The Post always prides itself on carrying the battle for the common man--the working man.

Well, I'm a working man and it is part of my job to get my clients into the newspapers.

You have every right not to carry anything on my clients, but you have no right to give me the brush, as you did in my two recent phone calls.

No one is that big or that busy not to respond to a phone call.

DEAR B----: Your letter is a grossly insulting thing but I have elected to answer it.

You have a perfect right, in pursuit of your liv1ng, to submit a publicity picture, however poorly contrived and unimaginative, to a newspaper. You have no right to expect that under some divine or regal privilege you can then enter into active negotiations with the person the picture is addressed to.

Beyond that, you have no right to expect that a man otherwise engaged, a big man or a small man, must perforce drop everything and reach for the phone when B---- calls. There might just be something else going on.

I concede you the privilege of the U.S. mails and the privilege of directing abuse towards any target of your choice. I defend that privilege for you and all the other working men of the world. I also defend my own. It is my privilege to reject your abuse. I am unwilling to account to you for the time in my day.