>I would think it would be at
>least a little bit interesting that Wendy Kaminer, cited by alex as a
>"good" feminist" on the ritual abuse issue, criticized him severely in
>the same letters column as Doug!
For some reason, I felt much more up to the technical challenges of scanning her letter than AC's response.
Doug
----
>Kaminer: Katha Koudn'ta
>
>I'M PUZZLED BY Alexander Cockburn's attack on Katha Pollitt for her
>recent column on the notorious Amirault child-abuse persecution in
>Massachusetts ("Wild Justice," 10/27). It Is true that Pollitt was
>late in recognizing the injustices visited upon the Amiraults and
>other people imprisoned for imaginary acts of child abuse. Still,
>the worst you can say about her column is "better late than never. .
>. .
>
>It is not true that a few columns by Pollitt would have convinced
>Gloria Steinem and the editors at Ms that claim about recovered
>memory, the ubiquity of child abuse or the existence of Satanic
>cults were unfounded. Cockburn greatly overestimates Pollitt's
>influence on the Ms. crowd, as well as the rationalism and
>fairmindedness of those feminists who rallied behind all the
>self-proclaimed victim of abuse. As he must know, many were simply
>not open to reason.
>
>Pollitt may have missed the story that Cockburn and Dorothy
>Rabinowitz covered so tenaciously, but it's not as if she was
>sitting home eating bonbons. She was writing about other injustices,
>like welfare reform (which I have never addressed). None of us can
>cover every story or advance every important cause. And if Pollitt
>erred in her earlier assessments of wrongful child-abuse cases, she
>had the grace to admit her mistake, which is surely more worthy of
>praise than scorn.
>
>WENDY KAMINER, Cambridge, MA