Reading the June 26 commentary on the Spice Girls by Cal Thomas, I wanted to dismiss the whole thing as a self-righteous, obviously intolerant view of what other people consider acceptable mores in entertainment.

I couldn’t. Please understand that I am not a Spice Girls fan, nor would I disagree with Thomas if his premise were simply that the group signifies a cultural decline in musical taste (or the neccessary distinction between mediocrity and sub-mediocrity). It was his constant, grating references to women, more specifically young girls, that drew my reluctant fingers to the keyboard.

According to Thomas, boys have to be “sexually manipulated” by girls. How interesting that in his world there is apparently no biological compulsion whatsoever for boys to experience sexual feelings for girls unless the girls are dressed in midriffs and short skirts.

Of course, if they are dressed in midriffs and short skirts, the take is that they are only doing it to manipulate boys who would otherwise go home and read Tom Sawyer or play video games. My question is what about girls who dress in neither midriffs nor short skirts, and are still ogled and harrassed by boys? I must be missing some fine point within the delicate premise.

A taste for the Spice Girls isn’t going to undermine an adolescence or a life — not if there are other positive influences at hand. Which there usually are. Not everything is so black and white as in this man’s oddly static world. Greta Sproul Brownville