Alterman, Asses, Satan and the NYC Mayoralty
I admire New York Press for its literate writers. Was this a joke?
Tina Nicholas, Broad Hollow, NY
David A. Powers, Manhattan
Marc Gardner, Gig Harbor, WA
Claire Francis, Brooklyn
Jimmy Walker was a happy-go-lucky frontman for Tammany Hall, a fact he never tried to hide. This "Satan" would have understood the importance of community gardens to the common Joes who elected him. This was Jimmy's magic. People loved him because they knew he never placed himself above them. Years after his resignation, a poll was taken among New Yorkers, asking whom they would rather have as mayor: Walker or Fiorello La Guardia. The vote was overwhelmingly in favor of Walker.
If Cabal wants to compare Giuliani to another Satan, I'd suggest the power-hungry miscreant Giuliani's been emulating: Robert Moses.
Lorraine Diehl, Manhattan
W. T. Quick, San Francisco
Galileo did not stand up for his beliefs. Casting him as a stoic martyr, even in support of an admirable cause, is a manipulation of a valuable historical event. If we misuse our history like that, soon no one will remember exactly what Galileo did or did not do, or what it meant, and our valuable and instructive past will become worthless and dangerous.
Harry Graff Kimball, Manhattan
Kathy Wollard replies: Galileo recanted under threat of being tortured to death, and was instead sentenced to life imprisonment. The sentence was commuted to permanent house arrest. Confined to his house, he completed his Discourses, a cornerstone of modern physics, and had the book smuggled out of the country. Mathematician Rene Descartes (among many other scientists of the day) knew the truth as well as Galileo but chose, as Descartes wrote, "to live in peace and to continue the life I have begun under the motto 'to live well you must live unseen.'"
The quest for truth demands that the marketplace of ideas remain open, and that all assertions be continually reexamined in the light of experience and reason. Only those who fear the results of the search for truth will demand that the search be ended.
The simple fact is that, in spite of all the claims of knowledge of causation and effect, 500,000 of our friends, families and loved ones have died from the ravages of this disease. In spite of the claims of certainty, the scientific community has given us no cure, and no treatment that is not itself harmful and painful.
We owe it to everyone who has suffered and died to step back and take a second look, without fear of confronting the possibility of error. To Laurie Garrett, Dr. Wainberg, Mark Schoofs and all who would suppress free speech, human rights and the unfettered exchange of ideas, we ask you to look at your hands and your hearts. If these persons have suffered as the result of medical error, or tame journalism afraid to ask or understand the hard questions, then their blood is on your hands, and you are the authors of your own holocaust.
However, if Bush picks a pro-choice candidate, I can't imagine him winning over any people who consider "pro-choice" to be an important issue. I can only see him losing the votes of the very extreme pro-life people who would rather forfeit the Supreme Court justice seats that are up for grabs than give an inch.
And all Bush needs to do to turn around the unyielding extremism on the issue of abortion attack is to agree. Bush: "Yes, extremism does exist surrounding the abortion issue. My opponent's position is so extreme that he won't even denounce partial birth abortion."
Having said all that, MUGGER, I do think he will pick someone who is pro-choice, perhaps Ridge. And I'll just have to keep my fingers crossed.
Tim Potter, Morristown, NJ
Animal rights believers only wear clothing made of leaves and vines. Cotton farms kill cute animals, and the water to irrigate them means dead fish! Or maybe they're all nudists!
Animal rights believers never use anything that has to be shipped or trucked to them. Roadkill is a serious problem! Beyond that, oil tankers tend to have accidents every so often, killing many cute little fuzzies!
Animal rights believers don't read New York Press (sorry!) because it's printed with oil-based ink (see above) on non-recycled paper (loss of habitat) using presses powered by coal (acid rain equals dead fish) or nuclear energy (dead fish from the cooling system, loss of habitat from mining plants).
Animal rights believers refuse all medical help that has benefited from testing on animals. Essentially they rely on prayer when ill.
Animal rights believers don't use anything made from a non-renewable resource or that wasn't manufactured using energy from solar, wind or other green energy sources.
If animal rights were truly the same as human rights, and the activists weren't really a bunch of hypocritical white yuppie holier-than-thou assholes, they would behave in the manner described above.
Instead they write letters.
So let's pretend that Chris Stern, Dudley Giehl ("The Mail," 4/5) and the bimbo who responded (2/23) to my previous letter (2/9) are animal rights believers and wish them luck as they live in the forest, with no clothes, medicine or New York Press.
Maybe the rest of us can seek a rational middle ground that ends unnecessary abuse and consumption of other living creatures, but recognizes that our existence at the top of the food chain in our current numbers makes anything beyond that a fantasy.
Carmi Turchick, Queens
Giehl and Stern, like Stephen Wise, apparently fail to understand the meaning of the word "rights" in the context that they were used by our Founders. Rights are not granted by the governors to the governed, but rather are possessed as inalienable by the people, who have the solemn duty of defending their rights against encroachment. What the animal rights people are attempting to do is project this concept into areas where its usage would only pervert the meaning of "rights." The only effect of this perversion would be to grant to a self-anointed elite the power to define the rights of animals?nothing more than an opportunistic power grab.
Stern says that "our understanding of animals and our relationships with them become increasingly sophisticated." Great. Glad to know you're so much more sophisticated than us slobs who don't have the privilege of living in Hoboken, Land of Enlightenment.
Giehl says that I have "no regard for the women's movement." Oh, what a terrible thing to say. I'm hurt. What will my wife and daughter think? The shame of it all.
Giehl, in attempting to debunk my claim that animal rights is "a fringe movement without significant popular support in America," cites the membership of "numerous animal welfare organizations...celebrities in the entertainment field, as well as people in academia." I rest my case.
While I think there is no imminent danger of the animal rights nuts being taken seriously by the rest of America, I am concerned that these nuts take themselves and their loopy cause so seriously. Instead of getting so worked up about the fictitious rights of apes, how about getting lives, guys?
Robert Stacy McCain, Gaithersburg, MD
It's all over. When Gore tries to inflame his base, they won't react. Witness Gore's tepid response to George's environmental proposals. They know Bush is stealing all their major issues. What can they do? Become more conservative? More like McCain? If they do, they will be called on by the liberal media. Meanwhile, Bush's proposals will be taken more or less on their own merit, portrayed less as being the product of cynical politics and more as serious proposals. After all, how can the liberal media deride Bush when Bush is giving them exactly what they want?
George Mikos, Concord, CA
Christopher William Cotner, Norman, OK
Originally, it was the Hollywood 19 who were singled out for the first rounds of testimony before HUAC. Seated on the left of Rep. J. Parnell Thomas, who chaired the hearings, was the junior representative from California, Richard M. Nixon. My point is that Taki errs in connecting McCarthy with the investigations of the Hollywood 19. Of that number, only 10 appeared in those first hearings, which became so unruly, the witnesses so defiant, that the second group, the nine, escaped summonses, except for Bertolt Brecht, whose testimony was short and sweet, like an old lady's dance. He fled to East Germany the following day.
Of the Hollywood Ten, I knew four personally, and two or three by correspondence, per my duties as founder/editor of Film Comment magazine, now published by the Film Society of Lincoln Center.
Doubtlessly some, or even all, of the Hollywood Ten were "card-carrying commies" (that was the epithet of the period). I will not attempt to defend them here. But I wish to emphasize that the U.S. has a long tradition of iconoclastic political thinking, even radicalism, since the mid-1800s, some of which can be called socialism. We have long had our own indigenous social activism. Indeed, many of these homegrown union organizers, et al., resisted efforts by sophisticated eastern Marxists to "infiltrate and subvert"?the common jargon when the working class gets smart and organizes. The great industrial strikes that tested union strength in the 1930s were by and large free of communist theory. No one talked about silly threats of American workers permanently seizing and managing the Detroit auto factories, etc.
All they wanted were decent wages, job security, safe working conditions, recognition for their unions and maybe a bit of vacation time. All of that is modest and reasonable. Americans are too individualistic, too argumentative, to fall into line obediently under the red flag of rebellion on behalf of what they sensed was an unworkable ideology that didn't fit America's style.
Similarly, the factory bosses and their allies in Congress were not terrified by the word "communism." Their desires were simple, like those of their workers. The bosses wanted merely to break the unions entirely and to return to the pre-union sweatshop happy days, or at least to dominate and control the unions indirectly. And for that purpose they halfway invented the Red Menace, along with their stooge press, and they chose their surrogates in Congress accordingly. I say "halfway," because there were indeed some Americans?very few?whose first loyalties were to the USSR.
Let me take a moment for nostalgia. For a time in the 1950s I worked in Hollywood, at one point as dialogue coach for the Twentieth-Century Fox comedy Mr. Belvedere Rings the Bell, adapted from the Broadway hit. The film was one of the Belvedere series, starring Clifton Webb, following on his first Belvedere hit, Sitting Pretty, for which he earned an Oscar nomination for Best Actor. Webb lost to Olivier for Hamlet, but, as Webb said, "Larry is an old pal," so he forgave him.
The Hollywood blacklist was then going full blast. Hollywood writers, performers, et al., were being summoned to testify. Webb was glued to his radio every spare minute, since the confession and contrition made for great theater. When Webb was due on the set, he asked me to take over the radio so that he could learn everything about the HUAC hearings, if only secondhand. Webb rejoiced when Larry Parks whined and groveled before the committee. But Webb's ultimate joy was the testimony of Jose Ferrer. How pitiful to hear a man nearly break down, as his estate and swimming pool were in jeopardy. Ferrer had starred in the original Broadway hit The Silver Whistle. Similarly, at that time I knew others in Hollywood who were suffering through the blacklist ordeal.
And so it came to pass that I myself was blacklisted. As a merchant seaman, I first sailed deep sea in the summer of 1942, at the age of 17, too young for the draft. I sailed five tankers and three Liberties from 1942 through 1945, and then, at 20 years of age after the war, I quit the sea and for a year worked on the English-language Mexico City Herald, developing a taste for journalism and Dos Equis beer.
The maritime industry by then was undergoing its own loyalty investigations, hearings and blacklists. There were variations. Sometimes you merely signed an oath swearing such and such. Sometimes others were questioned about you. Sometimes your phone was tapped, your mail studied. I endured some of this later, during the Vietnam War, when, as editor of Film Comment and as a sometime guest editor of Film Culture, the feds were concerned about the anti-Vietnam stance I expressed in print. Per the Freedom of Information Act, I sent for my FBI file, which was merely 80 pages. (I was also, by the way, a stringer for Variety, but my articles and reviews in that publication never generated any controversy. Besides, they wouldn't dare attack Variety.)
Thus I commend Taki for taking on a complex controversy. I'm trying to provide some context, however, having lived through all that. As Gen. Robert E. Lee told his troops at the surrender, "I wish you all an affectionate farewell."
Gordon Hitchens, Manhattan
Next, two well-meaning but ill-informed chaps write letters to "The Mail" attempting to correct Taki on his history of the blacklist. Taki's column contained subtle misrepresentations, but a moron named Ross Willett and a fella named Mike Chapman also failed to tell the whole story. In brief, neither HUAC nor McCarthy created the blacklist. It was created in 1947 at a meeting at the Waldorf-Astoria by all the big producers. Originally, the list contained 10 known communists, but it later expanded to fellow travelers and finally to those unwilling to fully cooperate. It was just good business and preemptive censorship. It was encouraged by some members of the Jewish ADL because so many of the known communists had Jewish backgrounds, which was becoming embarrassingly scandalous. The producers, most of whom were Jewish, wanted to purge these traitors from their midst. They were patriots, were wary of accusations of dual loyalty and were rightly afraid that if too many Jews were revealed to be involved in treacherous behavior, it would inevitably lead to an anti-Semitic reaction.
HUAC, on the other hand, was created originally in 1935 by Samuel Dickstein, in order to investigate links among Nazi propaganda, right-wing groups and German-Americans. Just recently, Allen Weinstein published a book about the era with the assistance of Soviet files. It turns out that Dickstein was a communist and a paid Soviet agent. The Soviets wanted to dump him because they felt he was too expensive and unproductive. They dubbed him "the crook."
After two years, Dickstein's committee published its finding, but Nazi propaganda continued. He was unable the get reauthorization. He then approached Martin Dies, who agreed to help set up a new committee, but could not limit itself to hunting Nazis. He would also hunt communists. In Dicksteins' words, they would "investigate everybody for activities that were un-American." Thus, in 1938, the HUAC committee was formed, and a multi-decade reign began, with many highs and many lows. With a conservative majority, Dies dominated the group, but remember?Dickstein created it, and he was a paid Soviet agent.
Dickstein's treason was disclosed only a couple of years ago, but very few people know this. The media doesn't report it, history books don't write it and for people like Jacob Weisberg and other writers the subject is a sore and sensitive one.
Finally, Tom Phillips writes a letter repeating his claim to be a spokesman for Generation X. He mentions dating two Oriental girls. I once trolled for poon in Bangkok, and I remember smoking opium and reciting Baudelaire's "Invitation au Voyage": "Mon enfant, ma soeur/Songe à la douceur/D'aller la-bas vivre ensemble."
For Village Voice readers, that translates as: "My child, my sister/Dream of the sweetness/To go down there to live together."
Since then I married a Latina, but I still keep a gong over my bed. I hope Tom Phillips does, too. As a generational spokesman, though, he should do more for the blacks and even the gays. We can only pray.
T. O'Toole, Ridgewood, NJ