Intellectual Insecurities

Too bad Adrienne Martini had to spoil CBT's Ghosts for the rest of us ["No Soul," Vol. 9, No. 5]. I happened to like the production, finding in it moments of real brilliance. Martini's review was so needlessly scalding that I couldn't help wondering if there wasn't something else at stake for her—like her own intellectual insecurities. She took great pains to catechize us about what theater should be, and to defend us poor, small-town folk from those mean, big-league intellectuals who might be trying to bamboozle us. However, I doubt that mean, big-league intellectuals waste their time entertaining American cities of less than half a million. I myself am thrilled that we are host to some risk-taking directors, and suspect that they are not getting rich from their work here.

Does Ms. Martini recognize that few people go into theater for fame or money nowadays? Or that any kind of experimental direction is so risky and unprofitable that it is a badge of courage to even attempt it? Who does she think is going to "blaze new trails into the boundaries and conventions of the forms," as she heroically puts it?

Finally, I find it hard to imagine a sports writer covering a local football or basketball game with the same vituperative zeal as Ms. Martini, even if "our team" lost. Theater is Ms. Martini's workhorse; she should be careful not to thrash it to death. She may find herself without a job.

Nadine Davis
Knoxville

The Conspiracy Revealed

No doubt you're aware of Jerry Falwell's announcement that one of the plush creatures on the British import kids' show Teletubbies� is a gay advocate. Falwell can tell this by the fact that he is purple, like another notorious PBS pedophileosaurus, by the blatantly queer triangle on his head, and by the fact he has the voice of a MALE cartoon character but carries a purse (I confess I would have mistaken the purse for a briefcase).

There is disturbing evidence the NEA's gay brainwashing may already have worked its insidious effect: informal polling reveals an alarming number of boys in the target 4- to 6-year age group acknowledge they don't like girls.

Thank God Rev. Falwell is protecting the nation's toddlers from being lured into homosexuality. Further support for his suspicions may be found in an important clue that he has possibly overlooked: What is the purple Teletubby's name? Tinky Winky. What famous literary character does this call to mind? Tinker Bell. And what was Tinker Bell? A fairy!

And let's not discount the part the other Teletubbies play in this British plot to make America's children as perverted as the British and, no doubt, to encourage them to eat more candy so their teeth will be as bad as English teeth. Dipsy, for example, is plainly a promoter of alcoholism (dipsomania), Laa-Laa would represent drugs, � la the expression "Off in la-la land." Drugs or California: just as bad. Po is more obscure, but a moment's thought reveals a reference to Poe...literature's foremost exponent of necrophilia!!!

Equally troubling is the fact that, not content with preempting the color purple, the gay movement has reportedly adopted the rainbow as its new standard. This raises the troubling prospect that the heterosexual majority may be left with only the color gray. And how long before, one by one, we lose the use of our remaining geometric figures?

John Mayer
Knoxville

Belt Buckled

Jack Neely says ("Secret History," Vol. 9, No. 3) that he has not located any use of the phrase "the buckle of the Bible belt" earlier than 1976, that one in reference to Jackson, Miss. It appears in the 1955 play Inherit the Wind, a dramatized version of the Scopes trial, in the mouth of E.K. Hornbeck, a character based on H.L. Mencken—the originator of the phrase "Bible belt," as Neely points out. Hornbeck, newly arrived in Dayton, or Hillsboro as the play has it, mutters to himself: "Ahhhh, Hillsboro—Heavenly Hillsboro. The buckle on [sic] the Bible belt."

Allison Ensor
Knoxville