Kvetching About Knipfel; Hipsters Attack Koyen; Is Glass Impotent?; Taki's Latin; MUGGER Shows a Little Tenderness
Does anyone besides Jim Knipfel need to visit the Snoezelen program at Beth Israel ("Therapy Overload: Better Living Through Snoezelen," 12/27) to realize that listening to enjoyable music in a comfortable setting makes one feel better? I look forward to Knipfel's next article, where he makes the startling discovery that getting his dick caught in his zipper makes him feel worse.
Brett Slater, Manhattan
Guess Right, Win a Prize
Come on, Jim Knipfel. You can't write that article ("Slackjaw," 12/27) and not tell us who the "Guru" is!
Name Withheld, via Internet
No
I just finished reading the 12/20 "First Person" column by Brad Tuttle. Great work. Has he written for you before?
Steve Restivo, Wayne, NJ
Hey Man, That's What We're Here For
Despite the generally dismissive tone of John Strausbaugh's comments ("Publishing," 12/20), this was a perfectly fair explanation of the Rick Moody protest and what we're attempting to say.
So thank you.
Damn, you right-wing idiots at New York Press can't even keep your quasi-libertarian ideals straight in your zeal to suck up to our scumbag government!
I'm one of those rich "dotcommers" who live in DUMBO, except that your resident moron (or should I just call him MUGGER Lite?) Jeff Koyen was a bit off the mark in his "Hipsters in the Snow" piece ("New York City," 12/27). I'm a waitress by night and a painter by day. But then, if Koyen had any idea what he was talking about, he wouldn't be writing for your consistently ignorant paper, now would he? In fact, almost everyone I know out here in DUMBO is an impoverished artist. Duh. That's why we live in raw industrial spaces instead of luxurious, up-to-code condos. (Couldn't figure out the obvious, could you?)
I thought you Republicans and libertarians believed in more individual freedom, and not the heavy (and stupid) hand of government. But that was more bullshit from the mouths of assholes. I thought you espoused the ideal that two consenting adults should be able to do whatever they want (as long as it doesn't hurt anyone else). It would appear that your only ideal in fact is: be full of shit at all times no matter how much shape-shifting is necessary.
If your uncle wants to pay to watch me dance topless, that's his business and my business, not Rudy Giuliani's. If your sister wants to buy pot from a Jamaican guy in the park, that's her business and his business, not Rudy Giuliani's. We're grown adults, let us live our lives how we want as long as innocent people don't get hurt. (I don't advocate drunk driving, for example.)
If a landlord wants to rent out a raw commercial space so he can make a living and can benefit poor artists who need space more than comfort and are willing to pay for it, knowing damn well it's not "up to code," then that's my choice as a consumer. Not the government's choice.
Life is filled with a million risks. (Should the government outlaw rollerblading if a whole bunch of people break their ankles?) This country was founded on the principles of individual freedom and self-determination (remember those concepts?), and if Koyen thinks government should babysit everyone minding their own business he should fuck off and become mayor of Singapore.
If my loft burns down and then I cry that it wasn't up to code, Koyen would be right to call me a hypocrite, but for now he needs to find a brain and recognize that the Fire Dept.'s crackdown has nothing to do with public safety. Nazi Giuliani has always been about harassment of the little guy on behalf of the big guy, but you retards can't figure that out. (You really think he closed the titty bars to lower crime? Well then, tell me why Europe and Japan don't have a crime rate five times higher than ours, you fuckheads.)
I was at CBGB last year when our little Hitler sent in an army of NYPD, FDNY and Public Morals Squad goons under the pretense of "public safety" (it was just a coincidence that it was a "Sick Art" show), and the only violation they could scrape up was an improperly stored ice scoop!
Listen up, morons, try putting two plus two together for once in your lives and stop lying about piece-of-shit fascists like Giuliani and George "the government would never execute an innocent man" Bush.
Maybe it was my mistake for looking at your piece of shit paper.
Name Withheld, Brooklyn
Jeff Koyen replies: Oh, dear. A self-proclaimed "impoverished artist" is mad at me. A "waitress by night, and a painter by day"? That makes you a waitress, sweetie. Sticking a quill up your ass does not make you a peacock, just as my mocking the plights of a bunch of loudmouth clowns does not make me a Republican. So fuck you, too.
What an obvious dickhead this Jeff is. I'm trying to figure out if it was some deep love of his who lives in DUMBO, who completely dissed him at the altar, or some bully artist who beat the shit out of this dork. Either way, he is about the only jerk on the face of the planet who would actually make such comments about the artists who singlehandedly transformed that neighborhood from a dead-body-ridden wasteland to the next Soho on the Hudson.
It's pretty universally agreed that evicting so many people who had lived there for 15 years just days before Christmas and giving them an hour to clear out their possessions, and in a midnight raid no less, was a completely shitty stunt by an administration with a whole history of shitty stunts. They've been there for 15 years?but now all of a sudden they've got to move right this second because their lives are in danger. Bullshit. This has nothing to do with safety and everything to do with the landlord who is behind the evictions, and who stands to triple his rents once the city does the dirty work for him by removing these pesky leaseholders for him.
This Jeff (writerboy) is not swift enough to do a little thing called "journalism." Instead he sputters forth this nothing piece, which could only prove that Jeff is the last person anyone would want to hang out with on a Saturday night. The article was completely unnecessary, and so is this dick, Jeff.
Paul Henry, via Internet
Nadler Will Eat It
Thank you for sending me some additional copies of the very fine article by Jonathan Vankin ("Votescam 2000: The Real Scandal Is the Voting Machines Themselves") in your 12/13 issue. I am sending copies to Sens. Schumer, Clinton and McCain, and to my representative in the House, Congressman Nadler. Given the Florida debacle and related events, the need for election reform nationwide is urgent.
Looking through your newspaper in depth, I find a most interesting variety: rabid Republican rantings ("MUGGER") alongside great articles like the above-mentioned one, as well as ads for penis enlargement, s&m and the Hellfire Club. The mind, as they say, boggles!
I have located one of your green distribution boxes close to my home, and I look forward to less MUGGER and more Jonathan Vankin and similar writers.
Ann Irving, Manhattan
Bullets, Ballots
MUGGER: Your 12/28 "e-MUGGER" was a good summation of the recent political past. Furthermore, relating all the irrational things the newly moronic left has to say is eye-opening. The lefty salons of DC, New York and Southern California are hunkered down for this interregnum?this upstart!
Your point regarding the unimaginable ignorance of voters dug up by the usual suspects is the stuff of counterplots. The Democrats have prospered mightily as the public's become more ignorant. Ergo, it is poetic justice that they be hoist with their own petard. There are people who are too dumb to cast a vote and too disinterested to ask how at the polls. Amazing.
If you feel brave, try writing a column on the "value" of voters who barely know the country in which they live. Get some extra insurance first, for the subsequent attacks will aim to kill, not wound.
Bruce Karlson, Navarre, FL
It's Near Buffalo
MUGGER: Your 12/22 recollections were much like my own. I can see that you love your family. I'm 45, too. Married and with four kids. Lord, but I love them all so. I celebrate Christmas with my family as I experienced it as a boy. I would bet you try to do the same. It's still as sweet as always for me, but the memories of those I'll never see again are with me, too.
MUGGER: Your articles are so very long, and at the end of them we still end up reading a pile of shit.
M. Cooper, via Internet
Digital Divide
Lionel Tiger is always a fascinating read, but his marvelous cohering of nail salons with such diverse instances of animal primping is breathtaking ("Human Follies," 12/13). I may even start to clean my fingernails.
William Bryk's "Old Smoke" is the one column in New York Press that I most anticipate. I wish that it appeared every week.
Mayor William Gaynor (12/20) was buried in section seven of Brooklyn's Green-Wood Cemetery at the top of a hill overlooking Crescent Water. His grave marker is unique and puzzling. It consists of a large stone circle lying flush with the ground. In the center is a circular opening that causes the marker to look very much like a huge stone washer or LifeSaver candy. There is nothing else remotely similar to it in Green-Wood.
There is also a monument dedicated to Gaynor at the north end of Cadman Plaza Park in Brooklyn Heights.
Alfred Kohler, Brooklyn
Don't Mention It
Melik Kaylan is correct when he argues in "Whose Genocide?" ("Taki's Top Drawer, 12/27") that history is complex. Injustices and atrocities have occurred at the hands of, and against, virtually all ethnic groups at one time or another.
However, Kaylan obfuscates matters further by concluding with a kind of moral equivalence theory. According to his logic, African-Americans, Native Americans, Jews and other groups who have suffered extreme oppression should just shut up about it. The unfortunate fact is that Armenian, Assyrian and Greek Eastern Christians have suffered centuries of oppression under Ottoman and Turkish Islam. In some periods and places this was more extreme than in others. What happened to these Eastern Christians in 1915-'16 was the first known genocide of the 20th century. Healing for their ancestors and "redemption" (which Kaylan seems to desire) for the perpetrators and for their Turkish ancestors and Muslim coreligionists would come much more quickly if the groups in question faced and admitted the truth, as some Turkish human rights groups have recently done. Charles Glass's truth-telling ("Taki's Top Drawer," 12/13) is much more helpful toward this end than is Kaylan's obfuscation and denial.
Markos Nickolas, Boston
Hooked on the Glass Dick
I'm an English expatriate, and Charles Glass' "Holiday Cheer" ("Taki's Top Drawer," 12/27) truly made me glad to be living in New York rather than in London. He brilliantly evokes a world of seedy journalists plotting all night (and day) to get the next free drink.
The article, however, evokes other images. Charles Glass writes of all the women he flirts with, and who almost drool at the sight of him. And from his article, he clearly isn't a young man, or a particularly sober one. The image he presents isn't necessarily that of a dirty old man, or even a courtly old man. Instead (and this applies also to every single column by Taki dealing with women) it raises a question in readers' minds: Is Charles Glass impotent?
Name Withheld, Manhattan
Mama Crass
Taki should complain about complaining Democrats solely in English, which he manages very well. But I think I know what he is trying to get at with the allegedly Latin phrase "matrem-coitando" ("Top Drawer," 12/20). There may be more than 50 years of tarnish on my Auxilium Latinum silver medal, but I know it should be "matris irrumator."
So maybe he should try historical fiction. A slave boy in ancient Rome, who has somehow managed to achieve literacy, sidles up to a wall, checks to see whether anyone is looking and scrawls on it, "Nero est matris irrumator." And that would be no underclass insult, but the literal truth.
John Boardman, Brooklyn
Wasps and Snakes
I enjoy Taki's columns. I only disagree with his use of the acronym "WASP" ("Top Drawer," 12/27). As a careful grammarian, he would realize it is redundant, since there are no Negroid or other groups within the Anglo-Saxon Protestants. Drop the "W" and call them ASPs.
Name Withheld, via Internet
Central Pork
Armond White's inclusion ("Film," 12/27) of Black and White as one of the top 10 films of the year is a joke, right? Why else would he call attention to yet another self-indulgent offering from an irresponsible, artsy-fartsy filmmaker? This pathetic piece of celluloid did more to stereotype contemporary black culture than a raging Afrophobe?and presaged the infamous Central Park gropings. Little wonder, since sexual triangles (and drugs) in the woods of Central Park are a central theme.
Name Withheld, via Internet
Soup Bones
Judge Patrick Duggan's ruling in the University of Michigan racial preferences case had nothing to do with political indoctrination on campus, as Scott McConnell states ("Taki's Top Drawer," 12/27).
Duggan's stated reasons for his decision (basically, that diversity is good for students) sound like good ones to me. His argument is certainly better than Bok and Bowen's, in The Shape of the River, that blacks do better in life because of preferences. Even if that is true, which they did not show, it is neither here nor there.
It sounds nice to say that you will admit the top 1000 applicants, but that leads to a really dull student body. I think it's perfectly legitimate for the admissions committee to use its judgment to put together a diverse group. I'm talking about background, of course, not race per se. Most people would probably favor giving a break to people from difficult backgrounds.
For many people, university is their first exposure to others from outside of their little cocoons. That's one of its main purposes, more than the actual courses you take and immediately forget. I think that's what Duggan is standing up for here.
Duggan also found that the admissions process from 1995-1998, which set aside seats for minority students, was unconstitutional. So I doubt that he buys into the politically correct views you seem to ascribe to him. I don't think Gratz and Hamacher's lawsuit against UM was a good idea. Lots of things are unfair in this world. If you're a Jew or an Asian and it is tougher to get accepted into a good school as a result, then you'll just have to be that much better to get in. I feel that it's tacky to complain about it. Complaining is for losers like Al Sharpton and his ilk.
Anyway, getting rejected from Yale is not going to ruin your life. Which school you go to (as an undergraduate especially) really doesn't matter as much as people think. If you're smart you're going to make out well in the long run, whatever happens.
Joe Rodrigue, New Haven
Old Men Down the Road
MUGGER: I very much enjoyed your 12/22 holiday reminiscences.
I am about your age, and the best and worst part of the holidays is the remembrance of all of the great older people who have passed on.
Joe Luehrmann, Chicago
Island Greetings
MUGGER: I just wanted to say that your 12/22 "e-MUGGER," "No Harm in Looking Back," was one of the best I've read about the holiday season. I now have a different perspective on my mother's melancholy during the season. Not real sadness, mind you, but a quiet reverie during the rush that I've come to see in her. As I get older, I also see some of the same traits in me. Some of my friends are gone, and it's sad to think of them at this time.
Reading your article reminded me so much of my own Christmases past, and it really did bring a tear to my eye. I have a 10-year-old son of my own, and I see the joy that he feels, the wide-open happiness that he expresses in everything for Christmas. It reminds me so much of myself at his age. I remember one time after serving a midnight Mass, not being able to sleep until probably 3 a.m. I was exhausted Christmas Day, but it was worth it.
I didn't mean for this e-mail to be so long, but I've been reading your articles for a couple of years on the Web, and I have found your stories about your sons' sports activities most enjoyable. Mine plays Little League baseball and basketball. Also, living here in Rhode Island, I'm a Red Sox fan like yourself. I have died those little deaths annually with our boys in Boston, so your references to them are fully understood by this reader.
Keep up the good work you do in watchdogging the inept and the clueless.
Nick Piscione, North Providence, RI
Jeez, Dean
MUGGER: It's been a long time since I could read your column!
You know, I really enjoy those columns of yours, like your 12/22 online "No Harm in Looking Back" piece, that go back into your yesterdays. Something about them is enjoyable, even though we've lived completely different lives.
My wife died in May, and I've spent months bombarded with the horrible pictures of watching her die?but at last I'm beginning to find I can think about her without reliving the horror of her last moments in that ICU ward. When she died?it seemed as if the world had stopped?but as she died I looked out of the window, and traffic was moving, horns blowing, people going in and out of the supermarket up the block. Nothing had changed in that insignificant little world out there. To me, the huge reality of the entire world was in that little room. I didn't give much of a damn about tomorrows, and the yesterdays didn't seem to matter at all.
I lost my subscription to New York Press when I moved. I really miss it, like I've missed your columns.
Dean Morgan, Glendale, CA
Sure, Clif
Alexander Cockburn ("Wild Justice," 12/27) notes that his book on Al Gore, with an original publishing price of $22, is now selling for $6.90 on Amazon, and he suggests that this collapse in price bodes ill for Gore's political future.
Here is my prediction.
Bush will be a one-term president.
The next president will be Ted Turner, and his vice president will be Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Incidentally, my predictions always come true.
Remember, you read it here first.
Clifton Wellman, Manhattan
They Speak Latin There
I think Richard Byrne is right on the money in predicting that George W. Bush's foreign policy will concentrate on larger and/or Latin American countries ("Opinion," 12/27), but he ignores the main motives for the shift?familiarity and pronounceability.
Let's face it, geography does not seem to be the President-Elect's strongest subject. He only really shines in discussions of large, long-established countries that are more or less in the same place they were when he went to school, and whose leaders are important enough to get their names in American newspapers from time to time. Under normal circumstances, confusing Slovakia with Slovenia would be a minor gaffe even for a politician, but imagine that it became expeditious to bomb one of them. Picking the wrong one could be a major embarrassment (maybe).
To the extent that he can speak at all, Mr. Bush's pronunciation of Spanish seems to be nearly as adequate as his English. Also the collective nouns for the residents of most Latin American countries considerately have regular -ian or -an endings, unlike those distressingly irregular Kosovars, Timorese and, uh, Greeks.
Wayne Hepner, Staten Island
Did You Trick?
M. Doughty never ceases to amaze me.
I ran away to Los Angeles once. Great experience. He was the second "celebrity" I had ever encountered (the first being the tiny woman who played Tangina in Poltergeist. I thought she was dead). He was walking out of a liquor store on Hollywood Blvd. I was the only one who recognized him. Desperately, I searched my brain for something "cool" to say. ("I think your band is great!" "You really changed my life." "I love you.") I felt none of those things. I knew that his lyrics moved me, and the music made me want to dance my little ass off.
I eventually assaulted him on the street, and told him how incredible I thought the band was (yeah, I went for what's behind door number one?a kick in the ass) and cursed myself later for not saying something so devilishly clever that he would immediately whisk me away to some hideout in North Hollywood.
Needless to say, he impressed me as a musician, and now he impresses me as a writer, and I just felt the urge to commend you for allowing me to discover M. Doughty's journalistic integrity. You know what? "I think your paper is great!" "You really changed my life." "I love you."
Jenn Tisdale, Baltimore
The Korean War Ruled
MUGGER: Read your 12/22 online column ("No Harm in Looking Back") about your mother's nostalgia. As a man of 77 years, it makes my thoughts clearer that we were far more fortunate with our lives than all following generations. I would not trade my memories of my life for living two more lives in present times.
Jim Froscher, Alva, FL
Okay, He Admits It
MUGGER: Your columns are laughable. Roaring about the evil media. Excuse me, I enjoy New York Press, and although it might not cost a quarter it is still considered part of the media. Your self-righteous indignation directed at the "left" is no less pathetic than the godless hedonism of Carville & Co.
How on Earth can you not recognize Bush's relative inexperience? Pointing to Reagan. Do you think George Jr. has ever even been on a job interview? Bush is assembling a very impressive team, which is great news, but what happens when Daddy and Cheney disagree? Junior might have to make another decision in life.
Finally, who are you to call for the end of the NAACP? The leaders might have lost their step a bit, but then, your moral calculus has faltered when you incredulously berate them for implying that Bush is a murderer. He has signed the death warrants of many men and, whether in a legal sense or not, he is a murderer.
Also, if you print this letter, please admit in writing that you believe George Bush to be a competent, intelligent man who has earned his lot in life, in accordance with the American Dream.
I write all the time and appreciate the vitriol you provide every week, which leads to deeper thinking and discussion.
Nicholas Padgen, Brooklyn
Imperial Presidency
MUGGER: You wrote in your 12/28 online column: "Uh, doubtful, Marty. For while you chew your liver like a spluttering drunk at a Dupont Circle after-hours bar, lost in a pink fog of what-might-have-beens, Bush will be running the country, paying little attention to snooty academics like yourself."
Presidents don't "run" the country, though Clinton tried to and Gore wanted to. They govern. Big difference. Leave "running" the country to dictators and Democrats.
Give 'em hell.
Tom Scheeler, Gilbert, AZ