Welcome to the Back of the Bus
HMM. NOT A BAD IDEA
I imagine your "50 Most Loathsome New Yorkers" issue has already been put to bed, but I do want to express my opinion. The best article in all the coverage to date on the subject of the Ratner Arena Proposal was in New York Press: Dan Neel's seminal article. The best caricature of Bruce Ratner adorned the cover of New York Press.
I predict New York Press may choose Ratner as its Most Loathsome New Yorker.
If you have done so, I applaud you.
If you have not, "he wuz robbed."
Thanks for your great coverage, and please contact me and my organization if you wish to do further coverage of this enormously intriguing and pertinent issue.
Daniel Goldstein, Develop-Don't Destroy, Brooklyn
SPINNER'S SPELLCHECK
Your work is enjoyable, and Jennifer Blowdryer's always a breezy read, but there is no such thing as an "alcapuma," unless some new age chef has switched the wild cat for the ground beef ordinarily found in the cornmeal snack called "alcapurria" ("Up All Night," 3/3). Better get some Boricuas on your fact-checking team.
Harvey Spinner, Manhattan
FIVE BOROUGHS, INDIVISIBLE
Aaron Naparstek's article about NYC's traffic-congestion problems provided a reminder of why NYC needs to secede and become the 51st state ("Auto Asphyxiation," 3/3).
He writes: "Perhaps the biggest problem [with NYC's transportation system] is that the city has no real control over its subways, buses and tolled bridges and tunnels. These are all run by the Metropolitan Transit Authority, which is controlled by the state and the governor. Over the last decade, Republican legislators have increasingly steered MTA resources away from the city and toward the suburbs."
Same as they do with everything else. New York City loses billions of dollars a year because we get back billions less from the state than we pay in state taxes. We also cannot tax (except property) without state permission. We are basically serfs to Albany. Our local hack pols apparently are satisfied with this setup, because it provides a ladder for promotions/career advancement for themselves.
Jason Zenith, Manhattan
TELL US MORE OF THIS YOUNG, EASTERN EUROPEAN WIFE?
I thoroughly enjoyed Mark Ames' review of Rachel Greenwald's Find a Husband After 35 ("Books," 3/10). I remember one of the last women I dated before I got married. She was 41 and told me, when we were on the subject of whether we wanted children or not: "Well, it's okay, I have plenty of time to decide." Luckily for me, it wasn't long after that that I wound up marrying a young Eastern European woman. (I'm now 40 and my wife is 26.)
Yes, Americans are an incredibly lovely, fearful people-women and men alike. As Ames, I have no idea how they go on living like this: office slaves that seem to be filled with some vague hatred and jealousy, hurting each other with petty office politics, only to wind up in a cold, lonely bed at the end of the day.
Robert Byzell, Brooklyn
RULING THE WORLD IS HARD WORK
You are certainly correct when you sneer at the late Brother William James that it was "possible that what [he] thought he was going to get...was a taste of unfettered power and demonic world control" ("The Blotter," 3/17). Possible, but unlikely he sought after puerilities of that sort.
I think it rather more probable that in your ignorance, you have slandered the dead. I suppose that somewhere, sometime during the period you seem to know so much about, ("at least 70 years"), loaded guns may have been used against Masonic protocol at a regular communication of freemasons. But this is all about a breach of law, and goes to explains why it is against law and custom to allow any kind of weapon in Lodge. It is good to know your own power to sneer is not unfettered. After all, he was possibly in some way your own brother, too?
Please tell Mr. Wiggles that the phrase "separation of church and state" doesn't exist in the U.S. Constitution ("Rehabilitating Mr. Wiggles," 3/17). We'd hate to see him in need of rehab and a high-school civics refresher course.
Jim Heathman, Manhattan
ANOTHER WORD FOR PIRATE TREASURE
You devoted the cover and two pages to Alan Cabal and Jim Knipfel's fears about the biological research station on Plum Island ("Monster Island," "Books," 3/17). Yet it all could have been summed up in this classic line: "Perfesser, they say in the village that you're meddlin' with things that mankind was not meant to know."
John Boardman, Brooklyn
WHO YOU CALLIN' INTELLIGENT, BUSTER?
Harrumph. I am constantly dismayed by otherwise intelligent journalists who have an inability to comprehend the most basic technical concepts. I know nothing of Plum Island, and this article ("Monster Island," 3/17) could have been a source of information, but for the confidence-shattering blunders in its beginning; "The shuttle is as close to a fail-safe system as our species is capable of."
Rubbish. That is an ignorance-revealing non sequitur. First, the concept of "fail-safe" has nothing to do with likelihood of failure. When correctly used, it refers to the design of a device or system that is designed to fail-safely. The first example of this type of deliberate design was the Westinghouse Brake system for railroad trains. The brakes are held in the "on" position by powerful springs, one set per axle; they are released by applying high air pressure to them through a single hose. If the hose springs a leak or the air pump fails, the brakes fail by slamming on, not off. That is, they fail safely, a stationary train generally being considered safer than a runaway train.
As for the space shuttle, there is simply no way something like that can be made to fail safely. "Fail-safe" was never part of the equation. Moreover, everyone involved with the program knows full well that it is a risky endeavor and that, sooner or later, someone is going to be incinerated and/or blown to bits too small to be recovered. Shit, indeed, does happen.
It may be that Plum Island is a hazard. Or maybe not. When viewed through the dark glass of basic ignorance, a reader has no way to guess.
Bruce Ward, Fredericton, Canada
OUT OF SEITZ
Matt Zoller Seitz's review of The Passion of the Christ ("Film," 2/25) was the most incisive, objective review of The Passion that I've read. Most of the reviews from the different media outlets took the same "violence angle" and just could not break away from it. I guess this was the safe point of view to take, and one that would be deemed acceptable to publish.
Thanks for posting a review of this movie that evaluated it so thoroughly, from a reviewer that used his heart as well as his head to comprehend this complex labor of love from Mel Gibson, as any reviewer should have. I was happy to read about the glimmers of brilliance that were found in this movie. These were the details that were missing from most other reviews and should have been reviewed hand in hand with any violence and charges of anti-Semitism.
Tom Varga, Piscataway, NJ
WHEN IRISH EYES ARE FIGHTING
William Bryk is certainly correct that Brendan Behan came from a family of writers ("Rotation," 3/17). His maternal uncle, Peadar Kearney, wrote many songs, including the current Irish National Anthem, "The Soldier's Song," in 1907.
But it was his paternal grandmother, Chrissie English, and his mother, Kathleen Kearney, who probably most influenced his literary vocation. Behan's grandmother had pictures of both the Bishop of Dublin and Karl Marx on her wall and often harbored Irish rebels in her Dublin home. She was a socialist activist her entire life, and according to family tradition, it was she who taught Behan to drink. His mother, once housemaid to Maud Gonne, was a longtime member of the Irish Communist Party and was well-known as a folk singer. She made a long-playing record at 92 and appeared on RTE and BBC television.
Matt Taibbi has at least improved his attacks on Christianity to the point of more thoughtfulness, and even to an acknowledgment of the loving historic presence of Christ ("Cage Match," 3/17). As to the rest, the attacks on historic Catholicism for example, I answer by recommending well-researched books like The Power and the Glory and simple, compact defenses of Christianity like The Case for Christ.
As for The Passion of the Christ, Mel Gibson went into this film having no idea whether he'd be able to get effective distribution or not, and no idea whether or not he'd be losing an awful lot of money. There was also no guarantee that the inter-Christian cooperation that has formed around the film would build, as Gibson's very Catholic view could easily have been looked at with suspicion by Protestants. His going ahead with the film despite all this sounds to me like an act of faith rather than materialism.
Where Taibbi brings up a very good point is with his question about what Gibson will do with all that money. Despite Taibbi's dark-humor joke about Jesus becoming an L.A. millionaire, the real, quite radical Jesus does indeed call on people to give up their wealth to the poor, as he explicitly states in the gospels.
Jack Seney, Queens
GRAVE-ROBBING FOR FUN AND PROFIT
Upon reading "Fireman's Fund," I was reminded of the horrible acts committed a few years ago, when grave robbers were snatching people's jewelry off the corpses in crypts ("Page Two," 3/10). And in 1955, when teen actor-idol James Dean died in a car crash, crazed fans were snatching parts of the mangled car he had been driving and taking anything they could from the tragic scene. This country has a morbid preoccupation with death. I wonder if that is what drove President Bush to embark on this useless war with Iraq. We have been losing American lives in droves with no end in sight. I wonder if anyone has tried to grab dog tags or boots off the fallen soldiers to sell them at some auction or for some political motive.
Norman Singer, Brooklyn
INJUSTICE LEAGUE
Paul Krassner is so right that our injustice system does not fit punishment to crime ("Zen Bastard," 3/24). As a former attorney and former federal prisoner, I know all too well about that reality. Keep writing the truth.
Karen S. Bond, J.D., Columbus, OH
MUGGER VS. BULL MOOSE
This caught my eye: "And like any rational person, I despise the grandstanding, anti-business Spitzer" (MUGGER, 3/24). Is it because the mean ole man hurt poor widdle innocent Merrill Lynch's feelings? In the alternate reality that Russ Smith lives in, doing your job with diligence and picking up the slack of the SEC, who looked the other way, is "grandstanding," and taking a company to task for ethics and not playing by the rules is "anti-business." I guess Enron and WorldCom were also unfairly maligned mom-and-pop companies that were just trying to eke out a living.
Alex Swingle, Manhattan
FROM THE BOTTOM OF HIS SEOUL
David Ritchie: What a beautiful, beautiful piece of work that was ("Goodbye to All That," 3/24).
David Ritchie's article caught me off guard. It had a lot of wonderful insights, delivered with a quiet serenity that truly made me feel the release of all that tension ("Goodbye to All That," 3/24). In his memoir My Last Sigh, Luis Buñuel, whose films often deal with erotic obsessions, also speaks about the wonderful liberation that comes with the end of desire. I can't say that I look forward to that time yet-I'm 22 and not really interested in the "cozy home" I could be saving up for instead of investing in sex-but Ritchie's piece has given me a new way to look at it.
On sex getting in the way of work: Yes, an erection undoubtedly takes one's mind off the job. But what about sublimated libido, that great engine of Western civilization? In any case, this has nothing to do with how happy an individual is with his own life.
Darrell Hartman, Athens, Greece
YEAH, LUCKY US
Since I suspect the majority of your writers have a Great American Novel or collection of Important Poetry sitting unfinished on their computers (those who haven't already gotten theirs published, anyway), your Page Two brief about artists' unemployment wasn't just mean-spirited-it was more than a little hypocritical (3/24). Lucky you-you can earn a paycheck for practicing your art; and as a bonus you get the opportunity to disparage those artists who can't do the same! I wish there were more jobs like that available!
Chris Stansfield, Manhattan