Other than being quoted in the initial press coverage about Bart's brief suspension in 2001, I have never talked about the feedback I received to the piece. It was extensive and—as the studio chief's story shows—revealing.

 
But there was one letter I received, postmarked Monterey, California, that was by far the most illuminating. It began like this:
 

Dear Ms. Wallace,
 
I wish to address one line in your article about Peter Bart in the September issue of LOS ANGELES MAGAZINE: "Over several months, he will volunteer that he has never once dated a Jewish girl…"
 
My name is Dorothy Callman. I am Jewish. We dated for three years, were married for close to twenty.

 After delivering that punchline, though, Bart's ex-wife went on to defend him. Bart's penchant for flouting political correctness, she said, might give the impression that he was "anti-Semitic, anti-blacks, anti-homosexuals, a bigot in many respects." But in Callman's view, this was "a simplistic judgment based on insufficient knowledge."
 
Callman wrote that Bart had been raised by a-religious parents whose rejection of Judaism gave him the impression that to be Jewish was to be weak. "This is not to excuse Peter's behavior. Not at all," she wrote.
 
"I want only to say that his behavior, in my view, is based not on bigotry or anti-Semitism but on his inability to transcend the wounds of his childhood, on a deep inner need to be acknowledged (a need we all have), to feel a sense of power, and that he is in control of his world."
 
As of Sunday, Bart is no longer in control of his world. But look around: What journalist is?

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