New York, NY

Dear Ned,

It is an old adage that he who lives in a glass house should not cast stones. Nor should one choose a "red light" district to deliver a sermon about the virtues of chastity.

You rightfully criticize Apple Computer's bad "PR" judgment when it first picked, and then dropped, Dalai Lama from its "Think Different" advertising campaign - so as not to upset the Red Chinese government ("Bitten Apple," WSJ editorial, 4/24/98). But you ignore some rotten apples in your own backyard.

Where was the Wall Street Journal's righteous indignation when one of your media brethren, Rupert Murdoch, ordered HarperCollins last February to cancel a scheduled fall publication in Britain of a memoir by Chris Patten, the last British Governor of Hong Kong, for fear it would offend the same Red Chinese government? Why was the Journal AWOL? Your silence in defense of Murdoch's assault on free speech was deafening.

You also rightfully criticized the IMF and the U.S. Treasury Secretary, Robert Rubin, for trying to deceive Congress and the American public so as to help themselves to another $18 billion of the U.S. taxpayers' money, on top of some $35 billion which the IMF has already claimed and not yet repaid ("IMFonomics," WSJ editorial, 4/23/98).

Yet, where was the Wall Street Journal's righteous indignation when one of your own big advertising clients (IBM) spent nearly $20 billion on stock buybacks without creating a single product or a job? Or when the Big Blue was joined by scores of other Blue Chip companies, many also your advertising clients, who jointly spent some $180 billion last year on share repurchases - several dozen small country GDPs'-worth (!) - without creating a single product or a job?

What makes your silence on such economic perversion by your Blue Chip clients any less despicable than Apple's dropping Dalai Lama to appease its Red Chinese government? What if it turns out, that Apple's competitors with bigger advertising budgets and greater China ambitions - yes these Blue Chip economic perverts - "broke" the Dalai Lama story?

Maybe the American public should use your "Think Different" anti-Apple campaign as an opportunity to put the U.S. establishment media "red light" district into the limelight. Yes, "something is rotten in the state of Wall Streetmark..." But maybe it isn't just the rotten Apples?

Best regards,

Bob Djurdjevic

Also check out... "Debt Is Good!  Really?" ,  "Kosovo: Another Vietnam?", "Banality of Bombings", "Greek Archbishop: Stop This NATO Attack,"  "You Were Wrong About Gen. Perisic", "New York Times' Kosovo News Manipulation",  "Plus, Another Kosovo News Cover-up",  "Embarrassed About Such 'Serbs',"  "Put the UN Justice on Trial",  "Another Wall Street Bailout, Another Main Street Sellout", "Does WSJ Dance to Wall St. Bankers' Tunes?",  "Clinton Fiddles While Milosevic Burns",  "Let the Bombing Begin?  Not!" , "What's Good for the Goose..."  and "Journal's Rotten Apples" (Wall Street Journal); and "Stock buybacks: Wall St.'s Duping of Main St.", Business Week).