Letters

An Error Tackled

You bastards. I have been a loyal National Review reader since my days as an undergraduate at the University of Illinois in Champaign–Urbana in the early 1980s. I was a long-suffering Bears and Illini football fan prior to that and ever since then (except in 1985, when “Da Bears” -- blessed be their name -- had the greatest season ever).

And what do you elitist East Coast twits do to add to my suffering? You wrongly tell the world upon the death of Dick Butkus, the greatest NFL linebacker ever, and the greatest football player ever to come out of the University of Illinois, that he “was a superstar college linebacker at Illinois State.”

Illinois State University is a fine school in Bloomington–Normal, Ill. It is not where Dick Butkus played college football!

You ignorant elitist bastards! You’re lucky Butkus is dead. If he had read this tripe, he would not have been happy. And he was not a man you wanted mad at you.

BTW, love the new magazine format.

Scott P. Larson
St. Charles, Ill.

Mr. Larson -- On behalf of the author who wrote that item, we at National Review would like to extend our sincerest apologies not only to you but to the family of Dick Butkus and to the many tens of thousands of Fighting Illini faithful offended at our mis-schooling of the Chicago Bears legend. The author would have written an apology himself, but we have temporarily shipped him to Champaign–Urbana for remedial training as a tackling dummy.

Respectfully, the Editors