Dear Editor,
I write in relation to Freddie Kissoon’s feature article captioned ‘My wife likes Harry’ in Kaieteur News of September 10, 2008. I am happy to note that Mrs Kissoon likes the name ‘Harry.’
The article has a few factual errors about one of my letters and I wish to set the record straight. He writes “Harry even wrote a letter published only in the Chronicle which I didn’t know about… He wanted the Ethnic Relations Commission to investigate me for what I had written in an article entitled ‘Pavlovian Respondents.’”
The letter referred to by Mr Kissoon was sent to the three major daily papers. I suggest that he ask the editors of the other two papers, one of which is the Kaieteur News, why they chose not to publish that particular letter of mine.
I have no control over publication, nor do I complain when my letter is not published. Publishing is the editor’s prerogative.
If Mr Kissoon had read and understood that letter, he would have realized that I questioned the title and not the contents of the article. In fact, I wrote that “whoever wrote that caption” should be investigated. As well, I stated that, to his credit, Freddie Kissoon did not use that phrase in the article.
I pointed out that in the context of what was written in Mr Kissoon’s article, the caption (‘Pavlovian Respondents’) was offensive to Indo-Guyanese. I reiterate my concern about that caption.
Readers should note that Ivan Pavlov was a Russian scientist who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physiology in 1904.
He experimented with dogs and conditioned them to drool by the mere ringing of a bell at mealtimes without giving them any food. In light of the contents of Mr Kissoon’s article, the caption implies that Indo-Guyanese in their support for the PPP are conditioned like Pavlov’s dogs. This comparison is odious.
Yours faithfully,
Harry Hergash
