Why ABC Lost the ‘War’

Howard Rosenberg continues to be the supercilious, arrogant critic, showing it with his Nov. 23 piece that castigated those 40 million viewers who chose Vanna White’s TV movie over “War and Remembrance” (“War and Remembrance Takes Its Place at Top of All TV Drama”).

This, he opined, no doubt says something about America. About what? Maybe its taste, level of intelligence or, more darkly, the universal guilt it wished to avoid by not watching the Nazi atrocities in the most expensive production in TV history.

I saw neither “War” nor “Goddess of Love,” but I resent what might be inferred had I chosen the goddess over the gore.

One observer notes that many viewers have complained that they don’t have the inclination to deal further with the subject of the Holocaust. I am among those who have seen my fair share of Holocaust films, and I too am surfeited. This may not be so with the millions who watched “War” rather than “Goddess” and in doing so gained Rosenberg’s approval. (Lucky them!)

I have seen the gray and grainy wartime films of the death camps--enough so that they are etched in memory and will forever evoke horror, sorrow and pity. I don’t need to see a glossy, colored, exceedingly expensive exploitative film about the Holocaust.

JOHN CORCORAN

Encinitas