Editor:
Your reader, Richard Galloway ("Cronkite would be devastated," Letters to the Editor, Feb. 5), takes exception to your headline "Samohi aide accused of grabbing teen's butt," Feb. 2-3. He claims that this shows disrespect to women. I'm not sure how he reaches this conclusion since, the last time I checked, I am anatomically correct in that department, too. If he is not, he has my condolences.
However, I do share his opinion of the word "butt." It is indeed crude and there's an end of it. He suggests "buttocks" or "derrière" as having a certain "je ne sais quoi" which would raise your journalistic standards.
I think "buttocks" is somewhat flabby and "derrière," though quite well-rounded, is too pretentious and flamboyant.
I would recommend the good old English term "bum," which is well seated in the English language.
"Samohi aide accused of grabbing teen's bum" seems to show a better grasp of the situation. Surely nobody could take literary exception to that?
Perhaps readers would like to write in and let us know their favored term for that part of our anatomy, which is always with us, but, except in a few cases, never directly observed by its owner. There is a rich lexicon.
I notice that if anyone objects to somebody's driving, they immediately call out to them and compare them to a derrière, but use a more Anglo-Saxon term.
What this is really showing deep disrespect for is not women, but all of us and our derrières.
What have our derrières done to us that we hold them in such contempt?
After all, what would we do without them?
I rest my case and my derrière.
Neil Macaulay
Santa Monica
