<< you might be surprised to know that BOYS TOWN is a real place, not a micky rooney movie.>> I would not be surprised to learn that (in fact, I knew it before your very defensive post). My point was not that Boys Town was an evil institution, but rather, the use of an absurdly idealized version of it from 1938 created by people who ought to have known better, by sloganeering and opportunistic politicians of 1994. Furthermore, the Boys Town of 1994 is (and has been, for a long time) unrecognizable as it was portrayed in that film. It is a short, term chain of "villages" for troublesome youths, not a long-term warehouse for working mothers as was suggested by Gingrich. In fact, the current director of Boys Town, a priest (whose name I do not recall) was interviewed this week on tv and said that while he felt that Father Flanagan's approach might have been appropriate in the 1930's, it was wholly inappropriate and absurd to suggest that it could cope with the geometrically more immense and serious problems that we face today. I was certainly not trying to hide my political bias in my post, but to interpret it as an attack on Boys Town today is symptomatic of the reasons why our political dialogue has become so viciously adversarial. Gene Stavis, School of Visual Arts - NYC