Dear sir or madam:
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It’s nice to see a left-wing newspaper reembracing its historical roots by championing a decent “common man” [“The Man Who Would Be Kingmaker,” August 5]. Back in the 1930s workingmen and -women weren’t treated with the condescension and contempt with which they are today. Broadway playwrights like Clifford Odets and Arthur Miller saw simple truths in the lives of simple people. Indeed, author Pietro Di Donato made a common Italian laborer a hero in his seminal novel, Christ in Concrete, while John Steinbeck sympathized with poor whites in The Grapes of Wrath.
That’s a very good question. And in order to get an answer, perhaps it’s time for news reporters and law enforcement officials to begin analyzing their own deeply held class and ethnic biases via the Italian-American community.
