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_______________THE UNEASY DEATH OF FLORENCE GRIFFITH JOYNER BY KRISTINA REBELO ANDERSON (12/04/98)
	I noticed Salon received many letters accusing the magazine of being unfair for publishing a story that speculates about Flo-Jo's possible illegal or dangerous drug use. I am a lifelong athletic woman who does construction work for a living and who lifts weights for fun. I have noticed over the years that ballet dancers (great athletes) and long-distance runners and sprinters all are very skinny and wiry. This is because they burn off any fat produced by female hormones. Weight lifters like myself are "bulked up" but we have the normal 20 percent fat that any woman has. I can lift and pump like crazy and I will not get skinny -- if I lose too much weight, my muscles go! This is why many female athletes from Russia were so heavy if they were shot putters, for example! Flo-Jo always disturbed me because she had a man's heavy musculature with a woman's body. She wasn't stringy or thin but had pumped up thigh muscles and biceps. No fat at all. This body type is impossible without the aid of male hormones. The sudden death of a healthy powerhouse of a woman was very troubling. I know of a number of male weight lifters who abused male hormones and a number of them died suddenly. We talk about this in the gym. -- Elaine Supkis Petersburgh, N.Y.
_______________DICTATOR OF CHOICE BY DAVID HOROWITZ (11/23/98)
	It is true, as David Horowitz charges in his Dec. 7 letter, that I am a professor; and I suppose it follows from this that he need not engage my argument about his Nov. 23 column. It is also true, as Horowitz charges, that his impassioned defense of Augusto Pinochet would not meet with a warm reception on many American college campuses; and I suppose it follows from this (as Horowitz writes) that I should "begin [my] search" for "fascist precedents from the '30s" on those campuses. (Did Horowitz really mean to say that I should search on campus for fascist precedents? Ah, but this would not be the first time Horowitz's logic has escaped me.) OK, so it's another boilerplate rant about leftist political correctness on campus. I can't say I expected a more substantive response from Horowitz than this. I truly am surprised, however, that Horowitz characterized my letter as "a vicious personal attack." My letter simply pointed out that the terms in which Horowitz defended Pinochet could be used just as well to defend Hitler. I didn't say word one about Horowitz as a person. Since Horowitz is an old hand at writing incendiary polemics, I did not imagine that he would turn out to be so whiny and fragile when confronted with a polemicist from the opposite side of the aisle. Well, you know what they say: If you can't stand a little heat, you should get the hell out of the salon. -- Michael Bérubé
_______________"WE WERE BURNING" REVIEWED BY ANDREW LEONARD (11/30/98)
	Andrew Leonard's review of Bob Johnstone's book is almost as one-sided as the book itself. I had to read the third sentence of the third paragraph before I stumbled across the word which is the crucial definition of this book: "revisionist." MITI was indeed a huge player. MITI helped Japanese firms acquire the rights to American patents. MITI assisted Japanese technology companies in "dumping" products on the American market. The U.S. companies, forced to play a fair game against unfair opponents, never stood a chance against their Japanese government-subsidized opponents. Rodnay Zaks' book "From Chips to Systems" mentioned this at the time when the first great dumping of memory chips from Japan was taking place at the beginning of the 1980s. It was one of the primary reasons few remember a company known as Mammoth Memory. I am not a Japan-basher. In previously published articles and op-ed pieces, I have come to the defense of Japan. However, this review seems to kowtow to the revisionist opinions expressed in the book. The CD was invented in a joint effort by Philips (Netherlands) and Sony, and Sony was the junior partner; they had manufacturing rights only in the U.S. and Japan. The synthesizer was invented in the U.S., as was video tape (Ampex). Japan invents little. Rather, their strength is in marketing, although they occasionally slip, viz Sony's Mini-Disc. Gallium arsenide MOSFET's will NEVER be a sexy subject. Neither will the word "helical," which describes the positioning of a videotape read/write head. But a short look into the source of these ideas and technologies points directly at the bad old USA. -- M.W. Grossmann New York SALON | Dec. 11, 1998

R E C E N T L Y+| IS MIKE DAVIS' LOS ANGELES ALL IN HIS HEAD? BY VERONIQUE DE TURENNE

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