because she had been inspired by her biology teacher.

I knew that she had had a good education in Baltimore County; I knew that she would be a good physician. I can no longer make that assumption. Good doctors, good lawyers, good teachers, good citizens all begin training for their life's work when they enter a school building for the first time. We need the community's help and support to create the workers for the 21st century. We can no longer do it alone.

Ellinor E. Myers

Baltimore

Hark, the Bard of Wall Street

This problem I pose, sincerely, with truthfulness:

The Dow Jones Industrials have outlived their usefulness.

The flaws in this average I will not repeat,

since they are well known to those on the Street.

Why not reject this hoary tradition,

and start up anew with tomorrow's edition?

What we need is an index that is much more inclusive.

Now, charts of that index we could really make use of!

A much better measure would be Standard & Poor's,

but here's a suggestion that beats all other cures:

To see if the market closed lower or higher,

use the 5,000 stocks compiled by Wilshire.

Richard G. McAlee

Baltimore