The stars align for WNBA
Re “WNBA popularity at an all-time high” by Gary Washburn (Sports, April 21): The 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris will take place at a very opportune time for the WNBA and its incoming rookie class. Caitlin Clark, the first overall pick in the 2024 draft, will probably make the roster of the USA Women’s 5x5 basketball team. Second overall selection Cameron Brink is competing for a role in the Women’s 3x3 team. This comes on the heels of the 2024 NCAA Women’s Basketball tournament, which set a record with 12.3 million viewers for Iowa vs. Louisiana State University, featuring Clark against another incoming WNBA athlete, Angel Reese. While Boston does not have its own WNBA team yet, TD Garden will host a game in August between the Los Angeles Sparks (with Brinks and fellow first-round draft pick Rickea Jackson) and the Connecticut Sun, which drafted Leïla Lacan from France as the 10th overall pick. The addition of “household names” to the WNBA — and the added visibility of the US Women’s Basketball teams in the Summer Olympics — presents a golden opportunity for the league’s growth.
ADAM SILBERT
New York
Seconding Jacoby’s view of William F. Buckley Jr.
Although I almost never agree with Jeff Jacoby’s positions or his choices for the subjects that apparently seem to him to be the most urgent, I want to commend him for his column making so clear the vast difference between the conservatism of William F. Buckley Jr. and that of MAGA conservatism (“The man who made conservatism fun,” Ideas, April 21).
I believe that Jacoby is correct to reject implications that Buckleyism spawned Trumpism. I would add one observation to that of Jacoby’s note that Buckley stood for respect for constitutional norms, for American internationalism and reasoned debate. In particular, regarding Buckley’s famous support of articulate, reasoned debate on his political show “Firing Line,” Buckley invited the leading liberal minds of the day to joust with him and his team of conservatives. Such notable liberals as George McGovern and John Kenneth Galbraith were routinely brought on to debate the political issues and philosophies of the day. Despite a no-holds-barred intellectual format, it was always clear there was mutual respect among all participants, each searching by their own lights to meet the needs of our society and open to the free debate of ideas. The contrast with the MAGA movement could not be more clear. I usually found the liberal point of view to be the most persuasive and wished that Buckley, as a self-proclaimed devout Roman Catholic, had more of Jesus’ concerns for and identification with the poor, women, orphans, prisoners, and the migrant wayfarer, but I cannot overlook the point of view of anyone who would use Bach’s Second Brandenburg Concerto as a theme song for his show.
ROBERT G. BILL
Quincy
Law, ethics, and humility
What a difference a day makes when reading the Globe. When I saw Saturday’s online Metro section headline, “Judge orders $1 million to be returned to Mass. man,” it initially caught my eye because I thought it was going to be a happy lottery story. Instead, it was about John B. Wilson, who has been largely cleared in the Varsity Blues scandal, recouping his $1 million. I hadn’t heard of Wilson before reading the article. But what grabbed my attention was him saying “we did nothing wrong in donating money to colleges and getting a tie-breaker boost in the admissions process.” Not sure I’d want to flaunt that. Just because something is legal doesn’t make it ethical.
Then the Sunday Ideas section publishes Ben Conniff ’s thoughtful piece, “I benefited from legacy admissions. Universities should get rid of them.” He reflects upon lower-income, marginalized kids who excelled in the same ways he did but who “required a strength and determination I never needed. I am sure one of those applicants did not get into Yale because a place was held for me.” His humility is a breath of fresh air.
Congratulations to Wilson and the recovery of his $1 million. I hope he’ll consider donating some of it to a scholarship fund.
ELLEN DEGENOVA
Cambridge
FaceTime or face time with our children?
Shaun Cammack’s piece on kids and screens (“Engage your wild child. Don’t sedate them with a screen.” Ideas, April 21) was both thought-provoking and humorous.
Neither accusatory nor defeatist, Cammack succinctly points out the new reality of raising young children in the current era of constant screen exposure. Not only do we have to be wary of abusing the pacifying nature of an iPad or smartphone to “sedate” our naturally wild children as he describes (“I think we might be putting kids in digital cages. No wonder they are not all right”) but a glance around any park or family venue shows that the lure of the screens in our pockets keeps our own attention away from the precious and fleeting small events of early childhood. The significance of this novel monkey wrench thrown in on early socialization should be worrisome to anyone who recognizes the innate need of infants and young children to be “seen” and to feel their own authenticity and value through the eyes and ears of their first caregivers.
My own children, raised more than 20 years ago, rarely had to compete with a technological device for their parents’ attention, and it concerns me to think what it might mean that we have a generation of babies growing up having felt second-fiddle to the dazzle of smartphones.
DR. LAURA J. PERRY
North Weymouth