"Why does the Militant always use the formal first names of politicians?" asked Jane Peterson in a letter printed on the facing page.

Capitalist politicians use informal names and nicknames to try to portray themselves as ordinary people with common lives like the average worker or working farmer, not representatives of the wealthy class. The bourgeois media go along with the scam. But the Militant doesn't. In fact, we always stress that they are not part of the same class, they are from the enemy class. They are our mortal class enemies.

Peterson writes, "Everyone but the Militant" uses the names "Bill, not William" Clinton and "Bob, not Robert" Dole. There is at least one other working-class publication that also uses formal names like "William Clinton" in referring to the U.S. president. And probably for the same reasons as the Militant. That paper is Granma, the newspaper of the Communist Party of Cuba.

- MAURICE WILLIAMS  
 
 
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