Poor Whiteboy Ned Vizzini is Godawful; Armond Rules?ro;”Wait, No He Doesn't; Ditto MUGGER and the Rest

Armond White: Let me say right now that I work for Winstar Cinema; I acquire foreign language films for theatrical/HV/tv release. I am writing to you, however, in the capacity of film lover with enormous respect for your writing. It was with such extreme pleasure and gratitude that I read your review of George Washington ("Film," 10/25), a film that has truly inspired me and galvanized my film passion like no other these last few years. I admire not only all those qualities that render yours the most engaged, respectful, intelligent and independent film criticism around, but above all your courage to advocate and your profound respect for the mandate of the film critic.

I sent out a mass e-mail?something I have done only once before to promote my brother's new play?urging people to go see this film. I feel so strongly that this film must be seen, that it not only tells us something so necessary about our society, but that it singlehandedly redeems American cinema of the past 10 years or so, and in doing so represents the best kind of American art.

Thank you for your confident and lovely advocacy for such a brave and ambitious movie. I don't really care whether you like or don't like Winstar's releases?by no means is this a p.r. effort. I care only that you continue to engage my intellect by means of your writing, and occasionally make my spirits soar when I can truly share your passion.

Marie Therese Guirgis, Manhattan

Corey, See "Intentional Fallacy"

Armond White should never second guess the intentions of the director. In his review of George Washington, White writes, "Green tracks his characters through complicated but telling details like Damascus' new job?a lonely parallel to Rico's aimless motorbike ride through town. Both scenes reveal class stasis within 'economic mobility' as each man?an interracial lover, an inconsolable itinerant?searches for something more."

David Gordon Green placed the two-minute long motorbike ride scene in the film because he thought it was "funny." I can't wait to read Mr. White's think piece on the unforeseen socio-geopolitical warnings in the work of Benny Hill. He's been hoodwinked by a spoof of Days of Heaven.

Corey Fineman, Winston-Salem, NC

In on the Shrill

Hey guys, I found Jim Knipfel's West Nile Virus piece ("New York City," 10/25) interesting, but it seems like your writers are pretty easy to trick, because they're too lazy to do the real work.

For example, the most obvious question regarding the mosquito spraying is: if the city was telling the truth about malathion being completely harmless, then why did they stop using malathion and start using a new chemical this year? For Knipfel to not even ask this basic question shows he's as blind as he says he is.

But then, his boss thinks George W. Bush deserves to be the most powerful man on Earth, so there isn't a lot of promise in the wisdom department at New York Press, is there?

No wonder so many of us are voting for the Green Party.

J. Carpio, Manhattan

Ain't It Good to Be Alive and in Arkansy!

MUGGER: I'm a little ol' 6-foot grandma from Arkansas. I guess you all think the folks that live down here are the same, but we aren't. I want to thank you for giving us at least some respite from the dreary droning of Al Gore. I have decided that he really is a fungus, a mutant, and must be stopped.

I would never vote for either Clinton, and with a friend I've created a bumpersticker. It says, "Aren't You Tired of Being Bulled by Gore?" I have it on the window of my station wagon, and have had some really great reactions, including being chased by a large redneck driver through the parking lot of the Wal-Mart. He jumped out and said, "Please ma'am, can I get me one of them stickers?"

Keep it up. The country needs to laugh, and people need to feel good about each other again.

Name Withheld, via Internet

We No Use MSG

MUGGER: Thanks for a very informative column. Well-written, and with no liberal spin. I really enjoyed reading it.

Maxine Bailey, Rydal, GA

Muggy Weather

MUGGER: George W. Bush's taking his father's advisers for his own disturbs me. It suggests that his father would be president all over again, through his son. It smacks of a monarchy instead of a democracy.

Who would be next? Bush's grandson? Can Bush honestly make the claim that he is his own man? Gore was correct when he quipped about building a bridge to the 1930s.

You've implied that Gore has Clinton's morality. Let's be fair about this. Bush's brother Jeb, who is Florida's governor, and his other brother robbed a bank. Remember the Silverado affair? Last time I heard, bank robbery was a crime. Yet no one was arrested or charged. Instead, their father bombed Iraq, to distract the American people from his sons' crimes. That is why he was not re-elected, and had Dukakis been on the ball, Bush would have never been president.

You have aptly named yourself. MUGGER, you have successfully and finally mugged your brain.

Marvella Lucas, Manhattan

Russ Smith replies: It's not really cricket to respond to a mental midget, but a few points should be cleared up. George W. Bush, should he be elected, will not reprise his father's cabinet. As far as former President Bush, he's 76, and isn't interested in playing a role in his son's administration, aside from having a natural father-son dialogue. Neil Bush was a scapegoat in the Silverado savings and loan debacle; to imply he's a criminal simply shows an ignorance of the case.

Webster Defines Journalism

Sometimes the sorriest parts of your otherwise admirable paper are the lame headlines you put on the letters. Like the one you'll put on this one, is my guess. So...Zachary Siegel writes in to the Oct. 25 issue with a legitimate complaint about Taki's whitewashing of Nixon's malfeasance, and the headline you use is, "Worship Clinton, Zach?" Did he even mention Clinton? Wasn't he trying to rectify a rather severe misreporting of history by the imperious Taki (who is in your paper...why)? Does any criticism of Republican heroes, even as legitimate as Zach's, indicate "worship" of the unmentioned Clinton?

Fact is, not that many people ever "worshipped" Clinton. No one I know did. They may have voted for him over two aging uninspiring GOP candidates, Daddy Bush and Dole, and they may not have been enchanted by the irresponsible impeachment process. But worship Clinton? No. We had our own complaints about him. Editor-in-Chief MUGGER is so anxious to damn Clinton at every term that it becomes necessary to attack poor Zach, who never typed the name "Clinton," with the cudgel reserved for Clinton "worshippers"? That's a stretch. And it's sad, and it's not very journalistic.

James Webster, Dobbs Ferry, NY

Semper Fi, Cap

MUGGER: Great to see a newsman who is honest and calls 'em as he sees 'em. Keep up the good work.

Ed Loftus, Captain, USMC (ret), via Internet

The Halitosis State

MUGGER: Just wondering what will happen to the great state of New York should Hillary Clinton win. Will it be known thereafter as New Yorkinsaw? Will your city become Big Rock? Will Saratoga become Hotter Springs?

Get ready, Bucko. If Hillary wins she'll make Chuck Schumer look like a chamber of commerce booster with ties to the NRA, Attila and perhaps even David Duke.

Can't wait to see Al Sharpton running the Tourism Board, can you?

What's unbelievable to people like me from flyover country, who aren't supposed to be as bright or well-informed as you denizens of the country's greatest metropolis, is that so many New Yorkers could actually be taken in by her line of crap, which is so shopworn that it doesn't even play in Arkansas any more.

I know you guys are tired of the Italians running things. That became clear when John Gotti was convicted, Mario Cuomo was retired and Al D'Amato was given the heave-ho for that oily scoundrel Schumer (who looks like a carpet salesman operating out of a used Dodge van), but to trade those guys in for the creepiest bitch to leave Chicago since That Girl and Rhoda were canceled is self-destructive.

Unlike the world's smartest (most amoral) woman, Marlo Thomas at least had nice ankles that didn't look like those ottomans made from elephants' feet.

James Bourgeois, Church Point, LA

Edifice Rex

Oh dear. In Jonathan Kalb's review of my play, The Beginning of August, the errors begin the first paragraph, regarding the title ("Theater," 10/18). The play takes place at the end of July, as is stated three?count 'em?three times in the text. And so Mr. Kalb is mistaken when he perceives irony in a "February gloom." The title is as literal as what it suggests: what will begin?or not?after the action of the play ends in late July.

And, for the record, I am not the least bit interested in irony. Or characters that "exhibit and explain themselves." Or "inessential details" except inasmuch as the folly these things bring. How they distract us and mis-reveal. And, apparently, confound critics rushing headlong toward the meaning of it all.

I am certainly not interested in drilling an audience "like schoolchildren." I consider myself to be generous to the audiences who come to my plays. I think highly of their ability to absorb and contemplate and not feel hustled, manipulated or led by the hand.

Also, for the record, the director Neil Pepe did not direct the actors in the "disastrous acting theories" of David Mamet. I think Mamet's acting theories are, to a great extent, a lot of happy horseshit. And Mr. Pepe is aware of my feelings. I do find it interesting that what Kalb perceives to be the result of our supposed approach?a technique that bars Mary Steenburgen "from her full expressiveness"?was described by another critic as producing "wildly exaggerated hysterical naturalism."

Finally, as for the "essential modesty" of my ambition, I can only hope to convey through my work the immense power of the theatrical experience as I understand it. But I'd like to thank whoever is responsible for the beautiful drawing that attends the review, and for Mr. Kalb's devoting so many words to my "edifice." Any press is good press.

Tom Donaghy, Manhattan

Taki Exposed as Naderite

Taki: How can you possibly say ("Top Drawer," 10/25) that Ralph Nader is "honest"? He charges that all the evils in the world and America are the fault of the giant corporations, which he proposes nationalizing. He never has an unkind word for the leviathan of the federal government or the grotesque excesses of the trial lawyers, who probably are his chief funding source. Do you really want to grow government from its current level of 47 percent of national income to more than 80 percent, which Nader would effect? Where is his honesty on the true impact of his proposals?

Ron J. Carr, Glenwood Springs, CO

In Plutarch?

Where can I find a brief biography of Taki? I find him most interesting and thoroughly enjoy his columns. Obviously, he must be well-off and rubs elbows with the rich and famous. Yet he retains the mindset of the average Joe. He speaks his concerns and his language.

I came across Taki several months ago, as I always bring up the Drudge webpage and read the different columnists to get different views and opinions. I also thoroughly enjoy the other New York Press columnists, and have forwarded many of their columns to friends and contacts of mine.

I wish New York Press were more known and read by the sheep in this nation, who have been so brainwashed and lied to by the commie-leaning national news media.

Keep up the good work, it's excellent.

Ken Stokes, Las Vegas

No Inkage

What kind of garbage are you printing? John Strausbaugh blames Israel for the current violence because the body count is largely Palestinian ("Editorial," 10/18)? Has it occurred to any of you that the Palestinian body count is so high because the Palestinian Authority, all those peaceful gun-toting henchmen of Yasir Arafat, has no respect for human life? They are throwing boys into the street to throw stones and molotov cocktails and then get shot down.

And what exactly is Israel doing that is so brutal? Faced with naked aggression, they are supposed to respond with what? Machine guns that shoot pies, a la Bugsy Malone? Give me a break.

Before you write another ridiculous, stupid editorial about terrorism and the state of the Middle East, why not just do us a favor and don't bother. If you don't have anything intelligent to say, don't waste the paper and the ink!

Abby Wisse, Manhattan

Come Offit

Every Tuesday, I kneel before the green box, and genuflect toward 333 7th Ave. in gratitude for your paper.

Lately, though, things are getting a little out of control. Taki has used your bully pulpit and gone from being an amusing raconteur of his wasted dilettante lifestyle to baring his fascist, bigoted heart. Guys who inherited dough and played third-rate Davis Cup tennis ought to show some humility now and again. His Bill and Hillary hatred almost redeems him, but we know he actually hates everyone except the old doorman at Le Club. Stick to stories about the size of Rubirosa's dick?it's clearly what you know the most about?and stay away from politics.

As to the rock-throwing ("Top Drawer," 10/11), perhaps the rock we need to reference is Chris Rock, who had a brilliant bit on "How to Avoid Getting Your Ass Kicked by the Police" on his show last week.

I submit instructions on how to avoid getting your kids shot and your house demolished by the Israelis:

1) Don't invade their country with the expressed intent of pushing them into the sea and exterminating the Jews, then lose overwhelmingly. 2) Don't disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of your own citizens who live in the territory Israel subsequently captured. 3) Don't send the kids out to play with slingshots and molotov cocktails. 3) Don't maim and kill hundreds or thousands of innocent civilians and soldiers from other countries in gutless terrorist attacks. Learn from history what suicide bombings accomplish (See: "Kamikaze Attacks and the Atomic Bomb," E. Hirohito, 1945). 4) Use some of the gazillions of dollars your people have been given by God in the form of oil reserves to do something other than build palaces, buy Rolls-Royces, hire hookers, invest in Amazon.com etc. Use some of the money to feed, clothe and house your people with things other than, respectively, rice, Chicago Bulls t-shirts and cardboard huts. 5) Don't desecrate holy shrines and start riots, or lynch defenseless policemen. 6) Stop blaming Israel for your problems, and work on solving them yourselves.

It's amazing what the U.S. does for countries that actually start acting like the 10th century ended a thousand years ago, and join the civilized world!

Keep up the good work.

Russ Smith, stick to current events, and write about your family in letters to your mother.

M. Offit, Manhattan

Stoner Rock

I have just finished reading the 10/18 issue of New York Press and am astounded by the lack of evenhandedness in the various columns that deal with the current events in Israel. The virulence of the anti-Israel bashing is to be expected, but the lack of insight and of knowledge on the part of the various columnists is beyond belief.

Since it is fashionable to be in the vanguard of those who condemn first and then pontificate on what they have condemned, it is important that you get your facts straight. First, there is the issue of sovereignty of the Temple Mount. In 1967, when Israel regained control of the Temple Mount from the Jordanians, Israel gave control and administration of it, with its two Muslim holy sites?the Dome of the Rock Shrine and the El-Aksa Mosque?to the Waqf, the Muslim Religious Authority. And while Israel does maintain sovereignty over the Temple Mount, the Waqf has sole responsibility for what happens on top of the Mount. And it is no secret that every Friday, the Muslim Sabbath, Muslim clerics give incendiary anti-Israel sermons often laced with the refrain "Death to the Jews." The same refrain is heard in the streets of the West Bank and Gaza.

And, by the way, stones may not be as lethal as bullets, but stones maim, blind and even kill innocent people.

So keep up your good work of bashing Israel. It certainly helps poison the minds of readers who often do not have the desire to know all of the facts, or even the inclination.

Rabbi Allen S. Kaplan, Manhattan

Bubba, Bubbles

MUGGER: Well, nice screed (10/25), but don't open the champagne yet. Today's Reuter's poll has Gore ahead. But yes, it looks like Shrub might stumble to the White House.

I'm assuming when you opine that Bush is the most investigated presidential candidate, you're kidding or writing your column after a nice dinner and several bottles of wine. The most investigated candidate, without question, is Clinton. And in fact, the press has made little or no effort to take a similarly eager look into Shrub's business past, not to mention that National Guard fiasco (remember all the talk about Bubba and the draft?). And so it goes.

Harley Peyton, Santa Monica, CA

Russ Smith replies: Bill Clinton's certainly been the most investigated president, and with good reason, but not presidential candidate. If you collected all the articles written about Bush's background in The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal, not to mention the newsmagazines, you'd fill Jimmy Carter's presidential library four times over.

Truth Ache

MUGGER: Thanks, from an American who likes the truth in all things. It is so rare to find a writer who will get his facts straight, then write without quoting a press release from the West Wing of the White House. Thanks, it lifted my spirits.

Virginia L. Weicheld, Collegeville, PA

Soup Bones

Gore sent his kids to private schools while condemning poor Americans to send theirs to failing public schools because he is a flimflam man ("MUGGER," 10/25). So much of what Gore says is just talk, like the line about putting money in a "lock box," "where politicans can't get it." Yeah, right. In the third debate he promised to close failing schools and reopen them the next day with a new principal and new teachers. That is completely unrealistic, fantasyland stuff. In the first place, the teachers' union would never let him do it, and even if they did, where is he going to come up with a schoolful of new teachers? Does he think he can wave his magic wand?

You could only swallow this if you've never done anything: never run a business or managed a big project. A leader should delegate as much responsibility as possible, and only Bush's educational plan does that. Vouchers let the educational system regulate itself. If parents aren't happy with the way their school is doing, they will take their kids out and the school will lose money. The failing schools will close by themselves, with no intervention from Big Al.

The line you mentioned about the U.S. military being the strongest in the world is the Democrats' standard nonresponse when the subject of military readiness comes up. It sounds like a denial, but it's a nonsequitur. A sweating Joe Lieberman used it in the vice-presidential debate when Cheney correctly pointed out that the military was hurting, and had the gall to insinuate that Cheney was criticizing the armed forces. But Cheney was right, and things are not going to get any better under Gore.

Most recently, the USS Cole was bombed in Yemen because they couldn't refuel it at sea for lack of tankers?thanks to Clinton and Gore. It was an unnecessary risk and completely predictable. An intelligence officer whose recommendations were ignored resigned immediately after?what does that tell you? All this crap from Clinton about terrorism and Osama bin Laden is just ducking responsibility.

Joe Rodrigue, New Haven

Aisle of Right

MUGGER: Your disdain for Clinton and Gore aside, have you no misgivings about the misrepresentations proffered on the other side of the aisle? Bush touts his Texas record with the revisionism of an equity analyst.

Bush claims he "brought Republicans and Democrats together" to pass the 1997 Patient's Bill of Rights in Texas. In fact, Bush refused to sign the component of that bill that would allow patients to sue HMOs for failure to provide coverage, a tenet for which Bush has now taken liberal credit. Other well-known examples, including Bush's frightening lack of sensitivity in regard to the specifics of the Byrd case, and his presumably libelous charges against Viktor Chernomyrdin, suggest that the partisan casting of Bush as a straight-shooting moral stalwart is replete with irony. Bush makes a good point in that most of the party schisms reflect differences of opinion, rooted in good intentions. To affect a preference for the affable, credulous Bush in terms of character, record or veracity is at best naive. "Truth" will have to bide its time until 2004.

John Atkins, Manhattan

Rotarians in Ermine

MUGGER: In your most recent column, you write that you are disturbed by a creeping laxity in dress standards.

Consider the U.S. Senate. It is fast becoming a place to put otherwise useless scions of rich families or those who, having made piles of money in other fields (Maria Cantwell in the computer business or Jon Corzine on Wall Street), would like to retire and go into politics. With their great piles of money, they can buy their seats without the need to create constituencies by holding a series of lesser offices. They can also afford to dress well.

To raise American sartorial standards, then, I'd propose renaming the Senate the "House of Lords" and having the members show up in ermine-trimmed robes.

Dr. Gene Mutschler, Mission Viejo, CA

Forbes FYI

MUGGER: I am a regular Catholic churchgoer, and you should see the boobs in shorts and t-shirts who go to Mass. You can't blame Clinton entirely (aw, hell, kick 'em when they're down, as P.J. O'Rourke has said), but your experience at Sparks is nothing new.

Kudos to you for sticking with Bush from the beginning and not losing heart. He will win at least 40 states. I like the fact that he is going nonstop, and not conceding anything. Alas, his coattails won't work in New Jersey. As you have said, Forbes would have swept the floor with Corzine. Anyway, continued good luck.

Brian McGurn, Warren, NJ

Bugger Repellent

This isn't a word I use very often, but Lucian K. Truscott IV's article "Being a Boy Scout" ("Opinion," 10/18) left me flabbergasted. "Why not deny membership to nonbelievers?" he writes. "Since the Boy Scouts are a 'private' organization, can't they discriminate on religious grounds as well?"

In fact, the Boy Scouts have for years claimed to be a religious organization, the better to do just that. There was the case of the twin 12-year-olds in California who were kicked out of the Scouts because they would not sign a paper acknowledging the existence of God. In the Walsh case in Chicago, a six-year-old was denied admission to the Scouts because his father refused to sign an affirmation of faith.

Not that any faith would do. It has to be the right faith. On Long Island a few years ago, an assistant Scoutmaster was denied a next-in-line promotion to troop leader because he was a Muslim; the sponsoring group for his troop was a Protestant church. These cases all had national exposure, yet here comes Truscott's oblivious article.

With all the handwringing over the anti-gay decision, the parents who don't want their kids in Scouts anymore, the charities and public schools denying money and access, no one seems to note that this has been going on for years. While it's obvious gays have more political clout than atheists, and the public opprobrium of the Scouts is welcome, I can't dislodge the nagging feeling that even God-fearing homos don't care if it's just the damned unbelievers who are being discriminated against.

R. Martin, Edison, NJ

You Can't Make Us

Ned Vizzini: I, for one, am not "every...stupid white New Yorker," thank you very much, and moreover would like clarify that I did not run out to buy The Marshall Mathers LP like everybody else supposedly did ("Music," 10/25). More importantly, I don't feel that music of this caliber exists merely as rap for "indie kids."

A couple of years ago I was the stereotypical "indie kid," working at Tower Records with my Archers of Loaf records and Silkworm t-shirt, yet none of the people who I came to recognize as friends seemed to buy into drivel of such a high fructose nature. Eminem sits atop the pop charts, where he will stay until his own label renders him useless, looking out over Z100- and KROQ-land, laughing his ass off at his own audience ridiculously spend upward of $17.99 for his CDs. Even today, I know virtually no one who listens to Marshall Mathers, save those who make fun of it; even then, just because they're listening to it doesn't mean they're listening to it. With sooo much wonderful music out on the world, why devote any time to an artist who's clearly a passing trend?thus contributing to the "hype"?at all? All this does is take away from the truly lesser known artists, who similarly work their asses off while also being from "broken homes," hooked on dope or desperately poor, and gives a platform to exploit an ever-exploited and boring fucking argument : "I'm a white indie boy who can't cope 'cause I'm maladjusted and frankly I just can't seem to understand this gosh darn 'rap thing.'" Are you fucking kidding? Stop perpetuating the myth with well-worn arguments of rapidly receding validity.

Joshua Fiegelman, via Internet

He Dresses Right

MUGGER: You are to be congratulated for hitting the nail on the head with your 10/25 article. Keep up the good work. It appears that not all news articles are of the slanted liberal type. It is refreshing to read your articles.

Murry Cohen, Congers, NY

That Dog Won't Wag

You write (10/25): "...if the Gore dirty-tricks unit is planning an October surprise this close to the election, it had better be a humdinger."

How about Bill Clinton with a Saturday, Nov. 4, military attack on the putative "Cole terrorists." Naturally, the timing of the attack will be purely coincidental?as usual.

Eric Bram, Peoria

Manly Andy Spits Up

Hats off to you for having the bravery to publish Sam Schulman's article on fellatio ("Taki's Top Drawer," 10/25). I sometimes think I am one of the few men around who still "gets" the point this article brings across. I only wish that Mr. Schulman (and, by extension, Mr. Abse, MP) had gone farther and explored the direct connection to the sudden prevalence of fellatio and the general homosexualization and feminizing of the male into his modern wimpy self, completely under the thumb of his harpie girlfriend and/or soccer-mom wife.

Given that your modern average American male's favorite act is now one of the twin peaks of homosexual intimacy, the other being the ever more popular act of rectal sodomy, one need hardly be shocked to see the craven and emasculated behavior these moderns like our own Liar-In-Chief exhibit. Gentlemen? Don't make me laugh! No gentlemen could endure a love affair involving this sort of degradation and role-reversal.

Men??? I hear the scoffing voice cry out: "Such [a word] hath a dying sound." Onan is thy name. The popularity of such "men" among our newly liberated, domineering, modern "women" is no shock.

What a blessing to both these groups of moral cowards it is to be freed from the old strictures of patriarchy, married life, pregnancy, children and responsibility by the twin "graces" of the Birth Control Pill and Blow Jobs. Our modern Sacraments!

What is still astonishing is how some of these men and women have apparently come to the conclusion that faux-homosexuality is the most natural way to carry on a relationship, while the "natural use of a woman," as St. Paul puts it, actual intercourse with the chance of creating a new life within, is a bothersome act they care too little for and from which they derive little pleasure but much fear. This "progress" supposedly straight males and their women are making in joining arms with the descendants of Sodom must please the strident in the homosexual camp to no end.

How straight can these men be if their sex life is identical to the clientele of the bathhouses? The only change is a switch in gender of the accomplice of the act. How does such a minor change preserve the normalcy of the abnormal and naturalize anti-nature?

The more one realizes what a break from the past the 1960s and the three decades that have followed are, the more apparent the complete turnaround and topsy-turviness of modern society becomes. Whatever happened to a good hail of fire and brimstone when you need it?

My consolation rests in the assurance that this perverse lot is so conveniently killing itself off through mass-generational suicide from its failure to reproduce?one only wishes it could go faster to free us from the shackles it has imposed upon we few who remain faithful to our ancestors' traditions! Now excuse me while I step off this crazed merry-go-round that has the gall to call itself "civilization" and vomit.

Andrew Byler, Manhattan

Biloxi Miss

Taki: Thank the Almighty there's someone out there in the press who's smart and not a liberal, in the American political sense, anyway ("Top Drawer," 10/25). I can't claim to be the most intellectual, educated person around, but I don't need the press and media constantly condescending to me or berating me as some ignorant loony because I happen to think Pat Buchanan, and for that matter George Will, stand head and shoulders above the self-proclaimed "intelligentsia," not because they're conservative (although that says plenty on its own), but because they are more intelligent, and also have that sneered-at, unsophisticated quality of integrity.

Melanie Felsher, Biloxi, MS

It's the Monica-Eye View of Greatness

MUGGER: The Esquire cover confirms that, after a long and arduous search, Mr. Clinton's quest for a legacy has drawn to a close; let's call it "The Legacy Shot." The photo, which captures our President in a pose more reminiscent of the primate house at the Bronx Zoo, is an accurate depiction of how he chose to spend his time in the chair occupied by Washington, Lincoln, FDR and Reagan. His predecessors founded a nation, united a nation, transformed a nation and reinvigorated a nation respectively, but to Bill?"It's just a job." So let us enter the photo in the pantheon of great American presidential icons.

Next to Washington crossing the Delaware on Christmas Day, Jefferson toiling away at the Declaration of Independence and Reagan calling for the destruction of the Berlin Wall, let us enter this "intern's-eye view" of our current President.

Presidential candidate Al Gore called him one of our greatest presidents. To paraphrase our Bill, I guess that depends on what your definition of "greatness" is.

Frank P. Cerbini, Pleasantville, NY

Hey, Andy, Frank's a Real Man Too

Frank Turk ("The Mail," 10/25) would be hard-pressed to find anyone in the gay community who, as he says, defines "who they are" by their method of sexual intercourse. It's people like Turk who do the defining. That's how he maintains the notion that some people should have rights that other people don't. Kudos to Lucian Truscott for pointing out the real self-involved dunce.

Lauren Wissot, via Internet

A Simple Equation

MUGGER: I would like to commend you on your excellent article regarding the presidential race. I found your writing eloquent, yet not condescending, and very easy to read. I thought you backed up every one of your points with excellent and pertinent facts, something that always seem to be missing whenever I read anyone talking about Gore, or, even more so, Hillary (there is absolutely no good reason to vote for her).

Most of all, I would like to thank you for all the ammunition that you have given to me in my continual battles with my left-leaning friends. As a writer in New York, I am sure you have similar discussions with colleagues, especially at the high and mighty Times, which I would not read at gunpoint.

It is nice to see that there are people out there who look at things past what the general media (aka, the Democratic Party) tells them to. I find it amusing, for example, that Bush is considered an idiot and Hillary (my last name isn't Clinton) a genius. Compare their records on education for example. During his terms as governor, test scores in Texas, especially among minority students, had some of the best improvements in the country. During Hillary's tenure as co-governor of Arkansas, students scores plunged to some of the worst in the country. Taxes went up, scores went down. Genius, huh?

Bryan Higgins, Manhattan

Forced Exposure

MUGGER: I'm glad you have the ability to put into words the thoughts of an average person like me regarding the current presidential race. Your column should be made mandatory reading for everybody. Even though that sounds pretty socialist, keep fighting the good fight!

David James, Sacramento

Shy Girl

Taki lists a plethora of justifiably sound reasons not to vote for Hillary Hubris-Laden Clinton in the upcoming senatorial election ("Top Drawer," 10/25). But I feel that he has omitted one exceptionally critical reason why this opportunistic carpetbagger does not even belong in the race: the fact that she is unwilling to appear on hardly any talk shows. She won't even give any newspaper/magazine interviews, at least none to my knowledge, anyway. Why? Because she did miserably on a radio talk show up in Buffalo at the outset of the race, where she was easily tripped up and left dumbfounded by callers' questions. She is petrified of an environment where she may be blindsided by a question that she cannot handle, because courageous spontaneity is something she is utterly incapable of and she knows it. It is also something a successful candidate must possess in order to survive in the tumultuous arena of politics, as opposed to giving unbelievably artificially scripted responses to anticipated questions. Therefore, this duplicitous and cowardly viper should not even be regarded as a legitimate candidate in this race, much less receive a "yes" or "no" vote in November. But since she is a candidate nevertheless, it is the duty of the voting populace of New York State to hand this duplicitous viper a staggering defeat this November. And I am adamant regarding this and am no fan of Rick Lazio either.

Name Withheld, via Internet

A River in Egypt

Jim Knipfel's "West Nile Plot Exposed!" ("New York City," 10/25) was both a delight and a disappointment. A delight in that it's the first time the controversy over OraVax's West Nile Virus vaccine has been responded to publicly by Dr. Monath or covered in any depth in the media, and a disappointment in that Mr. Knipfel seems to have bought Dr. Monath's claim on face value that our theories are all "tommyrot"?despite his own well-grounded suspicions to the contrary. Nevertheless, I applaud New York Press and Mr. Knipfel for publishing such detailed information on a subject the mainstream media has kept their readers and viewers completely in the dark about.

Politely dismissing my theories, Mr. Knipfel refers in the penultimate paragraph to Occam's Razor, which states that one should not make more assumptions than the minimum needed to support a theory. I would strenuously disagree that I have made unwarranted assumptions about Dr. Monath, OraVax or the City's West Nile Virus (WNV) response. What I and other researchers have done is simply compile the known facts?which neither Monath nor anyone else denies?and ask why we are being lied to about virtually every aspect of this issue.

Contrary to statements in the article, it was not simply Monath's long connection to U.S. government biowarfare labs that made me suspicious about the spraying or the vaccine. From the first week of the spraying in the autumn of 1999, after Giuliani press conferences in which the Mayor and his aides repeatedly described malathion as "safe" and "harmless" despite its being illegal in New York State to do so, I realized that the people of New York City were being lied to about virtually every aspect of this so-called epidemic. Basing much of my initial research on U.S. government websites and the Mayor's own Chem-Bio Handbook, located in every EMS vehicle, I found out that:

1. Malathion is an organophosphate nerve agent derived from those developed by the Nazis for chemical warfare. It is associated with DNA damage, blindness, birth defects, cancer, asthma, sterility and prostate cancer, to name only a few of its known side effects.

2. The CDC, the New York state and New York City Depts. of Health and the pesticide manufacturers themselves admit throughout their own literature that mass spraying as has been done in New York City during 1999-2000 (and that kills no more than 30 percent of the mosquitoes under optimum conditions) ultimately causes a long-term increase in mosquitoes who are then pesticide resistant and, according to some scientists, are the only mosquitoes who can get or transmit encephalitis. This is due to DNA deformities in their stomach linings that are caused by the pesticide.

3. Contrary to all media reports, WNV did not mysteriously appear in North America for the first time in 1999, but had been experimented with in at least three New York City-area labs (Rockefeller University and Sloan-Kettering in Manhattan, Plum Island on Long Island), in some cases since the 1950s. In these labs, mosquitoes and crows are deliberately infected with WNV. In Sloan-Kettering humans have been injected with WNV as an experimental cancer treatment. Genetically altered mosquitoes are also being bred that some U.S. government labs admit they plan to release into the environment.

4. The CDC and the ATTC (American Type Culture Collection) had been selling West Nile Virus samples (and samples of more than 70 other dangerous toxins, viruses and bacteria) to Saddam Hussein and other "humanitarians" for decades. The reason the U.S. Army wanted to develop a WNV vaccine as we went into the Gulf War was that we'd given WNV to Sadamm to use as a biowarfare toxin and expected him to use it on us.

5. According to an article on their own website, Rockefeller University scientists were in Uganda in 1936-'37 at the exact time and place of the initial "discovery" of West Nile Virus while they were involved in doing experiments on mosquito-borne viruses. Uganda had permitted them to do vaccine experiments that other African nations had refused to allow. The Rockefellers and their various scientific and medical institutions have been the foremost funders and promoters of eugenics (selectively breeding humans for race improvement and culling out "undesirables") since the 1920s. Among their more memorable connections in this regard are I.G. Farben, which they co-owned, its slave labor death camp Auschwitz and the experiments of Josef Mengele.

6. In the 1994 Rockefeller Hearings before the U.S. Congress, our government publicly admitted to 50 years of chemical and biological warfare testing on unsuspecting U.S. citizens (they didn't even get into the experiments on other nationalities), and admitted that these experiments were both ongoing and that many remain classified and could not be discussed.

7. The latest scientific reports on WNV agree that rather than suddenly appearing in 1999, it has most likely existed undetected in birds, mosquitoes and even humans in the New York City area for years and that some environmental change caused the seeming outbreak. The outbreak at the end of 1999 occurred at the exact time OraVax had previously announced that field testing of its Japanese encephalitis vaccine would begin. WNV is a strain of Japanese encephalitis.

8. From the New York City Dept. of Health's own website we found that of the four New York City residents who allegedly died from WNV in 1999, three were on immunosuppressant cancer medications and a fourth was HIV-positive. The significance of this is that only those with very damaged immune systems are susceptible to a naturally occurring WNV infection. Add to that fact that the best documented side effect of pesticide exposure is a weakened or damaged immune system, and you'll understand why we suggest that the spraying is ultimately far more harmful than the virus. It's also worth noting that while most healthy people bitten by a WNV-infected mosquito will not feel any ill effects, such a bite makes them naturally and permanently immune to WNV.

9. Even pro-spraying advocates readily admit that as a result of the past year's policy, next year we can expect a great increase in the number of mosquitoes?now pesticide-resistant thanks to natural selection?and that a vaccine will be the only viable option to fight the threat of an epidemic. This will put OraVax in the position of being the sole producer of a WNV vaccine that the National Institutes of Health already recommends that every child and senior in the U.S. should take. If government predictions for the spread of the virus are fulfilled, by next summer everyone in the U.S. will be lining up for his dose of live West Nile Virus, courtesy of OraVax. If only 1 percent of those who take the vaccine become seriously ill (which is not unusual for such vaccines), we can expect a million West Nile Virus victims from the vaccine alone, thousands of times more than a genuine WNV epidemic would be expected to cause. Unlike the naturally occurring and rarely fatal WNV, OraVax's vaccine is made with a genetically altered virus. No one, including Dr. Monath, can predict what its long-term biological effects will be. We will in effect be participating in a vast human experiment.

The rationale for massively and repeatedly spraying millions of people with immune-system-damaging pesticides to fight a virus that's almost impossible for a healthy person to be infected by would appear to be far more of a candidate for Occam's Razor than the theories of myself or the other NoSpray activists. The illogic of the Mayor's sprayfest in light of the points above (out of hundreds of such facts that were carefully omitted from the media coverage) rather than a taste for conspiracy theory is what led myself and many others to question what is going on here and the part Dr. Monath and OraVax are playing in it. If one applies Occam's Razor to this issue, it will be Giuliani and the CIA-run CDC and not the anti-spray activists who seem to be making unfounded assumptions about WNV.

Robert Lederman, president, A.R.T.I.S.T. (Artists' Response To Illegal State Tactics), Brooklyn