The Mail
PNAC VS. MALLARD FILLMORE
From reading the manifesto in this week's Press, I can tell a few things (The News Hole, August 24).
First, it appears as if the Project for a New American Century has taken over what was before last week one of the few outlets for progressive thought in New York; that's a shame.
Second, it appears that the ideologues running the paper are going to go out of their way not to appear as ideologues, which will be nice if they can stick with it, but won't change the fact that they're ideologues.
Third, the new editors don't like Mallard Fillmore comics, which speaks well of them.
Fourth, this is an awfully dour and pessimistic group of young men, going on about how the city is dying and being turned into a combination of campus and circus-where have they been for the last decade?
At least the manifesto had some energy to it. Energy makes up for a lot.
Joseph Mills, Manhattan
SLOBBERING SHOEHORNERS
Congratulations on managing to shoehorn a laudatory reference to Giuliani into an otherwise fine piece on graffiti ("The Art of Permission," August 24). I think that in your zeal to find an excuse to slobber all over Rudy you missed out on the fact that Mark Ecko's fake, homogenized corporate graffiti event is exactly the sort of art that would have fit into Rudy's New York, confronting and challenging nothing and ghettoizing art into neat, prefabricated boxes out of the sight of anyone who might find it challenging their preconceptions about what a clean, "safe" city is supposed to look like.
Jake Calder, Williamsburg
BATHOS VS. PATHOS
Looks like the line in the sand has been drawn once again, and Mark Ames seems much more like a playground bully than he did last time around. I'm not sure why he's given a forum for his mansize hatred of Klosterman, but I'm thinking it's centered around his own inability to express his inadequacies with any hope of making people laugh ("Please Kill Me," August 17). That talent, whether or not it's a prop for Klosterman, is what endears him to us. That Ames sees it as Klosterman's biggest fault indicates how broken his own self-awareness meter is.
I've seen what Ames has written; I've seen what Klosterman's written. Even if Ames is attempting parody, I find him disturbing. At least with Klosterman you get pathos and glory, however propped up they might truly be. Simply put, he doesn't scare me. Ames fails to reach any audience when he writes this stuff. What struck me most was how non-coastal he says Chuck is. What is that all about? This is America, isn't it? Land of the free, home of the exiled, right? What zip code is Russia again?
Jean Fid, Minneapolis
FACTS IN SEARCH OF A REPORTER
Emily Schmall's piece on the Fausto Lachapel murder was some good reporting in search of a point ("Outside the Impact Zone," August 24). Not to be unfeeling about it, but someone was murdered. And? Should the police widen their impact zones? Should the press have paid more attention to this murder? Should the press generally pay more attention to such murders rather than writing off their victims as just drug dealers? I kept waiting for the piece to come to the point, and it never did.
Delia Cornell, Brooklyn Heights
SPACE CAPTAIN CHIMERA
As a jogger, a member of Inwood Park Runners, a supporter of New Yorkers for Parks and a resident of Inwood I was distressed and disappointed by your dispatch from Inwood Hill Park ("Space Pirates Ahoy," August 24). It is sad that Mr. Chimera looked upon our small community gathering and those individuals who attended with such repulsion. I must conclude that he has never attended any political community meetings where all opinions and voices can be heard. If Mr. Chimera had truly interviewed the folks from NY4P or any of the members of Inwood Hill Runners who frequent the park daily and were present at the meeting, he would have known the facts.
If he had spoken to those residents present at the meeting who live next to Inwood Park and endure the lawlessness and disrespect of many park users, he would have known the facts. In the future, I hope New York Press will demand that its reporters be fully informed on their subjects and know all the facts. Because without the facts, New York Press is no different then the New York Post.
Grant McKeown, Inwood
A GRAND TRADITION
It's good to know that with the changeover in the editorial department, the great New York Press tradition of self indulgent, sophomoric "reporting" continues ("Space Pirates Ahoy," August 24). It is ironic that Adam Chimera refers to the concerned residents of Inwood as "out-of-towners" and "space pirates," yet had to take the A train to journey oh so far uptown to report on the event.
Perhaps he was so nostalgic for the good old days of drunken high-school partying in the park that he indulged a bit before arriving, because his reporting of the events has all the hallmarks of a drunken retelling. He rolled many of the various comments about different parts of the park into one, painting the picture that residents here want to turn the park into a fortress. This is not the case. No one is proposing steamrollers or building additional roads. He took one particular concern out of context. There is one single vehicular approach to the windward slope of Inwood Hill Park, which with weather, runoff and neglect, has eroded. This small section needs to be repaired in order for police and emergency vehicles to have access to thousands of acres of land. The concerns about lighting that Chimera reported had to do with lighting in the park, not in the woods.
The real problem with Chimera's article, though, is his characterization of proactive citizens as "outsiders." First of all, who gets to decide who's an outsider? In this case, it's your writer's arbitrary judgment. It's tinged with the guilt of the educated liberal upper-middle-class person who wants to gain street cred and prove that he can empathize with the poor misjudged masses.
Because a particular group happens to be the majority in a neighborhood, does that mean that any degree of lawlessness, urination, defecation, public drunkenness or littering by a small number of them is to be seen as cultural expression, and must be accepted and tolerated? Because it seems not to be a problem for them, then it shouldn't be a problem for us? We must be out of touch with the urban ecology if we don't just chill about it, huh? Believe me, I am very much in touch with the goings on in this community. I straddle both sides of it, bilingually, biculturally, bilaterrally-and personally, I wish to see the law applied evenly, if at all.
The very characterization of the people attending the meeting as some sort of homogenous group all with the same agenda is part of the problem. He misses the point. To view concerned citizens in this collectivist way makes it easy to dismiss any legitimate concern they may raise. It's not about "us" vs. "them," whoever us and them may be. It's about tolerating lawbreaking and anti-social behavior vs. making a stand.
And make no mistake, I can tell you that I do not think that anyone should be allowed to walk their dog off leash, nor do I espouse a "bust them, not us" mentality. And I don't think that the majority of the people at the meeting think that way either. I do not view a desire to see the law applied evenly as a special interest, nor do I see it in culturally relative terms.
Would it be fair to argue that if a building were filled with drug dealers, and if they are the majority in the building, that the one little old lady trying to live in peace should have no cause for concern that she be able to come and go without fear of being shot in her own building? Shall we say to her "You are obviously an outsider in this community, you should not complain." This kind of "majority rule" attitude is a total misunderstanding of what it means to live in a free, tolerant society. One need only look to current presidential politics to see the disastrous results of this kind of thinking.
Upon rereading his piece, I remain unconvinced that Mr. Chimera reported the facts of the meeting accurately. Furthermore, his editorializing smattered with juvenile personal reminiscing just seems all the more self serving, advancing his own agenda against thoughtful, proactive people in this community in order to buttress some invented claim of "space piracy."
It's fitting that in this same issue you publish your manifesto. I will quote from it: "The part of New York that belongs to those who make it their home, rather than those who are passing through, is slowly dying." Sadly, though, your paper's insistence on lumping us in with the latter instead of honoring us as the former, will keep you out of touch with this community, no matter how many of your staff live amongt us.
On a separate note, thanks for running my picture. The dog, by the way, is a Miniature Pinscher, "some sort of toy dog."
Mark Tafoya, Inwood
SPEEDBUMPS AHOY
Adam Chimera exposed the criminal movement of self-absorbed space pirates beautifully in his piece on Inwood Hill Park ("Space Pirates Ahoy," August 24). I live all the way downtown and cannot stomach the request by local parents to have a Tribeca Kid Safety Zone installed on public city streets. Speedbumps, ahoy!
Austin Downey, Brooklyn
SOILED PROCEEDINGS
I noted an intriguing omission from this past week's manifesto: "We aspire to bring in big bucks derived from the exploitation, depersonalization, and general mistreatment of women; the normalization of perversion, and from catering to and accelerating the general depravity of the masses (The News Hole, August 24). And we want to make this smut accessible to New Yorkers of all ages." Your posture as high minded purveyors of quality writing is preposterous so long as the back of the book remains as it is.
Why is "free" funded by such soiled proceeds preferable to charging a buck or two for high quality material? Haven't you confidence enough to feel that what you offer is valuable enough to stand on its own? If you really wish to distinguish yourself from other so-called alternative weeklies, how about abolishing such materials from your pages? I for one would be happy to pay for quality city-based writing that wasn't going to visually assault me with vulgarity. If the more mainstream publication can get by without such smut, why can't the alternative press? Why must alternative be synonymous with degeneracy? The truth is that no matter how good the writing may on rare occasion be, the moral cost of reading it regularly is too high. I'd sooner pay magazine prices for consistent quality and sleaze free pages.
Eric Ackland, Brooklyn
DUMBFUCK SENSE
Who is Russ Smith, and how can you let him get away with saying things about Peter Jennings("Clinton's the Man!," August 24)? Honestly, I don't give a rat's ass about Peter Jennings, but why did Smith say that Jennings exhibited "thinly veiled anti-Semitism" without so much as one example of what brought him to this conclusion? There is plenty of bigotry in this world without morons like Smith adding to it when none exists.
And I won't even get into what he was thinking by somehow pulling Jason Giambi's name out of his ass when talking about cigarette smoking. Nice segue, you dumbfuck. Made lots of sense.
Matt DeMazza, Manhattan
DARE TO ASK
Enough, then, of this CHUD nonsense ("The Coming C.H.U.D. Wars," August 17). I've handled the likes of them before, and will do so again if needed. Let's ask a more serious question: Has Knipfel considered being struck by a truck carrying radioactive materials as a solution to his real-life problems? Glad in any event to see that's he's survived the purge, and that Taibbi did not.
Matthew Murdock, Esq., Hell's Kitchen
A LOST BARGAIN
Thanks for providing space for Taibbi in the past ("End of the Road," Online, August 17). I've read him faithfully for at least two years and look forward to leaving with him. Whatever you were paying him was a bargain.
Thomas P. Bogan, via email
TO THE POINT
Without Taibbi, New York Press is only ordinary ("End of the Road," August 17).
Carl Sela, via email
SOMETHING TO ENJOY
Since Matt Taibbi is no longer with your publication, I can assure you I no longer have a reason to even read your publication ("End of the Road," August 17). Enjoy declining readership and waning interest by those of us seeking an exciting, thought provoking and above all, humorous look at serious social and political issues facing our world every day.
Brad Towne, Denver
SHAKESPEARE'S MONKEY
At the last bar I worked at, I got paid $25 per 8 hour shift by the bar-the rest of my income depended on tips from the people I waited on all night ("Here's a Tip: Don't", August 24)
Contrary to popular myth, bartenders are not all heading home at 5 a.m. to roll triumphantly in hundreds of crumpled, damp one dollar bills. There are plenty of slow nights or afternoons when you'll stand until your feet are burning, and get your ear bent by the sodden, persistent neighborhood blowhard(s), who in any other context, you would pepper spray to keep away from you. And sometimes you go home with $65, after being friendly and patient with jerks all night long.
What's more, serving beer and wine is really not just fetching a can like a monkey, as Bernstein claims-somebody is hauling cases of beer and buckets of ice up from the basement, washing glasses, cleaning taps, checking kegs-and it's not always the barback. In five years of bartending, I've had a barback (who, incidentally, gets tipped out of my tips at the end of night!) about 15% of the time. The rest of the time, I'm doing it myself-and I'm 5'4", 120 lbs. You try opening 25 bottles of wine in the space of 6 hours, and dealing with spoiled partygoers who want pinot grigio instead of chardonnay, and then tell me that preschoolers could do it.
I'm not complaining-if we didn't like the job, we wouldn't do it. But, we would like to be paid for it. Bars don't magically clean and stock themselves. You're paying for more than just the beer you're buying. If you don't like to tip or you can't afford it, why don't you just drink at home? I'm sure the bartenders you're not tipping won't miss you.
I'm going to write this one off to ignorance and hope that next time, Mr. Bernstein might try interviewing some people on the topic he's writing about-I mean, he's already hanging out in bars, how hard would it be to do a little reporting while he's there? Keep the good weird stuff coming. Save the half-baked opinion.
Alita Edgar, Manhattan
SCHMUCK vs. SCHMUCK vs. SCHMUCK
Hooker, what the fuck are you on? (Mail, September 16) Who still cares? Are you that desperate to put the hurt on Mark Ames? Why? Because he lived in Moscow at the time? What the fuck? Haven't you even read Klosterman's latest book?
Listen. I'll give you a couple of tips. First: if you're going to be stupid enough to criticize something as subjective as the method of another writer's prose, you'd better be able to at least back it up with some ability of your own. Your sentence structure is amusing in a sort of Flowers for Algernon way, but the endless clumsy sentences just make you sound like you're writing with a safety pencil from the comfort of a lushly padded wheelchair.
My second point: Mark Ames can only be faulted for hating the book too much. But that's understandable when it comes to such a shitty book. Klosterman is yesterday's Jon Safran Foer. And apparently today's too. America needs to overinflate the most banal and tiresome authors to the status of a modern-day Vonnegut in order to justify the incredible precociousness they feel about themselves. It's exactly like any other economic bubble, except instead of greedily over-estimating the value of stock, they greedily over-estimate the value of their own flaccid thinking.
What Mark Ames did was a review. A good review. He looked at the goals of the book, the aims of the author, the attempts, the failures, the methods and the devices. He treated the book as a book, and then dealt with Klosterman the artist as he saw fit, based on what he found in the artifact the artist produced. What you did, my fine Hooker, was ignore the content of Ames' critique entirely and focus on the tone (which is typical with those who have nothing to say). You also relied on ad hominem attacks aimed at Ames' person. That is, in fact, not a review. It is what academics call a "non sequitur". Or, in common English, "fucking retarded."
Who gives a cubic inch of turd whether or not Mark Ames is older than Klosterman? Who cares that he's not as big, and perhaps will never produce a best-selling novel? Does that invalidate his critique? Because if we're judging on that basis, my dear Hooker, why can you criticze Mark Ames, who is bigger than you?
You call Ames' review poor journalism. But it wasn't journalism. It was criticism. And good criticism, at that. He does an admirable job picking the hidden threads out of Klosterman's writing, spotting the tools of his relentless pop-culture gentrification in action, and dealing with the consequences of those actions. These are the things people want to know from a critic: What is this, essentially? What is the core of these essays? That's all we can ask from a review.
Hooker: fuck off. You know shit about books.
Jeremy Mesiano-Crookston via email
BRODEUR-"AN IMBECILE"
Is Harry the Worst Writer In NYC? Is Harry Siegel an IDIOT? YOU be the judge!
TRUE STORY: when I first read some of Harry's work in New York Press years ago, I thought he was over 60 years old!
His writing was stiff, crotchety, humorless, passionless, and it just PARROTED the generic right wing party line of immature and hyper-ignorant HORSESHIT. Harry never once displayed an original thought in his head, and I slammed him around New York Press as a completely worthless thinker and writer. (I didn't know at the time that he was the son of Fred Siegel, which would've completely explained his nepo-tastic inclusion in the paper.)
BUT I STILL TRIED TO GIVE HIM THE BENEFIT OF THE DOUBT when I heard his nepotism had made him the new New York Press editor.
So? MAY I DIRECT YOUR ATTENTION TO HIS "THE MANIFESTO" IN THE CURRENT ISSUE OF NYPRESS?
If you read it, you will see WITH YOUR OWN EYES a complete dearth of wit, imagination, originality, and PERSONALITY. (Sometimes that happens when you're a shadow / parrot of your dad.) (?Who is also a humorless and unoriginal LAZY THINKER.)
FACT: A SENSE OF HUMOR IS A SIGN OF INTELLIGENCE.
DON'T TAKE MY WORD FOR IT. Please read Harry's Manifesto yourself and tell me he's not a totally useless writer / thinker. IT'S LIFELESS and WITLESS.
(Hmm, I wonder why.)
To further prove my point, Harry is so uncreative and superficial, he'll say I'm just bitter, but 100% of the evidence will prove that's false. (Even the FIRST email I sent him 3 weeks back criticized his history of lacking ANY critical thinking abilities. I'll forward it to anyone who wants to read it.) (Unlike most of you, I don't kiss ass.)
(His reply was equally humorless and stiff.)
I ATTACKED RUSS SMITH, JOHN STRAUSBAUGH, JEFF KOYEN, AND ALEX ZAITCHIK endlessly, and they responded by praising my guts, passion, intelligence, and more.
They responded to my incessant criticism by putting me on the cover of NYPRESS a record FOUR times and giving me dozens of awards, beginning in 1991 after I moved here from Boston with no money and not one friend.
(Y'see, I get acclaim based on MERIT----NOT who my daddy is or what schools I went to or friends I have connections with.)
(Heck?after I slammed MATT TAIBBI repeatedly and drew cartoons of him as a blockhead [literally!], even HE gave me an award in last year's Best Of for my brilliantly brutal cartoons of the NYPress bosses. [He also used the word "brilliant" or "genius" to describe me. Hmmm. Someone I attack call me a genius? Hmm!] As dumb as all these guys could be [and Russ Smith is the second dumbest human I have ever met, NO JOKE], they were HONEST and BALLSY enough to transcend my (accurate) attacks on their lack of skills and tell the truth: CXB is the most provocative and smartest / nastiest super-critic in all of NYC and they continued to use lots of my writing [while refusing to put me on the masthead or give me a byline 90% of the time].)
(Most really smart stuff in the NewsHole was mine.) (They refused to even give me credit for exposing Fields' PHOTOGATE scandal!)
NYPRESS GAVE ME MORE 'BEST OF' AWARDS THAN THEY GAVE ANY OTHER HUMAN IN HISTORY!
(Not bad for an uneducated, unread little punk like me!)
SEVEN DIFFERENT writers over the years also praised my pseudonymous MUSICAL acts in the paper, not knowing I was the brains behind them! (Koyen and Zaitchik also praised my brilliant music projects a few times when they knew I was behind the acts.) WHYDIDN'T NYPRESS GIVE HARRY LOTS OF AWARDS? WHY didn't NYPRESS or Russ Smith put Harry on the cover even ONCE?
(Hunch: he's more boring than Stephanie Gaskell's coke habit.)
I'm already a legend around the world for many different things. (EX: none of you are aware that my artwork is tattooed on thousands of people thruout Europe and Japan!) (And I'm not talking typical tattoo crap, either.) (And I didn't ask for a cent in return!)
If not for the fact that my mission is to expose and attack ANYONE who is full of shit---friend or foe---and that I step on a lot of toes---I'd be a wealthy superstar. (Too bad I'm not a greedy capitalist and wasted years at zero pay trying to clean up a crooked govt that most of you supported and fostered.) (That's misleading: I SPENT my money to help the people of this city find out the truth about govt corruption that media coverups.) (Imagine if ANYONE had listened to my warnings in 1994 about flying a 747 into the Twin Towers! 3,000 people would still be alive and our skyline would be intact.) (And I would've saved you a trillion dollars in "homeland security" fakery.) Even Harry's OWN DAD calls me a genius and says I'm a hundred times smarter and more charismatic than Harry is! (Sorry, Harry, but it's true.) So? RAISE YOUR HAND IF YOU THINK HARRY IS A PRODUCT OF NEPOTISM OR MERIT.
(And yet Harry has the GALL to talk about merit in politics!)
HARRY!
I'M CHALLENGING YOU TO DEBATE ME IN PUBLIC AND WE CAN CHARGE ADMISSION AND GIVE THE PROCEEDS TO YOUR FAVORITE CHARITY. (Perhaps Al Qaeda and The CIA?)
[Sounds like the name of my next rock band: "Al Qaeda and The CIA"!]
WHY WON'T YOU DEBATE ME IN PUBLIC, HARRY?
WHY do you have no confidence in your childish "Giuliani is the messiah" arguments?
(Oh yeah: you know damn well I can prove each one of your ignorant ideas wrong.)
ANOTHER CHALLENGE:
I BETCHA $100 YOU DON'T COME UP WITH A SINGLE EXPOSE IN NYPRESS AS BIG AS FIELDS' PHOTOSHOP SCANDAL I---ALONE---BROKE.
(It is now the BIGGEST news story / scandal of this entire Mayor's race, having pulled far ahead of Freddy's Diallo lie, and we'll be hearing jokes about it for the next 20 years of NYC politics.) (Of course, I exposed thousands of scandals much BIGGER, but the media only jumped on the overblown Fields' one b/c they're all working for Bloomberg.)
(Heck, I beat the entire media with stories of BERNIE KERIK's corruption FIVE YEARS before every other journalist.)
(WHY do you think I'm such a cocky bastard? It's because I've been proven right on tens of thousands of occasions when everyone doubted me.)
YOU'VE GOT TWO MONTHS TO PROVE YOU CAN BREAK A STORY THAT IS BIGGER.
Go!
(Should I even mention the international acclaim I reaped when I SLAMMED Giuliani and the 9/11 Commission on live television? [Google it] WHERE WAS HARRY? Oh yeah: he was calling Giuliani the HERO of 9/11 for all the 'heroic' things he did like? like? well, I'm sure Giuliani must've done SOMETHING heroic to be called the hero, RIGHT?)
WHY do I expose govt bullshit while Harry COVERS IT UP?
Any explanation, Harry?
[Harry picks his nose and pouts.]
OH YEAH:
KISSING ASS IS HOW YOU CLIMB THE CORPORATE LADDER!
BACK TO HARRY'S DEBUT AS EDITOR OF NYPRESS? JUST LOOK AT THE COVER!
"Your Tag Here"--- the cover story title---is ILLEGIBLE! Good job, Harry!
"Go ask Alice (Cooper)" is the kind of sub-childish cutural pun that is rudimentary in every shitty periodical in America (from Time Out to the Voice). [It wouldn't have passed my QC after age 11.]
SO MUCH FOR HARRY'S false promise, "YOU WILL NEVER MISTAKE NYPRESS FOR ANY OTHER PAPER"!
(Like his idol Rudy Giuliani, Harry breaks all his promises right off the bat.)
I CAN'T FIND ONE SMART IDEA IN THE ENTIRE PAPER!
How about this headline / story:
"SPACE PIRATES AHOY; WILL JOGGERS DESTROY INWOOD PARK?" ????
People are dying while ambulances get stuck in traffic gridlock and this vacuous robot is printing stupid shit like this?? (Is Siegel the JEWISH Zaitchik?)
I couldn't even make it past the first few paragraphs of most of the shit, from AZI's graffiti piece (zzzz) to Emily's promising piece about a murder ignored (which ended up being all fluff!)
LOOK AT THE CULTURAL CRAP TOO!
Harry said NYPress wouldn't look like other papers BUT IT'S IDENTICAL!
AD Amorossi continues to write about banal shit that's ALREADY been in Spin and Rolling Stone! (Eric Benet at BB Kings? Halle Berry's ex!!??) Harry recommends the SUGAR HILL GANG! (Maybe Harry really IS 60 years old?) Joshua recommends TED LEO and the Pharmacists (as did every other periodical) and AVRIL LAVIGNE (as did every other periodical)!!
HARRY!! YOU DON'T HAVE AN ORIGINAL OR DISTINCTIVE BONE IN YOUR BODY!
(No wonder your dad calls me a genius and YOU an imbecile!)
THIS is why I asked you out for lunch.
I wanted to give you some tips on USING YOUR FUCKING HEAD! (Pardon my french, but I don't have a lot of tolerance for shitheads. Remember: there are none so dumb as those who don't use their fucking heads!) [WAIT 'til y'all see my REVIEW of Harry and Fred's hilariously amateurish and un-fact-checked Giuliani-fellating "PRINCE OF THE CITY"] [No wonder you pansy "liberals" are losing the world to right wing morons who at least have some gonads.] I'M SORRY I have to be so cruel (ie, HONEST) but I don't think you are sincere, Harry.
WHY don't you use something like my TEN QUESTIONS FOR ALL THE CANDIDATES in this mayor's race to get some REAL issues out there (like the fact that Bloomberg is a CONVICTED CRIMINAL who escapes jail illegally)?
I'm partially trying to piss you off here so you'll PROVE ME WRONG about you being a vapid parrot.
I'M TRYING TO HELP YOU, HARRY, but like most children, you can't recognize that yet. (In 20 years you'll say I was totally right, like all of my critics from 20 years back now say.)
SO LET ME END ON A NICE NOTE:
I'm like your wiser friend on the playground who is telling you that Santa Claus is just your fat dad in a gay red suit. You should welcome my advice, even if it crushes your illusions.
Any monkey can get mad at me, Harry.
But can you prove any of my criticisms WRONG?
Even 100% of your friends think I'm ten times smarter than you!
Listen to me and LEARN about reality.
I'm trying to help you grow up.
Your conscience,
Christopher X. Brodeur, NYC