If You Can’t Repeat Anything Nice . . .

I often remark that you can’t do a worse story, but the story about Chelsea Clinton, camouflaged as the plight of children in political families, really is the low I have feared (“Stepping Into the Fish Bowl,” Dec. 2).

It’s one thing to show how children’s lives change when they are elevated to public scrutiny, but it is quite another to republish remarks that are hurtful and degrading. Children are not fair game. They need our protection.

Surely tasteless remarks which are judgmental and cruel can be eliminated from an otherwise interesting story--especially cruel remarks which the writer didn’t even gather herself.

KAREN SHORTRIDGE

Santa Monica