The American Spectator

p> THIS COULD BE THE LAST TIME br> Re: Michael Skaggs’s letter (under “Literacy Test”) in Reader Mail’s Biden His Time : /p>

Now, and for the last time, we turn our attention to Mr. Michael Skaggs and his near frantic search, over these last few days, for vindication.

Mr. Skaggs: During the latter part of the 20th Century, the Peoples Republic of Cuba proudly announced that literacy among the Cuban people had reached 100 percent. That’s extremely impressive, until you learn that in Cuba literacy is defined as the ability to sign one’s own name and to recognize one’s own name when it appears in print.

By most standards, however, and certainly within the industrial democracies, literacy means more than an ability to identify most of the 26 letters of the alphabet and a few of the punctuation marks that govern their usage. By the high standards that guide civilized men, literacy includes at least a passing familiarity with history, literature and philosophy, as well as an ability to extrapolate when one confronts some thing new and unfamiliar.

My point remains what it always has been: (1) I attended a reunion of the Rainbow Division, and (2) the Rainbow Division was made famous by an old Movie called The Fighting 69th. Those two things are true, regardless of “timeframes.”

It is funny (sad, but still funny) to hear your claim that you were “‘getting it right”…”because of a lack of an included timeframe,” in my first letter, and therefore you were not splitting hairs. (For further illumination, consult a dictionary of American idiom. Look under S.)

Your desperate need for victory is reminiscent of Jimmy Carter’s periodic efforts to look like a statesman, or Geraldo’s demand that he be described as a journalist. When a pink toy poodle tries to chase a mountain lion up a tree, it gets high marks for valor, shrill noise and nervous energy, but that ain’t nearly enough.

p>This is the final time I will speak to this point; it bores everybody but you. br> — Edmund Dantes /p>