July 26, 2001
Letters to the Editor
letters@time.com

To the Editor:

    Apparently bad taste and racial profiling are alive and well over
there at Time Magazine.  In your July 30 issue of the News Quiz, you went
three for three in choosing offensive stereotypes for a quiz question about
Italy which characterized Italians as corrupt, unwashed sexual predators.
Once in a while it would be refreshing and informative for your magazine to
run an article by a journalist whose insight into Italian life and culture
was not based on Hollywood movies. 

    Then perhaps, your readers would learn that Italy, one of the
world's wealthiest democracies, has one of the five leading  economies
(ahead of Great Britain, Russia and China).  A world leader in machine tool
manufacturing, with advanced technologies in robotics, electro mechanical
machinery, shipbuilding, space engineering, construction machinery, and
transportation equipment, Italy also excels in the culinary arts, fashion,
interior and graphic design and furniture manufacturing.  According to
UNESCO, the cultural and educational agency of the United Nations, this
little peninsula in the Mediterranean also has produced  over 60 percent of
the world's greatest art treasures. 

    Isn't it time for Time to move into the 20th century in its
reporting on this important U.S. ally?

Dona De Sanctis
Bowie, Maryland 20715