Make-Believe Ads

Ellen Goodman, the Wailing Wall’s best customer, must have been ‘way back in the line’ when they gave out senses of humor.

She has a fit (Editorial Pages, Dec. 13) because the MaidenForm people depicted an imaginary woman doctor clad mainly in attractive lingerie--complaining solemnly that wimmin doctors don’t really dress like that.

Does Missus Goodman think that O.J. Simpson really hurtles down out of the air into Hertz cars? . . . that Merlin Olson really goes around locker rooms passing out bouquets? . . . that there really is a little man in a boat floating around in her toilet tank?

Where would we be without Make Believe? MaidenForm’s ad campaign has been going on five or ten years with no evidence that the nation has been corrupted by its delicious fantasies. In fact, the human race has gotten along quite well for a million years without Missus Goodman’s Grundyism. She probably thinks Santa Claus and Tinker Bell are socially inimical concepts.

If she doesn’t knock off her knee-jerk reformist noodging of the wonderful world of Make Believe, some of us heretics might be tempted to blow smoke in her direction, just to see her faint.

GLADWIN HILL

Los Angeles