---

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, February 27, 1993                   TAG: 9303010226
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-11   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Short

---

TARZAN-LIKE THINKING ABOUT CLINTON

IN RESPONSE to your Feb. 5 editorial, "What hath Clinton wrought?":

I always found the notion of using live or dead baby parts for "medical records" morally repugnant. The Reagan-era ban on such ghoulishness was a welcome reprieve from the incessant yammering of Dr. Mengele-inspired "scientists" who couldn't sense a moral consideration if it were surgically stapled to their foreheads. Yet you view the ban itself as "morally repugnant." Does this mean you think using baby parts for research is "morally attractive?"

You also say that the ban was a policy under the "guise" of anti-abortionism. It was always clear that the ban was an overt anti-abortion measure, with no "guise" about it at all. Exactly what were you trying to say?

Your sentence about gays in the military, "orientation isn't relevant to military fitness, behavior is . . .," was equally confusing. The sentence implies that homosexuality does not involve "behavior," when of course it does.

When your thoughts get this muddled, it reduces the sense to something like an old Tarzan movie, "Ugh! Clinton good! Reagan bad!"

Finally, to defend President Clinton because he's taken some action on noneconomic issues is awfully anemic. Any substantive criticism of the president is ludicrous, at this point in his term, but this is, after all, the man who ran on "The Economy, Stupid." Rightly or wrongly, he will be judged primarily on how he handles economic issues. RICHARD A. LLORET ROANOKE

---