HUSH MONEY I agree with your Newshole piece, "How Much Do ...

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I agree with your Newshole piece, "How Much Do We Get for Putting Up with Them?" (11/17). You're absolutely right that a lot of the victims of 9/11 are getting way too much money, but certainly you understand why this is the case, yes? They don't give the widows of car crashes or murderers millions of dollars, so why these particular victims?

Simple: If the government doesn't buy them out now, the lawsuits will cost them a lot more than a few million bucks per victim, and any civil trials will put a spotlight on the endless criminal government negligence related to 9/11.

Our government failed beyond even the terrorists' wildest dreams. On everything from the illegal building of the Twin Towers in which our government ignored city building codes because the Port Authority is immune (and this is why Rudy got rid of all the evidence before experts could look at it), to the complete retardation of the FAA and the White House, which could've and should've prevented 9/11 in a hundred ways. This makes it clear that the government could never win any of the lawsuits. Ditto the airlines.

In fact, the payoffs are really quite sane.

The only shocking aspect of this story is that people aren't more cynical or aware of it all.

Christopher X. Brodeur, Manhattan

WILD HORSES

I really enjoyed Russ Smith's article "Pulitzer Time for the Marlboro Man" (11/17). One thing, though. As an old homo/fag/queer, my antennae started buzzing when I read a hetero-only statement like "[Miller] is the object of female adoration?"

Believe me, there're a lotta guys (primarily gay) adoring that dude, too. Talk about fantasy material!

Name Withheld, Manhattan

LET THE POGROM BEGIN

Mark Ames, it is hard to spot you as a Jew with a last name like Ames ("Save a Jew, Save Yourself!" 10/13). What shtetl are you from, anyway? Generally your piece on the Evangelicals is dead-on. As to the verse you quote, Zechariah 14:12, perhaps you read a version of it as transcribed by M. D. Evans, whose book I would never have read even as an assignment, since I know too well the poop.

If you go to the original, Zech 14:12 reads, "And this shall be the plague wherewith the Lord will smite all the people that have fought against Jerusalem; their flesh shall consume away, etc..." Neither Zechariah, nor any of the other prophets ultimately prophesied against the Jews, except on a temporary "for your sins..." basis. Jerusalem, in Zech 14:12, is a synonym for the Jews, whom God will ultimately "save," along with any other of the "peoples" who tag along, after them, to Jerusalem.

The "saved" will not be those who flock to "the son of..." but to his and your old man, if you can accept any of this gibberish. However, you're right on the Christian Bible, especially Revelations.

Jordan Scher, Manhattan

YOU FORGOT THE BIG NOSE, JOAN

Just read "Save a Jew, Save Yourself!" by Mark Ames (10/13). Wow! I have just read the most anti-Christian, radical-liberal diatribe I have ever encountered in any media-with the exception of the vile and virulent hate documentary coming out of the heart of another hate-monger the liberals love.

Ames must have studied your writing and non-thinking skills under Michael Moore. If he were just a cynical Jew, I would pass him off with a pitying shrug because his tribe (is it Manassah?) has almost a corner on the market of cynicism. By that I mean looking for the worst in people who have a sincere faith in Jesus, who was not the author of confusion and certainly not a model of the big putdown. I think Ames enjoys his work; I see him in my mind's eye with leering lips drooling out gleeful sarcastic conjectures on what causes Christians to love the Jews.

Man, Ames doesn't have a clue, he is so driven by hatred that I see in him the very essence of the madding crowd (tribe?) that called out "Crucify him! And give us Barabbas the thief and murderer..." Why did the Sanhedrin and all their devotees make that choice? Could it be that they could relate more to B than to C? I don't know that this theory has ever been explored. But never mind, the trade is plied with reckless speculations and crass stereotyping so that Ames will never come to the truth and will probably take down with him many hapless ignorant sycophants.

But be careful, there are consequences for defamation of character (it's called hate crime, now). I'm not threatening-just reminding Ames that God warned the errant rebellious nation of Israel about killing the prophets, verbally or physically. They tossed that counsel off lightly, but we can see what a deplorable history they have shared because of that rebellious dishonoring of God's Word and Plan for them.

Joan Archibald, via email

EGO DOWN UNDER

American egocentricity knows no bounds. Matt Taibbi wrote that it couldn't be only the media's fault "that we are the only people on Earth who demand that our leaders be as dumb as we are" ("Wimblehack: Round 4," 10/27).

How typical that Taibbi thinks Americans are unique in this. Americans are not the only people on Earth who demand that. Australians do it too, and have just done it again at our own election. We, too, demand that our leaders be as smug, xenophobic, mean-spirited and unkind as we are.

Ian Warden, Canberra, Australia

COME TO ILLINOIS! THE PLEASURE STATE!

In response to Russ Smith's diatribe, "Waiting for 2008" (11/10), I'd like to say this. I grew up in rural and small-town Illinois surrounded by red-staters (this was 25 years ago, when Illinois was still considered a battleground state). If pundits like David Brooks who conjured up the red-state/blue-state dichotomy want to call a spade a spade, the proper term for my former neighbors would be "red necks."

Such "condescension" may be "astonishing" to Smith, but it's based on experience. I've lived in places like Plano, IL, where there are more assholes per square mile than anyplace else on Earth. I've also lived in Bristol, IL, population 400, where every single resident can boast of his undiluted white-trash lineage. And I spent my teens in Rockford, IL, which regularly finishes in three-hundredth place, dead last, in quality-of-life surveys because it lacks employment, culture, recreation, health care and natural beauty.

I consider myself one of the lucky ones who escaped from heartland hell. Early in life I looked around me and decided, "This sucks!" and swore I would someday seek greener pastures. My cohorts and I eventually landed in places like Chicago, New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Boston, Seattle and Minneapolis, cities that anchor the blue states, where, thank you very much, we enjoy higher incomes and better standards of living than we could possibly have earned in our hometowns. Moreover, living in America's financial, cultural and entrepreneurial centers, we have naturally grown more sophisticated, worldly and tolerant than if we had stayed.

The losers we left behind are perfectly portrayed in a book I'd recommend to Smith, The Driftless Zone: Or a Novel Concerning the Selective Outmigration from Small Cities, by Rick Harsch. At one point in the story, which is set in La Crosse, WI, one of those bastions of middle-American values so admired by Smith, the protagonist, the downtrodden Spleen, ponders how bright, ambitious, educated young people always move away from the shitty little towns of their childhood and leave in their wake a depleted population of the timid, mediocre and outright insane.

This is the pool that red-state voters have to choose from every four years. They're bound to get nutjob candidates like Tom Coburn, whose ranting during the recent election about "rampant lesbianism" in Oklahoma's schools didn't scare off a majority of voters, as you might expect. Instead, this election tactic-one notch above leading a Salem-style witch hunt-was rewarded at the polls by other ignorant, superstitious, homophobic people living in Coburn's dusty, crappy, hillbilly state. As Tom Frank argues in What's the Matter with Kansas?: How Conservatives Won the Heart of America, red-staters are regularly conned into voting against their core values and economic interests by scare mongering and patriotic chest thumping. I survived a red-state upbringing, and I'm here to tell you that it's true.

A current resident of New York, the quintessential blue state, I'm not ashamed to say that there is absolutely no question I have a superior situation compared to the red-state hellhole I emerged from. My arrogance is "astonishing," you say? Why should I be disallowed from voicing this opinion, which I've earned the right to hold? Why do I have to excuse the narrow-mindedness of red-staters as if they were Indians or Bushmen, followers of a primitive religion and alien culture that I may disagree with but nevertheless must accept? Red-staters certainly don't tolerate my blue-state lifestyle, and they're extremely strident and outspoken in denouncing it. Why shouldn't we blue-staters return the courtesy? Does the answer have something to do with the social stricture against making fun of retarded people?

Smith may call my arrogance astonishing, but I find his desire to stand up for a brain-dead Middle America and defend its stupid reelection of George W. Bush even more astonishing.

Tim W. Brown, Westchester

FOUR'S THE CHARM

I have read Matt Taibbi's "My DLC Problem, and Ours" three times over and cannot make any sense of it (11/10). I defy anyone, in fact, to make sense of the following sentence: "Our handicap, to which they are immune, is to understand that modern society is a machine that can operate seamlessly according to its own peculiarly twisted morality without obviously interfering with the advance of those concepts they consider important." Why would a machine be endowed with "morality," "twisted" or otherwise? What is the antecedent of "they" following "concepts"?

Other problems: Why does Taibbi, if he is not a Democrat (as he admits), expect to have influence within the Democratic Party? Why do I, if I am a Democrat (or even just a Bush opponent), experience the world as "de-eroticized," and yet, spiritually unhappy, cruise the bars pumped up on Viagra, unwilling to confront my existential despair? I, at one time, cruised the bars-unaided by Viagra-now I do not, having settled down. My politics now do not differ from what they were then. I am mystified. Why does Taibbi contend that Democrats, liberals, leftists, etc., are necessarily single, middle-aged and on some sort of sexual-potency-enhancing drug? Honestly.

He suggests that Republicans are deranged fanatics and at the same time asserts that we-not they-are afflicted with spiritual unhappiness. Having to recognize myself as a deranged fanatic would not make me spiritually happy. What could he possibly mean?

He says that Bush is our fault because we have failed to love each other. Well, that is a nice little cloud to float above us. Were we supposed to have been setting up communes? I only wanted to punish Bush, electorally, for his criminal incompetence and deceit-I didn't know I had to figure out how to spread love among tens of millions of strangers.

Recently, Taibbi has been the scourge of the complacent mainstream political reporters. Having taken on the role, he should refrain from producing a different form of gibberish himself.

Scott Ferguson, Astoria

KEN PARADY, INDEED

Can you tell me who protects these panty-wearing journalists and photographers while in battle (Russ Smith, "Pulitzer Time for the Marlboro Man," 11/17)? I watch these guys taking pictures and writing op-eds while hiding behind our troops during a gun battle and telling everyone how much danger he is in.

How about letting these guys go first? They can tell the Iraqis they're neutral. I would think the Iraqis would honor their request. What the Marines failed to do when this traitor photographer took a picture of a Marine under battle pressure was kill him too.

No one remembers that the first CIA agent who was killed in Afghanistan was walking around wounded terrorists trying to remove them from that fort. I wonder if John Walker would have killed a Marine if discovered?

This freedom of the press is getting to me. Freedom is not taking secret pictures of battle for the Arab tv to use as propaganda. In WWII you would have shot the journalist.

Ken Parady, Grand Rapids, MI

FROM THE BOONIES

Thank you, Matt Taibbi, for keeping my 68-year-old suburban housewife's brain from fossilizing before its time ("Wimblehack: The Sad End," 11/17). You may be the only journalist left in America who knows what the serious issues are, and who has the guts to keep pointing out the lies and hypocrisies of our corporate/government/media/marketing oligarchy. And, especially, thank you for helping me laugh through my tears and fears.

I hope you caught the delicious, all-too-brief moment on last night's Hardball when Chris Matthews, addressing a question about the week's events to Howard Fineman, said he thought "people were getting too giggly about it." At that point, Fineman's customary smirk had to be rearranged into something approaching an expression reflecting gravitas. It was very revealing and hilarious. Try to get the tape. It's an automatic elevation for "the Finester" into the Wimblehack Hall of Fame.

Please keep up your good work and standards. Some of us out here in the boonies need you more than you can ever know.

Virginia Ekman, Barre, MA

ALL RED, ALL THE TIME

Regarding Kate Moon's letter on Lucius Allred's story "My Cheatin' Art" (The Mail, 11/17): She assumes that the piece is fiction. I'm pretty sure I know (and have known-wink, wink) this Lucius Allred, and can comfortably say that I believe what he wrote here is true. All but one point, which is a matter of differing opinion concerning the other women he's, uh, known. Although he comes off as a real shitheel, Allred is actually a delightful human being, candid and emotionally available. But like all of the other emotionally available men I've known, he's worthless in bed.

Sunny VonBride, Oakland, CA

MOSH PITY

Just read Armond White's article on Eminem's video "Mosh" (11/17). "Let us beg to differ" is "the lamest rap lyric ever"? This lamer is the most lame (since lamest isn't even a word). Which black-musician term should Em have used? "Hep-daddy"? "Un-cool"? Now it's a rapper sin to use proper English?

Obviously Bush's way of reaching al Qaeda is through war. Youth are waking up to a new reality-one where guns are used for sport (at best) and war is seen better suited for barbarians. If war were the answer, we'd need to unseat Bush through overthrow rather than using pen and ink, the more sophisticated way (a way better represented by Marshall Mathers than George W.). What are the social classes hinted at here: the warrior class and the intellectual class, the educated class and the ignorant class?

Armond's best critique of "Mosh" is that the cartoon mob is all dressed alike (that and guilt by association with Michael Moore, whom many people respect, unbeknownst to White). Let's not put our faith in Armond White, whose insipid column can't presume to reach or influence as many people in a lifetime as Eminem can in a week.

Brett L. Robertson, Crawfordsville, IN