'HERO WORSHIP'

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

I found Christopher Cabot's piece, "The Beauty and the Beast" (March 8) insulting as well as an utter waste of your space and my time.

A piece of this sort had potential-a great deal of it in fact. Mr. Cabot could have explored the phenomenon of Ali (witness Robert Lipsyte's article in the Sunday New York Times Magazine) or he could have explored, by focusing on certain ramifications of the Ali-Frazier match, the sport of boxing in the United States. At the very least, Mr. Cabot could have treated Joe Frazier and Sonny Liston with some measure of the respect and sympathy they both deserve: neither are (in Liston's case, were) ogres, but human beings with dreams and desires and failings like the rest of us.

Instead, Mr. Cabot chose to engage in hero-worship, which in most instances is indicative of a mind that ignores the complexities of man, and is always most demeaning, ultimately, to its object. All is my champion, but no man is my idol.

Mr. Cabot's piece, infected with a boarding-school point of view (and style) is notable only for its complete lack of saving graces.

Lee Arthur Daniels Editor Harvard Journal of Afro-American Affairs