Watching ‘High Noon’ in a Different Light

“Be a Straight Shooter When One’s Needed,” subtitled “Sometimes, principles call for a ‘High Noon,’ ” (Commentary, Dec. 6) is indeed right that “High Noon” is a parable for our time. But James Holmes’ shallow reading of the movie gets the message completely backward, reading it as a call for us to stand by the Bush administration in its bellicose stance on the Middle East and its rush to war in Iraq.

A review of “High Noon” by Brian Webster, on the Web, reminds us exactly who the cowardly friends were who abandoned Gary Cooper: The movie is “all the more meaningful when it’s considered in the light of events at the time of its making, when people in the movie industry who were targeted by the House Un-American Activities Committee experienced similar abandonment by their friends.”

For our time, it is all too popular to turn quickly to war against a tinhorn dictator or back the destruction of the Palestinian people because to do otherwise is to risk charges of lack of patriotism or worse. As it was for Cooper’s character, it is time for us to risk popularity and “respectability”; we must oppose the coming conflagration in the Middle East.

John V. Walsh Jr.

Worcester, Mass.