_______________ BETRAYED! BY EVAN MARX (04/28/98)
	While I was greatly unsettled by the 21st story on infidelity, it ends with the wrong message. To say that e-mail and the Internet at large lend themselves to such flings and deception may have merit, but I doubt it will erode relationships or lead to a new world of lies and false loves. The driving forces behind infidelity and this kind of twist-the-knife emotional harm have never been the tools used to carry out the acts, but human weakness and cruelty. This is obscured in the story by the massive emotional weight given to the situation: We want to ask, "How can she be so wicked?" and it took me a long time to see that the situation itself is timeless. Only the steps of the dance have changed. The real questions don't start, "Why didn't she use common tools to conceal herself?" and, "Why didn't he capture keystrokes?" but, "Why aren't people honest with each other?" and, "Is he going to be OK?" -- Derek Zumsteg I wanted to commend the author behind the pen name Evan Marx for his wonderful and heart-wrenching story on relationship betrayal online. This is an issue that is coming up more and more as couples spend less time together and more time in front of their computers. I have known many people affected by this same situation. One woman on a mailing list even went so far as to take on a different online personality just to catch her husband meeting another woman (boy was he surprised to find it was his wife!). The information age has led to more than a lack of privacy and an overabundance of information. It's led to a lack of trust because it offers more opportunities for betrayal. My heart goes out to the author. -- Pamela Wilfinger Evan Marx's article about his fiancée's betrayal was an interesting one. I (tipping my hat to Bill Clinton ... or maybe Hillary) "felt his pain." Marx clearly was betrayed by his fiancée and was deservedly angry about it. However, I do wonder if Marx's anguish was the result of his fiancée's behavior ... and his own. First, I think Marx was actually surprised that his fiancée would be in the position to cheat on him. He said that she "wasn't the most beautiful woman [he] had ever spent time with" and that she was older than him and that he expected younger woman groupies to follow him across the country. Is it possible that his self-centeredness and arrogance about his own sexual magnetism and subsequent power in the relationship ("I'm the more desirable so she is lucky to have me") created distance between them? Was the relationship perfect before she slept with Mitch? Probably not, but Marx seems to think so. Second, I believe Marx was more interested in self-torture rather than self-discovery. After he found out she was cheating on him, he should have let her know! Why torture one's self over and over for three weeks and barely hide the simmering anger and feelings of betrayal? Marx seems to suggest that the moral of the story is the role of technology in affecting relationships. I say the real moral of the story is that it takes two people to make a bad relationship. -- D. Carter Bloomington, Ind. What a pathetic wimp! Anyone who can't just come forward at the forefront and say, "Hey, what is this about? I wanted to ask you rather than snoop" deserves the pain he got. How bloody childish to dig up dirt on your lover with the aid of SOFTWARE!! You need to live away from your damned computer for a while. Yes, she did wrong. Yes, you have a right to be angry she did that to you. But your handling of it was ridiculous. You don't deserve to be married or have a fulfilling relationship unless you can communicate -- orally and in person. Spoiled child who got his feelings hurt on the playground and thinks the world owes for a kick in the face with sand? Please. Go back to your mother's tit. -- Geoff Tucker Mr. Evan Marx's article demonstrates two things: one, that he is a fool, and two, that he has learned all the wrong lessons from his aborted relationship. Anyone -- of whatever sex -- who categorically refuses to have children within the context of a relationship is by definition selfish and self-centered to a fault. Children take an enormous amount of patience and self-sacrifice to raise, which is generally why selfish people don't want them. That should have been Mr. Marx's first clue about the nature of his significant other, but then he was blinded by his own selfish desire to never have children, wasn't he? There is also the lie his significant other told to her own parents about the cohabitation of which they disapproved. This is a clear sign of dishonesty and, again, selfishness. Even worse is that it was a wholly unnecessary lie told by a grown woman to her parents for what I can only assume to be the sake of convenience. Confronting them, and respectfully explaining her wants and desires, would have been the decent -- not to mention adult -- thing to do. Instead, she chose an elaborate deception. This certainly would have set off alarm bells in MY head. The lesson that Mr. Marx should take away from this is simple: Observe your beloved's behavior toward others, and their personal life choices. These and these alone will tell you whether they are trustworthy. Not their e-mail. -- Robert Anderson I can sympathize with Evan Marx's feelings of betrayal at discovering his fiancée was conducting an affair. I can see how, morally, he had the right to spy on her e-mail. Frankly, though, as a 34-year-old woman, my reaction on reading the following passage was: What a sexist creep! "She wasn't the most beautiful woman I had ever ever spent time with. And she was a few years older than me. In terms of our attractiveness to the other sex, her stock was on the way down (she was 32) while mine was on the way up -- I was 29 and my first book was nearing publication. I knew I'd soon be on a book tour and that I'd probably have a lot of interested younger women giving me their attention" Did Evan truly love Amy? I doubt it. He sees himself as a great catch; Goddamn it, why wasn't the woman grateful! After all, her "stock" is way down, his is up! He was in control, he had the power. Not her, right? When you are betrayed by a lover, Evan, your best move is to get out of there ASAP. You only stick around if you want to reassert your power, have the last word. I didn't see a lot of heartbreak in his reaction; rather, indignation at being deceived. OK, he's justified. But instead of spying on his girlfriend and accusing her of being a "whore," perhaps Evan should have gotten into couples counseling with her as she suggested. It's a more mature way to work on a relationship than by deceiving each other -- one spies; the other has an affair. Deep down, is there a big difference? Grow up: A mature relationship requires both parties lay their cards on the table. -- Elisabeth Keating
_______________ THE BEST LITTLE ASS-KICKING COLUMNIST IN TEXAS BY CAROL LLOYD (04/21/98)
	Kudos to Carol Lloyd for her wonderful interview with Molly Ivins. Lloyd asked all the right questions, and Ivins, of course, has all the right answers. In 1992, while on a book tour, I shared a network television green room with Molly Ivins and Sally Quinn, while we waited to be interviewed separately and to plug our respective books. Guess which author made sure that the production assistant brought me a cup of coffee, too, thanked her profusely, and called her "darlin'." You only get one guess. -- Leslie Goodman-Malamuth Washington
_______________ DAVID HOROWITZ RESPONDS TO LETTER-WRITER BLAKE FLEETWOOD (04/23/98)
	For writing a Salon article about Murray Waas and Dick Scaife, I am accused by Blake Fleetwood of many crimes against truth, decency and the Kennedy family. Peter Collier and I did not write a "vicious book about the younger Kennedy generation," which Fleetwood would know if he had bothered to read it. In fact the book is about three Kennedy generations, and the treatment of the younger Kennedys is notable for its sympathetic portrait of these obviously troubled young men. I did not interview a stoned David Kennedy "who was not in any condition to talk on the record to anyone." When I interviewed David Kennedy he was going to Harvard and working as an editor at the Atlantic. In the 13 years since "The Kennedys: An American Drama" was published (and went to the top of the bestseller list) not a single statement or fact has been challenged by any of the hundreds of people we interviewed or by any member of the Kennedy family or its hangers-on. Fleetwood's slanderous attack is notably absent of any specifics as well. Nor does he explain why, if the book was as libelous as he maintains, there were no suits filed by the Kennedys against us. The obvious explanation is that every interview was tape recorded and that we did not lie to anyone in doing the book, nor mislead anyone, nor embellish any information. The particular "information" I am alleged to have taken, "despite pleas that it would destroy many people," concerned the drug use of Lem Billings, a Mayflower descendant and college chum of Jack Kennedy who was a guardian of Bobby Kennedy's children, and who thought that sharing narcotics was a way of earning their respect. This was the only person who could be "destroyed" by such information, but Lem Billings was already dead when the book was completed, and thus beyond any hurt we could inflict on him. To one charge I plead guilty: Not enjoying the benefits of a trust-fund income, Peter and I did not object when our publisher sold serial rights to Playboy. However, the idea that a book excerpt in Playboy killed David Kennedy must rank with Teddy Kennedy's invocation of a "Kennedy curse" to explain why Mary Jo Kopechne was driven off Chappaquiddick bridge. -- David Horowitz SALON | May 1, 1998

R E C E N T L Y+| TRIUMPHANT IN DEATH BY DAVID J. GARROW (04/28/98)

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