LETTERS: AMERICA BERSERK OVER 19-YEAR-OLDS' NORMAL BEHAVIOR

To the editor:

During the salacious coverage of l'affaire Monica Samille Lewinsky, a letter was published in an Australian newspaper which contained this memorable phrase: Thank God Australia got the convicts and America got the Puritans.

I resented then the drooling and almost obscene ecstasy with which the holier-than-thou crowd in America recounted in detail the sordid, but nevertheless private, liaisons between the self-destructive Bill Clinton and the scheming Lewinsky. As it turned out, numerous of the self-righteous pursuing hounds -- Henry Hyde, Robert Livingston, Dan Burton, Newt Gingrich -- were found to have more than a little of the pursued hare in their own behavior.

Again, America is going berserk over the very idea that two normal, 19-year-old women -- who have the mischance to be daughters of the U.S. president and, therefore, not to be allowed to be normal with impunity -- would want to have a margarita with a meal in a Mexican restaurant. I think a law forbidding such a thing is a gross, hysterical reaction to relatively few unpleasant happenings in a free society that we could be, but are not. Of course, I would word the sentiment of the Australian letter writer slightly differently: Too bloody bad Australia got the convicts and America got the Puritans.

DONN S. MILLER

Tamms, Ill.