Jennifer Lopez, Famous Italian; Mimi Kramer is Wrong; Taki's Target Replies; Where Should MUGGER Live?; R.S. McCain Talks Trash, Gets Punked
Thanks for Andrey Slivka's inauguration article ("Dirty Jubilee: Warring Sects Assemble for the Bush Coronation," 1/31), and for Slivka in general. That guy can write his ass off. Thanks also for John Strausbaugh and Matt Zoller Seitz. You guys are the best.
Jerome Nadler, Manhattan
Go Tarheels! Go MUGGER!
MUGGER: Just a note to say that I'm always enjoying your work, and to send a big thank-you from a North Carolina friend and admirer.
Martha Copenhaver, Tryon, NC
White Wedding
Regarding Armond White's racist review of the movie The Wedding Planner ("Film," 1/31):
Apparently Mr. White never showed up to the company diversity seminar. Image the horror?an actor playing a character! I suppose that means that Jennifer Lopez should be confined to playing Hispanics on the movie screen. After all, shouldn't an Italian character have been played by an Italian actor?
As to his comment that "the map of Italy is not on Lopez's face," I suggest that next time Mr. White wants to take a trip, instead of lighting up a fattie, he hop on an airliner to Rome, the capital of Italy?a city that has palm trees and hot weather, just like San Juan, and that just like San Juan is chock-full of natives with dark hair and eyes and olive skin.
Bruno Donaggio, Whitestone
Why You Frontin', Holmes?
This is about Matt Seitz's film review of The Gift ("Film," 1/17). The review was artsy-fartsy in its totality, but one line set me off. Referring to Katie Holmes' topless scene Seitz said this: "cue a million 14-year-old boys chanting, 'Woo-hooo!'"
What a phony Seitz proves himself to be. Do 14-year-old boys buy the millions of copies of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue every year? Not on your life. And who has kept Playboy going for three decades, 14-year-old boys? No, Katie Holmes is a young woman, not a teenager. Her tv show, Dawson's Creek, where she plays a teenager, is fiction, in case Seitz didn't know it. Maybe Seitz is gay and resents Katie's sex appeal.
If you do not wish to publish my letter, please give it to the phony Seitz. He sucks.
William Morgan, Manhattan
Iron Age
You fire Godfrey Cheshire and then run an article by Mimi Kramer ("Culture," 1/31)? The person who wrote an article about a second-rate movie, a many-years-old movie and one she watched on tv, while she ironed? Writing a paean to Quentin Tarantino at the end of one of the worst movie years in recent history is silly. Pointing out that Guy Ritchie is a one-trick pony is pointless. Suggesting that Tarantino is both the cause of and cure for a bad movie called Snatch is just plain dumb. Kramer proves herself to be a moron convinced she is clever. She decries one person's racism, applauds another's and is oblivious to her own.
Mimi, keep your next big idea under your hat: It is better to be thought a fool than to open one's mouth and remove all doubt.
Jeremy Sterritt, Manhattan
Shades of Green
MUGGER: I love reading your articles. I live in Detroit and enjoy your word pictures when you talk about the streets of New York. I feel connected. Keep up the good work, and when are you going to get a show on Fox?
Bruce Green, Detroit
Oy Sharona
So Mimi Kramer didn't understand until the "very end" of the Christopher Walken/Dennis Hopper scene in True Romance that Hopper's character was trying to get himself killed? Is she kidding? Even my cat Zippy the Pinhead knew what was up as soon as Hopper stuck a cigarette in his mouth. And perhaps she almost fell asleep watching the much more entertaining, all-male, Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels because there wasn't a wedged-in love interest to hold her interest. Mimi, after all, was doing the lonely woman's work of ironing. Tarantino's an overrated, punch-happy doofus whose script dialogues are just sooooo cool, and so phony. I, being an Appalachian Trail hick, demand more cultural insight from a big city paper's culture column. That said, Snatch stunk.
As for Wendy Reynolds' surgery story ("First Person," 1/24), I don't understand the fuss. I didn't find it to be a poor-pitiful-me piece. Legal proceedings aside, she had a story to tell, and she told it. Quite well.
The Ariel Sharon pitbull illustration for the 1/31 "Wild Justice" was great.
Mark Duffy, Manhattan
Kurt Chasing
It's nice to know that some people still have an eye for real talent. Brett Camponi (Ned Vizzini, "Since When," 1/31) may be my brother, but he is still talented, and I think great things will happen to him.
Kurt Camponi, via Internet
Brit Popped
One of your readers sent me the link for Taki's article "Fascist the Snowman" ("Top Drawer," 1/3), which made very distressing reading. You say that I did a "report attacking the snowman as racist and sexist" and that this took five years! Your information is wrong, and your personally insulting commentary is unjustified.
I wrote an article in a journal five years ago that looked at the imagery of the snowman on Christmas cards in Britain, because I was interested in why this was becoming as popular as Father Christmas and other Christmas imagery. It was great fun and I always looked out for new images of the snowman. The article was not an "attack" on "snowmen" and neither did it use the terms "racist" or "sexist." Finally, I did this little piece of research in my own time in the evenings, while teaching during the day.
If you are as attached to the truth as you claim, I hope you will publish this and give it as much prominence as you gave to getting all the facts wrong and to labeling me a moronic halfwit (very witty on your part!). Perhaps you could e-mail me a copy as some minor compensation.
Dr. Tricia Cusack, School for Professional and Continuing Education, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, England
Taki replies: I regret upsetting Dr. Tricia Cusack, but she did label snowmen as sexist and did use language so obscure as to allow me to interpret her feminist rant in a manner that suited me. I should not have called her a halfwit, but all feminist academics are pretty moronic in my book, so Dr. Cusack got included with the rest of the mob. No personal insult was intended.
Who's That Girl?
I was walking down the street last Thursday morning, not far from your paper's offices. In front of me, shuffling along in the same direction I was walking, was a familiar figure in a seedy-looking hat and overcoat, with scraggly hair tumbling down. Instantly, I knew the sketches by Russell Christian that accompany the "Slackjaw" column are very accurate renditions of Jim Knipfel. My first impulse was to, gently, so as not to startle him, approach this man and say, simply, "If you are Jim, I think you're a helluva writer," wish him a good day and move on. But I've read his column enough times to suppose that by doing this seemingly innocuous thing, I would probably set off some horrific cascade of events that would ruin his day, or worse. So here you go instead?Jim, I think you're a helluva writer.
Michael Slater, Manhattan
The Smell of Napalm In the Morning
I enjoyed reading "MUGGER" this morning. Very good reading and to the point. Thank you for the excellent writing.
James R Boyce, Port Charlotte, FL
No Bum Steer
MUGGER: Fort Worth is a wonderful place to live ("e-MUGGER," 1/31) if you spend August in Minnesota or Maine.
Brian A. Perkins Sr., Fort Worth
Rocky Mtn. Hi There, Cowboy
MUGGER: Believe me, you did not overlook Denver. I took a copy of the Financial Times to the office the other day and word went around I had brought some gay publication in. Got it? Stay put.
You and Taki and his gang are my drinking buddies on Wednesday.
Thank you very much for New York Press.
Name Withheld, Denver
Check Please, No Desert
MUGGER: How about living in Phoenix? Nice, not many liberals here, and only a few of them work for the newspaper (token liberals, I suppose). Does get quite a "brown cloud" in the middle of winter, though you could probably put up with a little air pollution after all the political pollution in your neck of the woods. We would be happy to have someone of your fine breeding here to write for our newspaper.
Jan Durham, Phoenix
Wrong Again
Great issue, like always, guys.
Um, Chris Caldwell: when complaining about those who find dubious "moral equivalenc[ies]" ("Hill of Beans," 1/31), you can perhaps better pose as one who can see these things in their correct proportions if you leave Stalin out of it.
And nice job, Russ Smith, on his riposte to the woman who, reasonably enough, chided Alex Cockburn in "The Mail" for his credulousness in hearing and passing on thirdhand Clinton-gossip (and who could miss the Rusticle's sweaty palm prints all over the title "I Worship Ambitious, Cynical, Sleazy, Crypto-Rightist Politicians, and I Wish Cockburn Wouldn't Criticize Them"). Russ, baby, there are dozens of us out here who don't like the Clintons much, but still look with aghast amusement at your paper's lack of measure when discussing them.
Terry Benoit, Manhattan
The editors reply: Russ Smith doesn't write the letter headlines, and had nothing to do with the one Benoit refers to.
The Dear Hunter
Ned Vizzini: I just wanted to commend you on the 1/17 "Live & Learn" article on Hunter College and the good things you had to say about the place.
It's funny, as a Hunter student beginning her fourth semester there, I have no complaints about the school except for the students (probably from the 33 percent dummy percentile) who sometimes say negative things like how the school sucks (yet they still attend), bad food, etc., in essence the same lame complaints about all schools. Yes, they could have a better maintenance system and cleaner bathrooms, but I am happy with the quality of teachers so far, the library and the whole staff.
Anyway, I think your article was on the money. Someone should defend this school, and as for myself, I am proud to be a Hunter student. Although I can't afford to go to a more expensive school, I'm guessing that bigger, more exclusive schools are probably a little more uninviting and colder than this CUNY institute. Thanks for the props! I've always had a good feeling about Hunter and it's good to know that my instincts were correct.
Valerie Gobaira, Manhattan
Apropos of?
David Brooks is a deeply vulgar man. He shames the University of Chicago "great books" program. His stupid and flat soul crushes anything that is rare, fine and beautiful.
Help me. I hate him so much.
Name Withheld, via Internet
Hit of E
That was a very nice article on Emusic ("Music," 1/31), and we thank William S. Repsher for understanding and sharing our vision with your readers.
Robert H. Kohn, chairman, Emusic.com Inc., Redwood City, CA
But Uglier
MUGGER: Regarding Hendrik Hertzberg (1/17): Dude, if you have to ask what that essay meant, then you will never know.
Also, chill on Hillary. She has a sense of humor. In fact, Harold Evans and she were ballsy enough to joke about murdering Ralph Nader. She's the next Bukowski, man.
Thomas Phillips, Manhattan
Melik Kaylan Responds
I worry that a syllable more on my part and the editors will dedicate an entire issue of New York Press to Christopher Atamian's article ("Armenian Holocaust Denial: Why Does Melik Kaylan Hate Those Pesky Armenians?" 1/17). So I'll keep it short. Readers might have noticed that anyone who raises the merest query about the Atamian/Charles Glass position is immediately labeled a "denier." Not honestly mistaken, or uninformed, or even legitimately in disagreement. So Diana Finch, in the 1/31 "Mail," who innocently points out that I wasn't denying anything, becomes a holocaust denier herself in Atamian's response to her. This is slimy, dangerous and cowardly name-calling against people who, unlike Atamian, may not belong to a lobbying group and have no ax to grind. No doubt, for that reason they are dangerous and must be instantly hosed with effluent lest they dare speak up again.
Message: don't get involved or we will destroy your good name. Thomas Goltz, in his 1/24 letter, pointed out that this virulent and concerted style of attack was standard practice by the Armenian lobby. As he predicted, he gets immediately accused in Raffi Meneshian's 1/31 letter of being in the pay of Big Oil and Turkey. That, too, is a disgusting and cowardly tactic. Anyone who read Goltz's terrific book, Azerbaijan Diary, will know about him. On topics relating to the Caucasus region, he has written for The Washington Post, The New York Times and The New Republic, and worked for the BBC and 60 Minutes. No doubt they're all in the pay of The Big Denier.
Melik Kaylan, Manhattan
Fat Tuesday's Children
MUGGER: I greatly enjoy your columns, which I have begun to read in the last few months.
Your discussion of the climates of American cities was accurate in my experience ("e-MUGGER," 1/31), but failed to mention New Orleans. If you want 75 to 90 degrees, you'll get it for all but a handful of hours from May to October, and in those hours it'll be over 90. We don't have a winter. After living in Boston, I never get cold here, and I only use about half of my gear.
Oh, yes, it does rain here, and you can only hail a cab (the most brilliantly bizarre criterion for where to live I've ever heard) in the French Quarter and downtown. Plus, we've got a Robert E. Lee Blvd. and a Jefferson Davis Pkwy.
Houston and Dallas? C'mon. They're the Indianapolis and Columbus of the South, all the charm and soul of a legal pad contained within a loop of freeway. Great grub? Spend a fortnight here, ideally including next year's Super Bowl or Mardi Gras, and then tell me about great grub.
Cobe Parker, New Orleans
Colin Trouble
The comments by Christopher Caldwell on George Bush in his 1/31 "Hill of Beans" were interesting but premature. Mr. Caldwell is already making judgments about Mr. Bush's presidency. By my recollection, he was inaugurated on Jan. 20. Let's withhold judgment at least until he has been in office for a full month.
Mr. Caldwell criticized Mr. Bush for not including vouchers in his education program. His reason for criticism is that vouchers are a Republican idea, and that Mr. Bush was a coward in leaving them out. The important thing to think about is whether vouchers will be effective. Who cares whether they were a Democratic or Republican proposal?
Mr. Caldwell also criticized comments Colin Powell made about the Chinese. He (Mr. Powell) said that China needed to be exposed to the "free-enterprise systems and democracy." These comments were not out of line. Many people would agree with him. How long has Mr. Powell been in office anyway? We need to reserve judgment about our new secretary of defense for a little while, at least.
These generalizations about Mr. Bush were unnecessary. Hopefully Mr. Caldwell will not make comments about Mr. Bush every week about his presidency. We will just be presented with more jumbled logic for the next 200 weeks.
Stann Kaplan, Little Neck, NY
His Back Pages
MUGGER: Your comments on Jesse Jackson (1/24) and the need for a new crop of leaders for the African-American community were dead-on. (However, I'm not sure that I like you on the back page of the paper.) How do you feel about John Ashcroft? I know he is not your type of Republican, but do you fall into the let-Bush-pick-his-own-Cabinet camp?
Greg Joseph, Manhattan
Russ Smith replies: I fully support Ashcroft, even though I disagree with him on many issues. He's qualified and honest. And after Janet Reno, I think even Rick Lazy-o would be a huge improvement.
Drill Bit
MUGGER: You should go to the Museum of Natural History with your family and see the exhibit that illustrates how short a time homo sapiens have inhabited the planet ("e-MUGGER," 1/31). Extrapolated to a 24-hour day, our species has been here for a couple of minutes out of that 24 hours. So by saying you don't care what the planet is like in 1000 years, that's really just a tiny bit longer in the life of our planet.
By any standard?religious, moral, scientific?your rhetoric is ridiculously ignorant and selfish, but instructive of the Bush credo: "Shit, let's drill now, we're all gonna need some oil next winter!"
Mike Brewster, Manhattan
Interesting and Yes They Did
The Byrds (not the "Birds") and Buffalo Springfield do not tour anymore and they didn't suck, despite what your reviewer Crispin Sartwell ("Farm Report," 1/24) suggests.
A writer who takes unwarranted vicious potshots at his readership in his second and final paragraphs should be on stronger factual journalistic ground than Sartwell is.
By the way, this attack on the purported lack of intelligence and insight of your own readership, by a writer who demonstrates neither insight nor intelligence?is this some kind of new journalistic technique New York Press is pioneering? Well, it's not endearing and it's not designed to win friends. It sucks?unlike the Byrds and Buffalo Springfield.
James Kibbee, Manhattan
Cross-Referenced
Deriding Christianity has always been popular sport among urban intellectuals. It was unexpected and gratifying to see this cliche turned on its head. Your recent feature on downtown's Hispanic Pentecostals (Andrew Baker, "Tongues of Fire: Pentecostals of the Lower East Side," 1/10) was informative and a good read. More pieces like this, please.
Edward Lisicky, Manhattan
Flat-Earth Catalogue
Christopher Caldwell: For your information, the most unethical administration in U.S. history ("Hill of Beans," 1/31) was the Reagan administration, with its more than 150 indictments. The only scandal in the Clinton administration was the Lewinsky scandal, and that had to do with private behavior.
Furthermore, Bush's pardoning of Caspar Weinberger in order to silence him about Bush's involvement in Iran-Contra was one of the biggest scandals of all time.
Reba Shimansky, Brooklyn
This Old House
Christopher Caldwell: The Reagan house was not a gift ("Hill of Beans," 1/31). It was a loan that the Reagans paid back with interest. Nancy Reagan said on a show recently that they needed help for a couple of months when they got out of the White House and they were given a loan that they paid back?with interest. Please help put this Clinton spin to rest. Thanks.
Loved the article. When will they just go away? I wanted him to get the hook at that first convention speech he gave in 1988.
Betty Marshall, Annandale, NJ
Disputin' Rasputin
Christopher Caldwell: You quoted Jesse Jackson as saying ("Hill of Beans," 1/24), "Someone said a saint is just a sinner who got back up again..." I can tell you who he's paraphrasing. Grigory Efimovich, otherwise known as?Rasputin. That's right, the mad monk. Seems he joined a sect in Russia that claimed you could not really be forgiven until you had really sinned. So Rasputin would organize orgies.
I get sick of people in positions of power who get to be holier than thou, and then, when they are caught up, say, "Well, what do you know. I'm just like you." Meaning, immoral?just like all of us poor people. Back where I come from, where everybody knows everyone else, we keep our dogs chained up so they don't behave like Jesse, so they don't bring shame on our families.
Jesse Jackson's no man of God, much less a saint. Like most politicians, he's just another self-serving son of a bitch. So were Jim Bakker and Jimmy Swaggart.
Roger A. Sheddy, Brooklyn
Mason-Dixon Lies
The role of the Other in identity-formation is vital to understanding developmental psychology. We form our identities based not only upon our conceptions of who and what we are, but also who and what we are not. Those conceptions of who we are not are ascribed to the Other. Example: I am a Protestant, a University of Alabama football fan, a conservative. I am not a Catholic, an Auburn University fan or a liberal?those are the Other to me.
Andrey Slivka ("Dirty Jubilee: Warring Sects Assemble for the Bush Coronation," 1/31) seems fiercely proud of his identity as an urban New Yorker counterculturalist. Part of maintaining this identity is defining it against the Other: rustics from the provinces, middle-aged women with Southern accents, tuxedoed preppies, blondes in pearls, suburban women driving Volvo station wagons, senior policy analysts who live on suburban cul-de-sacs and suburbia generally, including the tree-lined landscapes.
Well, okay, we all need our petty hatreds, our bogeymen, our Others. But does it ever occur to Slivka?has he ever once stopped to wonder?whether his prejudices are every bit as offensive and absurd as anything John Rocker said about New York City?
Let us take just one colorful anecdote from Slivka's narrative: the hippie with his NO BUSH GENOCIDE IN COLOMBIA flier. Now, it happens that our current military aid to Colombia was a policy undertaken with the full-throated support of the departed Clinton administration, including former Attorney General Janet Reno and ex-Defense Secretary William Cohen. Fighting the War on Drugs is very important, especially during an Election Year.
If Slivka would care to research this subject, he would find that Clinton and his hapless stooge, Al Gore, made a very big deal out of this intervention in Colombia, a place where the Gore family's favorite oil company, Occidental, just happens to be trying to chase some indigenes off land to which Occidental has drilling rights. So, if there is any genocide planned in Colombia, it was the Clintonistas who did the planning and?if the Powell doctrine prevails?I really suspect that our military involvement in that country is more likely to decrease than escalate under the Bush II administration.
But does Slivka know any of this? Does his hippie protester pal know it? No, they are content with their prejudicial conceit that Republicans?with their "decadent, ignorant and destructive complex of ideas"?are would-be perpetrators of genocide. Such is the mentality of those soi-dissant civil-rights groups who, though they never once criticized Janet Reno's many abuses of the Bill of Rights and the rule of law, howled bloody murder at the nomination of John Ashcroft, chiefly because he is a Christian pro-lifer who once said nice things about Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson.
Slivka may fear and loathe whom he will, but his fear and loathing at least ought to be rational. Let me know the next time a blonde suburban housewife bashes in somebody's skull on the streets of Manhattan, Andrey, and give me a call if wilding gangs of tuxedoed yuppie Republicans ever assault, rob, rape or murder any Central Park joggers.
Like the hippie who feared BUSH GENOCIDE IN COLOMBIA, Slivka seems consumed by fear and loathing of people who have never done him any harm, and are not likely to harm him in the future. This kind of fear is not the sign of a healthy mind.
Robert Stacy McCain, Gaithersburg, MD
Andrey Slivka replies: Dishonest little twerp.
So I'm a Clinton defender all of a sudden? After I've written dozens of anti-Clinton articles over the last couple years, some of them precisely referencing the Clinton administration's viciousness in Colombia? I'm a New York City liberal? After I've expended thousands of words in print criticizing such people's politics, even to the point where I've been slandered by other "Mail" correspondents over the course of my tenure at New York Press as a "conservative" or a "Republican"?
Idiot. Next, McCain?who is perhaps most famous among some of us here at New York Press for his series of insinuating, creepily solicitous letters several years ago to our former sex columnist Amy Sohn, written presumably after his wife and children had been tucked safely into bed?will be calling me, say, a "colored" or a "deaf-mute," or something else that I simply and self-evidently am not, in defiance of all the strictures of reality. But it's funny. Almost two years ago, after I wrote fondly about my nice experiences traveling along the Gulf Coast (4/14)?precisely the sort of locus of the American Other that you'd expect a famously pro-Janet Reno Upper West Side-style, Hillary-loving, Utne Reader-worshipping liberal such as myself to hold in contempt?it was McCain who took notice. His April 21, 1999, letter to "The Mail" read: "It was with great interest that I read Andrey Slivka's Dixie travelogue in 'The Skillet' last week. I don't get back down home near as often as I'd like, and it's good to hear that some things haven't changed, such as the bacchanalia in Panama City." In what followed, McCain corroborated and expanded upon my observations, which pleased me.
So which is it, chump? Presumably, McCain?an occasional contributor to New York Press, and thus someone who could be expected to remain current with what we publish?missed my long Dec. 6, 2000, article about the Mississippi Baptist Convention. In it, I effused?conventional New York City "liberal" that I am?about the rhetorical mastery of the Southern Baptist Preachers I encountered, lauded them as representatives of a fecund, admirable Southern culture and ridiculed the common Northeasterner's view of Southerners as violent Klansmen. Yup, that's the way I hate provincials, sucker. That's the way I sneer at the American Other. McCain's probably correct in calling me a New York "counterculturalist," but I'm so in a way he's incapable of understanding.
In truth, McCain's letter has nothing to do with my article, which he's using as an excuse to get his talk-radio-level cliches published in New York Press again?to slide them into the paper without their encountering the usual filtering mechanism of our editorial judgment. McCain shouldn't worry, though. Because I'm forgiving, and I sympathize?and I'm aware that, being the father of a number of children, McCain needs any income he can get. And so next time he slithers up to New York Press' transom with some sort of article he wants published, I won't stand in the way. Because I'm like that. And sometimes when a roach scuttles its little way into my office, I don't even smash it. I gather it up in a Dixie cup, cover it with a piece of cardboard and feed it with a crumb off the floor. Then it amuses me to liberate the insect downstairs in the trash, where it belongs.
Until you need New York Press' money again, Robert?until my fellow editors and I decide to throw you a couple more coins?you'd better scurry away back to your little hole. Scurry along home now.
Legal Seefood
I just read Jim Knipfel's article, "Contempt Across a Two-Way Street" ("e-Slackjaw," 1/31).
I have always been legally blind. They tell me that I have about 5 percent vision. I see light things, dark things, blurry things, none of which are particularly useful. I have always used a cane. A wonderfully impractical invention that I find preferable to a quadruped that drools and licks its own genitals.
Triple-strength contempt is a very powerful thing. In my case my contempt for other blind people is the greatest, followed by contempt for my lack of ability, and then contempt for all the sighted wankers who don't have a clue.
I don't think triple-strength contempt ever goes away. It is the rage of a mind that has to work way too hard just to get through the day. It is the dichotomy of needing heightened sensory awareness and a detuned emotional state at the same time. It is knowing that you don't trust yourself to be a part of anything, because you can't trust yourself to do something the way you perceive it has to be.
For some reason that I won't bore you with here, the contempt now walks with me instead of in me. This small distance has opened up a world of options that I do not as yet understand.
Why didn't you ask for help at Penn Station?
David James Olney, Willaston, South Australia
You Can't Fake the Funk
The Lenox Lounge has been in the news recently, including in Hugh Pearson's recent article ("New York City," 12/27) about gentrification in Harlem. Before its renovation last year, two New Yorkers, one black and one white, stopped in early one evening for a drink. We are women in our early 40s, who are professional and polite and dressed neatly.
The scene was not the friendly neighborhood place that the proprietors were quoted in your article as wanting to maintain. A tight ring of regulars at the bar barely budged so that a visitor might ask for a drink. In fact, although the place was not busy (maybe a total of 20 people there), the woman bartender did not greet us or ask for our drink order as we stood a few feet in front of her. As the booths and stools were taken, after a while we left.
Some residents of Harlem welcome the area's increased exposure and connection to the rest of the city, and don't want to seem insular. But there seems to be a growing contradiction between keeping the neighborhood together and grabbing those tourist dollars, and attitudes change depending on the agenda of the day. Who exactly is welcome in Harlem?
Lynne A. Funk, Manhattan
Man Oh Man
As far as "The Mail" of the last several weeks goes, I wish the Jewish and Armenian crybabies would shut up already about their respective genocides.
These two historical situations are more similar than different. Both the Jews and Armenians were alien nationalities, religions and cultures prospering in a host nation. When times are tough and resources limited, something has to give. While the Turks sent the Armenians on death marches, with some gratuitous slaughtering along the way, the more efficient Germans put the Jews to work in refugee camps, when no other country on Earth would take them.
In WWII the Russians lost more than 20 million of their population on their own soil, more than the Jews and Armenians combined, and we don't see them moping and making cottage industries of their loss.
The lesson to be learned is that you do not squat on your neighbors' property with impunity.
Kunst Schnellman, Manhattan
Fatz Beats, Dope Rhymes
Thomas Fatz ("The Mail," 1/17) disses MUGGER for wanting to decriminalize gambling, drugs and prostitution. Fatuous Fatz claims that these activities "far from being victimless...have destructive effects on not only the individual, but primarily on families, which make up the units of societal stability and order."
To simply make a statement does not make it true. Where is the data concerning the net destructive effects of legalized "vices"? Can morals really be legislated? If these phenomena exist in every culture on Earth, from day one, doesn't that suggest something about inborn human nature, and the need to accommodate rather than suppress it?
I am a B+ high school student who takes home less than $40 a day working at McDonald's. The D students and dropouts make $500 a day selling illegal drugs. I take the subway, they drive Mercedeses. Tell me why this is. I don't see the corner deli owner who sells tobacco and alcohol driving a Benz. Why is that?
As for gambling, can you really imagine a world without it? How much tax revenue is lost to illegal gambling games? Please calculate it and report back to us. By the way, illegal bookies take only about 10 percent of each bet, compared to the government's 50 percent (or so) take of the lottery.
With regard to prostitution, my uncle has no family. His wife passed away. So would you mind if he visited a prostitute every now and then? If prostitution has destructive effects on society, please spell them out, and let's then criminalize those effects, and not prostitution per se. For example, we don't outlaw guns, only shooting people.
I've heard that the SAT scores of college students majoring in criminal justice and religion are among the lowest in academia. Is it any surprise, then, that the cops and the clergy are in bed with one another, practicing stupidity and intolerance, resulting in laws that are destructive of societal stability, equity and justice?
Serge Kolmogorov, Manhattan
La Question du Texte
The New York Times didn't just "bury [Marc] Rich's name deep into its story about the 140 people who received pardons" ("MUGGER," 1/24). In fact, the paper?in a dedicated editorial?slammed Bill Clinton for this last-minute act of presidential kindness. This is not the first time your blind hatred of the Times made you write things that had me wondering if we were reading the same paper.
Oren Tatcher, Manhattan
Russ Smith replies: In fact, Oren, if you'll read the dateline of the MUGGER column, you'll see I was writing on Jan. 22. At that time, the Times, unlike the New York Post, hadn't made the proper stink they later and repeatedly did during the week. One look at Clinton's pardon list, which was released by the AP on Jan. 20, and Marc Rich's name stuck out like Barbra Streisand's schnozz. It makes me wonder if the Times' weekend workforce is staffed by people like you.
Watts Riot
MUGGER: Would you like to know why Bill Clinton will have nothing of note to say about his eight years? There is nothing of note to say! Real simple.
As for Jesse Jackson and the gang passing on the torch to others, they can't, period. They make their living (a nice one at that) parasiting off of others of the same color. Their egos and wallets won't allow them to pass anything on. Besides, the heirs are as bad as they are. It is a pity that J.C. Watts and others of his cut, both male and female, are so vilified by Jackson and his kind.
Lehrer had a group on not long ago, and the one real thinker of the bunch repudiated Jesse and company very eloquently?he referred to them as a civil rights industry, and talked about how it needs to change its direction. I'm of the Cal Thomas bent. Black pastors and ministers need to draw their people away from the Democrats to leadership that offers something more than the same old racebaiting. Only when black churches stop hosting rallies for the Democrats and repudiate them one and all will change really take place.
Duane Cooley, Marion, IA
Factors of Ten
MUGGER: The state of the Earth in 1000 years doesn't worry you ("e-MUGGER," 1/31)? Well, I'm not surprised. No one ever accused the human race of having foresight. But we're not talking about 1000 years. We're talking about 100, and even if your bloated carcass is rotting in the ground by then, mine might not be, and MUGGER III's might not be, and certainly his kid's?MUGGER IIIa?won't be. The most recent study we have says that within the next 100 years the global temp will rise 10 degrees.
Who cares about 10 degrees? Well, New York might, since it will be dealing with increases in the amount of disease-carrying insects flourishing in the new hot/wet climate. Not to mention having to shell out for new coastal bulkheads and sea walls at a cumulative cost of $30-$40 million to deal with the 22-inch rise in sea level. The South Shore may have problems bringing in the tourists when the beach has eroded. And what will you do when the water shortage comes? Lake Erie and Lake Ontario will have each lost about a foot of water, exacerbating water quality problems in those lakes and in the St. Lawrence River Basin. Too bad, since state farmers will be drawing all the more heavily on them for irrigation. Not to mention the number of people using that water to take their fourth showers of the day to wash off summer heatwave sweat. Of course, that could be mitigated by the increased number of heatwave-related deaths?from 300 per summer to 700. But don't worry about it MUGGER, it's not your problem.
Now that the vitriol's out of the way, let me say this: you may be right. It's difficult to predict just what effect, if any, a rise in global temp will have. And it's all heavily dependent on whether global precipitation rates increase or decrease. So we can't know. But we do know it's getting hotter, and we know it's getting hotter faster. We have evidence that suggests that it could be a serious problem. And we have evidence that suggests we're responsible for at least some of that. Not to mention that, regardless of global warming, we've seen the effects of industrial waste on various ecosystems, and on the communities (ours) that live in them. We know from experience that breathing smog and pesticide and carbon monoxide is bad for us, we know we don't want contaminated water. Who needs a conspiracy to point out that we ought to be more careful?
Sadly, global warming has become an albatross. It's a debatable problem that has been pushed to the forefront of the conservation agenda because it's big and scary, covers all the bases and sounds great on public service announcements. But now it's all anyone thinks about when they hear the words "the environment." And it's allowed the debate over individual conservation issues to become sweeping. A lot of the things that need to be done have merit on their own, and would provide immediate benefits, as well as helping to mitigate the warming trend.
Let's commit to those, and the whole world will look a lot nicer when we burn it to a cinder with thermonuclear weapons in WWIII.
Aaron Shapiro, Boston
Gathering Hunters
I believe your stable of writers should include none other than Hunter S. Thompson. Now, having read a lot of Thompson, I have to wonder just how well he can hold a deadline together, but headaches and cattle prodding aside, you would do well to consider including something by him, say, once a month, on political topic, since he has a taste for it. He and Taki would be like triangulated lasers on the buffoons, quacks and frauds that populate our front pages.
Or maybe it would be two bulls in a china shop, maybe bad medicine. But who knows until you try? Anyway, I think your newspaper is great and this is just a thought. But what the hell do I know? I'm from southwest Virginia. Pass the corncob, maw, we're out of Sears catalog again.
John E. Lane III, Roanoke, VA