Wendy Reynolds and Weight-Loss Surgery; Down with Cockburn; More on the Armenian Genocide; Some Hate Mail
"So, give me a break, you sniveling hair worshipers, my nose hair ain't self-serving, as some might attest. It is, rather, a different type of grotesque, the type of grotesque that leads the public to say, hey, why don't you throw yourself into that wormhole and give us a holler when in fact you wake up and get a clue.
"Clearly my philosophical reasoning is a bit inane and convoluted, I'll see you on the bright side of the rising moon."
Jeff Blank, Washington D.C.
Gee, Thanks
Hugh Pearson's article about people in a Greenwich Village diner ("New York City," 1/24) was a pretty good read. Reminded me of the slice-of-life articles in Up in the Old Hotel by Joseph Mitchell.
John Arnold, Kenai, AK
Toby Is Clever
If Melik Kaylan really is an "Armenian holocaust denier" (Christopher Atamian, "Armenian Holocaust Denial: Why Does Melik Kaylan Hate Those Pesky Armenians?" 1/17), could I congratulate him on doing a first-class job? I've never heard of the Armenian holocaust.
Toby Young, London
V for Victory
Thank you, Eva Neuberg ("New York City," 1/24), for so aptly capturing the self-parodying absurdity that is the Harris Comics staff in your piece about the Vampirella auditions. I'm sending a copy to my mom.
Name Withheld, Manhattan
Nip and Tuck Inside of Mobile
Wendy Reynolds: I am so sorry that people have complications with bariatric surgery ("First Person," 1/24). You really had a awful time. But that is something you take a chance on when you decide to have the surgery. Just because Carnie Wilson has a good experience doesn't mean everyone should down her like they do. I am proud of her, and everyone else should be as well.
I am pre-op and can't wait to have the surgery, but I do understand that I could face many problems?as everyone should know and expect when they are admitted to the hospital to have the surgery.
Sorry to be so blunt, but I had to speak a little after reading the article.
Name Withheld, Mobile, AL
Carnie Asada
Wendy Reynolds' one-sided report on obesity surgery was disgusting. I am sure this poor lady had a very bad time with her surgery. But thousands of people have had this surgery and are very happy with the results. Sure, it is no day at the beach, but for many of us it saved our lives. A more balanced approach to this wonderful procedure should be done. People do have complications, but most do not, and most have excellent results.
Dr. Harvey Sugerman, Medical College of Virginia, Richmond, VA
Chili con Carnie
I read the article from the woman who had weight-loss surgery and just have one comment?she sounded fully unprepared and completely ignorant of what she could experience. She went to one surgeon and then decided to have him do the surgery without researching her options. She didn't research the end result of the surgery. Instead, she relied on the story of one person who she had read about. There are thousands of people who have this surgery every year and thousands that belong to the online support community. The people online research, research, research before they jump. This woman sounds like she jumped before finding a surgeon she trusted and a procedure she was comfortable with, and before she had any knowledge at all about the side effects. That was her stupidity. While I have sympathy for what she experienced, much of it could have been avoided if she had taken the time to find out what she was getting herself into.
D. Rasley, Rogers, OH
Wendy Reynolds replies: I did do my homework regarding the surgery, for a year. Not just on the Net, but also medical journal research and a year of psychotherapy to prepare. I did indeed know there were risks; however, my surgeon (whom I will not name, as per my attorney's instructions) did indeed "gloss over them" and assured me that I was a "perfect candidate." Why did I go through with it? I was desperate, I believed it would work, and my insurance company approved it. End of story.
Yes, I am angry. Yes, I feel Carnie Wilson only told one side of the story, and that is why I opened myself up once again and wrote about mine. I do not regret it. Finally, it comes down to this: It was my story to tell. It wasn't pretty. But my ultimate goal has been accomplished?dialogue and questions from other people who are considering the surgery, whom I feel have every right to know that statistics don't lie, that this is indeed a dangerous procedure. I don't have anything against Ms. Wilson. I don't know her. I just wanted to make sure that people got the whole picture.
Pimpin' for Jesus
I recently picked up a copy of New York Press and I was impressed by the quality of the writing and the featured articles. I was appalled, however, by your advertising and the lifestyles it addressed. How can one enjoy financial gains derived from such obscenity and appealing to such lurid obsessions and sinful?yes, I said "sinful"?how dare I, right??diversions.
Perhaps a prayer would enlighten your own consciences on this matter. Like the Pentecostal lady in Andrew Baker's article ("Tongues of Fire: Pentecostals of the Lower East Side," 1/10), you may come to the same conclusion?"I'm afraid Jesus doesn't want to be associated with that filth you print..."
Andrew Baker, surely with your writing abilities you can pick up assignments without compromising your own integrity and indirectly endorsing "that filth."
Name Withheld, Manhattan
Hemidemisemiquaver
You people may be nasty, vulgar, self-indulgent and often elitist, but you may also know how to increase your writers' productivity beyond all necessity. In "The Mail" (1/24), the editors state, "Both Szamuely and Kaylan are semiweekly contributors to 'Taki's Top Drawer' these days."
Therefore, you are either semiliterate or you have those poor guys contributing twice as often as you publish.
Al Silver, Manhattan
We're on Tenterhooks
It's bad enough to have MUGGER, a minor league journalist at best, constantly sniping at far bigger fourth estate figures in ways that are more juvenile than they are insightful. Now you have a very shoddy music critic, Crispin Sartwell, taking pot shots at your readers.
What's with this attack out of nowhere in his "Farm Report" ("Music," 1/24) speaking to the reader (a reader, a stand-in for all readers, whatever), and beginning his last paragraph, "Now perhaps in what might flippantly be termed your mind..."?
What? People who read patiently up until the end of his commentary somehow deserve that unwarranted and unsubstantiated broadside? This from an alleged music critic who has more nice things to say about effing Seatrain than he does about the Band?
As for his earlier "in your nearly infinite fatheadness it may never have occurred to you that the Grateful Dead was a country band." No, Crispin, most of us have a grasp of the obvious. We sort of got that.
New York Press seems to think juvenile hostility and pissantry (pissantism, whatever) is a viable substitute for more traditional journalism. Think again. Jeez, it's bad enough you have Taki in your pages (why?). Now you've got clowns like Sartwell with his dubious judgments and clear inferiority complex allegedly critiquing music.
By the way, George Szamuely and Melik Kaylan do not contribute "semiweekly" to "Taki's Top Drawer," as you said in reply to Karen Golightly's 1/24 letter in "The Mail." That would mean that each of them contributed twice a week. This is the penultimate time I'm going to explain this to you. Which means I will explain it one more time after this.
Robert Cortez, Manhattan
Blood and Iron
Gee, why did Crispin Sartwell refer to the group Seatrain as "something like a rural Blood, Sweat & Tears"? Could it be that Seatrain's two founding members, bassist/flautist Andy Kulberg and drummer Roy Blumenfeld, were in the pre-BS&T band Blues Project with future BS&T members Al Kooper and Steve Katz? Someone needs to read their liner notes more carefully.
Stu Taubel, Manhattan
Thurston Moore in 4th Grade
It was so cool to read the 1/24 "Mail" and see a letter written by the one and only Thurston Moore, for I am a big fan of his work. Although I could never understand why a guy with all that money would take a commercial three-hour cruise with a bunch of ham-and-eggers. You would think he'd have his own boat.
Brett M. Slater, Manhattan
Me And My CB
Oh, poor Thurston Moore III , someone said something bad about him. Waah. Waah.
Generally I'm quite proud of my fictions. But our exchange outside of CBGB (?) was not one of them. Unless of course this is a shared delusion by all five former Camper Van Beethoven members. The only thing that may be inaccurate in this story is that it may not have been at CBGB. Furthermore, the benign exchange Mr. Moore refers to after a Sonic Youth show never happened, as I don't think I've ever been to a Sonic Youth show. I am sure we are both referring to the same meeting 16 years ago, but Mr. Moore was at the time an indie rock icon, and I was just some "mook" (his word), and as is oftentimes the case in meetings of unequals, the details of that evening are more accurately recorded in the mook's memory.
Anyway, the whole point of telling this story was to point out that CVB was not then considered a cool or hip band. We were very much an outsider's band, and this had a profound effect on our work. Certainly Mr. Moore illustrates this point and my assessment of him as an "arrogant prick" with his description of the crowd at CBGB that night as "bearded college dudes high-fiving each other in rapture."
Then, just to make sure we know that Thurston Moore III is very un-mookish, he has to include some journal-writing-style drivel about walking home alone after visiting various obscure, now-defunct NYC nightspots. What was that about?
David Lowery, Richmond,VA
One Heart at a Time
MUGGER: You know I don't agree with you, but last week's column was a masterpiece. You are just on fire. Can hardly wait for your next party. Take care.
Lynn Samuels, Manhattan
Go Leafs
MUGGER: Although a liberal Democrat, for want of a better term, I wanted to say thank you for an informative, hard-hitting article last week, one that illuminates the pork barrel attitude of the Democratic Party. I think the Bushes are decent people who will return a measure of decency and morality to the White House. I, for one, wish him well.
Michael Kirkby, Toronto
Utne Reader Fan, Honey?
MUGGER: Let's hope you can spew your venom in another direction soon. The Democrats and the recent Clinton administration have really had about enough. Some of us decent Americans are Democrats, you know. The fact that we have differing opinions in America doesn't really give you the right to downgrade us. What keeps you people running? Hate?
Bette Lou Grogan, via Internet
Russ Smith replies: The venom will continue. Obviously, the vast number of Democrats are decent Americans, even most of those who live in Hollywood, the Upper West Side and Cambridge, MA. That's not the point. It's the Clintons and everyone they've infected with their 18th-century-style corruption who've poisoned the well. You need look no further than the pardon of Marc Rich, a fugitive who was let off the hook by ex-President Clinton for an obvious quid pro quo. As in moolah for the Democratic Party.
So Does Autoerotic Asphyxiation!
Glad to see Michael Yockel's "Obituary" column back on your website! It makes death kinda fun!
Erik Boring, Baltimore
"I Worship Ambitious, Cynical, Sleazy, Crypto- Rightist Politicians, and I Wish Cockburn Wouldn't Criticize Them"
Alexander Cockburn ("Wild Justice," 1/17) reveals himself as incredibly naive in repeating as fact a tale he heard from a "friend," who heard it from a "limo driver"! This was an accusation of prejudice and obscenity against New York Sen. Hillary Clinton. Actually it was a quote from the ugly book by "Anonymous" that made its author a lot of money.
Cockburn is so cynical, you can tell him anything and he always believes it. Pitiful.
Roberta Hartman, Brooklyn
See Below
In response to Sandy Weinman's pathetic attack on George Tabb's use of the word "pussy" ("The Mail," 1/17), why are you so offended that he calls someone else a pussy? Anyone familiar with George's writing will know that he uses "pussy" much more in reference to himself than as an insult of anyone else. You have to resort to insulting his dog! How low is that? Come on, you can do better than that! Let's try to insult some humans.
Carmen McCarter, Lancashire, England
6) You're Fakes And You Suck
To measure on artist's ability, talent, worth, on whether or not he sells his work is the typical mentality of the smallminded, bourgeois, non-artist way of thinking.
There are some of us artist/workers who are forced to work blue-collar jobs because either 1) we refuse to compromise our work by selling out and becoming commercial artists, 2) we do not come from rich families, 3) we bypassed a college education to jump right into painting?we are self-taught, 4) we are sometimes simply not lucky or do not have the right connections, 5) all of the above.
I guess E. Brown ("The Mail," 1/17) is like those people who considered Vincent Van Gogh a failure in his lifetime because he couldn't sell his work. His fellow painters knew better. So, "Name Withheld," let E. Brown sit back and scoff while he judges an artist by his paycheck.
"I heard the song of the poet who died in the gutter"?Bob Dylan.
P.S. Let's all remember Herman Melville as the great American customs inspector.
Regina Bartkoff, Manhattan
Bluff Daddy
Could New York Press establish a Hymietown Father of the Year Award in honor of Jesse Jackson?
Name Withheld, Brooklyn
He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother
I have an image of Petra Dickenson ("Taki's Top Drawer," 1/17) standing in a crowd collected from hardcore gyms in Manhattan. As they protest the guv'ment's granting fat people the rights to the same jobs and opportunities currently granted to thinner people?and we're mostly talking about fat women, since they typically bear the brunt of people's fat-phobia, despite the author's scoffing at the notion that fat is a feminist issue?Dickenson stands with her bullhorn yelling, "Fat discrimination now, fat discrimination tomorrow, fat discrimination forever!" a la George Wallace circa 1963.
Any time any group of people tries to assert its rights, an inevitable backlash ensues, and editorials are issued by know-nothings. Dickenson's piece basically perpetuates any stereotype you've ever heard.
The whole point of this piece is to argue against government intervention in the rights of fat adults?a conservative political stance?get ready for four years of that, can't wait?though what makes the piece offensive is the sarcastic way the writer expresses it, which is typical New York Press.
The jury is out on whether or not fat is a choice. My friend John is 43, 5-feet-9 and 140 pounds. He eats high-calorie foods pretty much all day, doesn't exercise and never gains weight. As for me, I'm on that treadmill 45 minutes to an hour, five days a week, lift weights on alternate days, watch what I eat, eat dessert rarely?and I continue to carry about 30 extra pounds. I'm not obese, mind you, but those are certainly pounds I'd like to get rid of. But the only way to do that, it seems, is to eat like Tom Hanks in Cast Away. Then there is the problem of regaining the weight, which your body does to compensate the low calorie count?it thinks it's starving.
So I am sympathetic to those with 100 or more to lose. It's one of the hardest things you'll ever do.
It is very difficult to permanently change your body size. It's as hard to gain 100 pounds deliberately as it is to lose it. After a while, the obese say, "I am tired of doing this shit. It doesn't work, and I'm going to live my life as I am, and be happy." It's far from a complacent stance. Believe me, if there were a safe, easy, permanent way to lose weight, people would do it.
People say, "It's bad for your health!"?which can be true?but that's a smokescreen for the fact that fat is wrapped up in sex. The majority of Americans say they don't find a lot of extra pounds attractive. This is what terrifies people. If you're fat, you don't get fucked, period, according to some people's reality.
No one is neutral. There are those who are okay with another's flab, there are those who adore it (like the ones Dickenson met at NAAFA) and there are the ones who loathe it from the bottom of their hearts, and would never, ever hire a fat person. This is what NAAFA's trying to fight against. Same education, same qualifications, same work history?equal opportunity. To compare advocates of fat rights with granting rights to "the stupid, the kleptomaniacs, the pedophiles" is just childish.
Thanks for listening.
Frank Canonico, Brooklyn
Who Isn't?
I say, I have enjoyed your publication for some years now, particularly Russ Smith's comments on the national situation, and also Mr. Alan Cabal's comments, although he seems somewhat obsessed with young women.
However, I must take umbrage at the language expressed by many of your "Mail" correspondents who, either in their ignorance or lack of social graces, persist in using words that I feel are unsuitable for a family publication, especially one disseminated throughout the world on the Internet. I understand that you Yanks strive for an ideal of free expression, but that expression is much diminished by vulgarities so often repeated that they lose all impact. A good thesaurus is easily procured at any bookshop, and I understand that most computers provide one with their e-mail applications. I assume that you are loath to censor those who take the time to write you, but perhaps a nudge on your part for greater civility is in order, what?
John Carroll, Richmond, VA
My Old Schools
Melik Kaylan's recent "Taki's Top Drawer" response (1/24) to my article on his denial of the Armenian genocide ("Armenian Holocaust Denial: Why Does Melik Kaylan Hate Those Pesky Armenians," 1/17) misses the point. Certainly, I apologize if I inadvertently portrayed all people of Turkic origin unfairly. That was certainly never my intent. Certainly, Mr. Kaylan will understand that some of the tone of my piece was stylistic, given New York Press' usual satirical tone; and if Mr. Kaylan implies that I have no sense of humor or should "tone things down," then he has even less.
Melik can say whatever he wants, but as Charles Glass points out in his piece again last week ("Taki's Top Drawer," 1/24), Kaylan is in fact a holocaust denier: more precisely he is an apologist. Mr. Kaylan also seems to have problems reading my writing, since I acknowledge his acknowledgment of the Armenian massacres in the first paragraph. My point is that the remainder of the article is a barely veiled form of denial: i.e., "well sure, the Armenians got a bad deal. But so what, so did lots of other people." If that's not the tact of the apologist, I don't know what is.
I said all that I wanted to say in my original answer to Kaylan's original piece. I would add two things. Like Mr. Kaylan, I am also of mixed ancestry, being in fact half Italian. My father was born in Lebanon and my mother in Switzerland. Like Mr. Kaylan, I also attended Episcopalian boarding school, at Phillips Exeter Academy, before matriculating at Harvard University, as well as a French Lycee and a Dutch Reformed boys' school in New York City, Collegiate. So whatever point he was trying to make, i.e, that I must be some hot-blooded all-Armenian chauvinist, is in fact not true.
As for Turkish culture, I have many Turkish friends, am currently learning Turkish and am well-acquainted with Turkish culture and writers?of whom Nazim Hikmet and Orhan Pamuk are two favorites. So his implication that I somehow hate Turkish culture or Turks is preposterous and wrong. Melik Kaylan complains that his reputation is ruined because he has been labeled a genocide denier. It was certainly never my intention to destroy anyone's career?nor do I flatter myself with having this type of power?but perhaps Melik should have thought of that before he published his apologist trash in a national newspaper.
One last point. If Melik Kaylan is comparing the Turkish-Russian War of 1870 to the Armenian genocide, then he needs to reread his history books and the definition of "genocide."
Christopher Atamian, Manhattan
We Prefer T-Bone O'Connell
"The music, overseen by T Bone Burnett, is period-accurate, beautifully performed and extremely strange..." wrote Matt Zoller Seitz in his 12/20 "Film" column.
I love both O Brother, Where Art Thou? and the music, but you're dead wrong about the film being "period-accurate." No one in Depression-era Mississippi could have sung Jimmie Davis' "You Are My Sunshine," which was not recorded until at least 1940, I think.
That particular nitpicking aside, the song is exactly the sort of song that folks from the Depression would have sung had they known it.
Kenneth Bickford, New Orleans
Willie and the Hand Jive
MUGGER: On Jan. 25, in response to your query about where Bill Clinton will be in five years, you guys posted a letter that read:
"Shoving his big, fat cock up MUGGER's tight asshole, of course. And MUGGER, wincing and grimacing as tears of sweet, sweet pain roll down his ruddy cheeks, will love it. The hate he exudes toward Clinton is so clearly that which can only come from the truly jealous that it indicates that he would like nothing better than to be Bubba's ass-monkey."
One is forced to wonder if this person is familiar with Paula Jones' accusations, and since he appears to make himself out to be a regular reader, I will assume that he is. That leaves me to wonder?if a 5-and-quarter-inch bent pecker qualifies as a "big, fat cock," what kind of minuscule appendage is this guy holding when he takes a leak?
I know you're probably too much of a man to defend yourself, so I figured I'd enter the fray.
Michael Wickham, Glen Ridge, NJ
We'd Like to Thank the Academy
MUGGER: Another outstanding article. Such clear thinking is in such short supply in New York. Your newest Senator bailed out of public appearances when the heat turned on her and her dirtball husband. She has the cover for that.
As a former Marylander, now an Empire Stater, you can you give your personal opinion of which state has the worst, most idiotic pair of U.S. senators. Previously, I thought the lethal combination of Mikulski/Sarbanes trumped all. But they are so gross, they seldom make the news, and so long periods of time go by between appearances. Not so Chuck Schumer and Hillary. Congrats, you win.
John Snyder, Frederick, MD
Heavy D
MUGGER: I have read many of your columns over the past several years, and I must say that I find your willingness to be totally honest in the expression of your opinions most admirable. Truth has no shading, and lies are never productive or excusable.
We are not living in tomorrow, we are living in the present, and people like the Clintons weren't "thinking about tomorrow," they were and are thinking about themselves.
Thank you for telling the truth, and thank you for writing about your family, making the connection that we are all part of the daily fabric of this society, and are responsible for what we say and do.
Keep on telling the truth.
David Bumgardner, via Internet
Armenian in Havana
With reference to Melik Kaylan's column "Whose Genocide?" ("Taki's Top Drawer," 12/27) and Christopher Atamian's lengthy 1/17 rejoinder ("Armenian Holocaust Denial: Why Does Melik Kaylan Hate Those Pesky Armenians?"):
I think that Christopher Atamian should have been held to the same standard established in Kaylan's column, in which Kaylan identifies himself as Turkish-born. Kaylan then describes the contradictions and complexities of both historic and contemporary ethnic hatreds, some encountered on a personal level, that confound him. I found none of this frank questioning in Atamian's article, and much manipulation, like Atamian's characterizing the statement, "Yet when the Russians occupied Turkish Armenia...the local Armenians helped them massacre more Turks" as "propaganda that Armenians have unconditionally supported Russia."
No, saying that Armenians helped Russian occupiers massacre Turks is not saying that they are unconditionally supporting Russia.
Or take Atamian's claim that Kaylan is confusing "Turkish" and "Muslim" when he links both terms in a sentence. I thought Kaylan was distinguishing between them, in acknowledgment that there may have been Turks who were murdered and there may have been Muslims who were not Turks also murdered.
And given the context established in the column, I did not think we were talking about Egyptian or Indonesian Muslims. I thought that Kaylan's column did not deny a holocaust, but rather raised questions about whether a massacre should be memorialized if it occurred as part of a long and complicated history of ethnic violence, oppression and atrocities committed by both sides, and continuing into the present day. Not an easy thing to ask.
Finally, if a Web search conducted through Google has accurately yielded the following information, I think that because Atamian himself did not do so, the editors of New York Press should have identified Atamian as half-Armenian and as a pro-Armenian lobbyist, a host committee member of the Armenian Assembly of America, a nonprofit organization dedicated to furthering "ways in which activists can work to extend U.S. and international observance of the Armenian Genocide and broaden Congressional involvement in Armenia and Karabagh...[by] influencing legislators, working with the media, coalition building and grassroots lobbying."
Diana Finch, Bronx
Turkey Tetrazzini
After reading the possible transcript from a recent Melik Kaylan therapy session entitled "Kill the Denier" ("Taki's Top Drawer," 1/24), I would hope that Mr. Kaylan is getting the point. Specifically, genocide denial should not be tolerated and must be rebuffed even if the volume of protest must go to 11.
Christopher Atamian's groundbreaking rebuttal to Kaylan's amateur attempts at genocide denial is significant because of the level of liberal discussion in which New York Press has allowed its readers and writers to engage about Turkey's dirty little secret. What I have concluded about Kaylan's meager attempt at salvaging his self-respect after a few ill-advised attempts of genocide denial is this?he is a lightweight at this denial game.
Enter Thomas Goltz, aka "Tommy the Turk" ("The Mail," 1/24). Unlike Kaylan, Thomas Goltz is the real thing. A professional Armenian genocide denier, that is. Well-known in the international community as "Tommy the Turk," Goltz is a hired gun of Turkish and Azeri interest groups whose job is to be the "neutral non-Turkish" voice of reason in the mainstream press to anyone who will listen. While Goltz tried to qualify his reputation in his letter by announcing to your readers that "you will soon be inundated with protest letters describing me as a liar, fabricator, paid apologist for Big Oil, agent of Turkey/Israel/Azerbaijan, etc...," he is just that. Like a guilty thief who has just robbed a bank and tells the oncoming cops, "He went thatta way," both the thief and Goltz are one and the same as they attempt to dupe unsuspecting authorities and readers alike.
"Tommy the Turk" has been at this Armenian genocide denial game for years. Whenever a discussion of the Armenian genocide is featured in any publication, Thomas Goltz pops up as the unofficial Turkish voice of protest by using bogus historical references as his weapon. After all, it is his job. His job is to deflect the attention of the reader away from historical realities involving the brutal and inhumane treatment of the Armenians during WWI and provide red herrings. From playing with the numbers of how many Armenians actually died in the genocide to casting doubt on historical references such as Churchill, Morgenthau and Wegner, Goltz is a talented professional historical assassin who knows the terrain well.
That is why he is so dangerous. If we used his logic, African-American slaves of yesteryear were actua