Dear Terry, Your point is magnificently taken, and I remember posting something when the awards were first created that they weren't about Sam at all, but television ratings. Awards shows are hideously cheap to produce, and are easy promotion tools for sagging arts venues. Because ratings are what matter above all, to give such an award to someone who someone really deserves it would not attract that sacred 18-to-35 demographic (which, if you read the piece in the Sunday Times magazine of Oct. 20, is a crock). Notice how all the recipients have been comics (albeit good ones) and not writers. Notice how Twain is beside the point. In a just world, the prize would go to writers, the first having been awarded posthumously to H.L. Mencken (Terry Teachout's new biography, THE SKEPTIC, is quite good). After him, the usual lovely suspects: Garrison Keillor, Roy Blount Jr., Christopher Buckley, Cynthia Heimel. But these awards aren't about Sam. They're about television, and the forum and the circle should do everything possible to distance themselves from this fakery. Not that Newhart isn't deserving. He should have been first. Cheers, Kathy O'Connell Record-Journal Meriden, Conn.