When Whiteboys Go to Jail; Pig-headed Englishmen; Bryk's Old Map; Justice for Fidel Castro; Love's in the Air for Taki

I enjoyed Max Patel's recent article, "You're Under Arrest: My First Night In Jail" ("First Person," 11/29). I am 35 and recently got into a scuffle with my neighbor. We both went to jail for a night. You captured the very essence of what a night in the slammer is. When I was released I ran to the nearest ATM, got some money, got a cab?and went home and took a hot bath.

A well done article.

Chris Halbal, Bronx

In the Penile Colony

My sympathy goes out to Jen, the girlfriend Max Patel mentions more than once in his insufferable "First Person" account. Honey, your boyfriend comes off like a totally shaved pussy (in a pink frilly dress). I guess that makes the two of you a lesbian couple.

Sorry to be so malicious, but Maxi(pad) has it coming when he foists such an insipid personal journal entry onto the reading public. New York Press, in this big bad city, can't you find better storytellers with more interesting stories to tell?

Brian O'Hara, Manhattan

Pom Pilot

Jesus, if you guys are going to insist on publishing pig-headed Englishmen, can we at least keep them on Taki's page? Peter Eavis, the whinging pom you featured in your 11/29 "Opinion" section, gets just about everything wrong.

The secularization of America must be stopped, he argues, because it will lead to dull, European-style politics where, deity forbid, politicians might have to address real issues. Bring Christ back to politics, he cries, so we can have fun again. Christianity is, he says, what makes for free societies?the more Christian, the freer the society (this, of course, explains why Guatemala and Cyprus are such paradises of freedom and Holland such an authoritarian hell). His lone source for this confidence is Tocqueville?conveniently forgetting that Tocqueville thought that it was American Catholics who were the truest Christians.

American society is doing just fine without British moralizing. Our absence of religion is nothing new; it is written into our Constitution. Perhaps Eavis will follow the example of his forefathers, who also fled religious persecution in England, and assimilate into the secular miracle that is America.

Seth Armus, Patchogue

The Nell Tolls for We

MUGGER: I just read your 11/29 column and had to jot a quick note to you and express my respect and compliments.

I love your mind and your journalistic style. May your career be long and prosperous and your body and mind long-lived and healthy. God bless you.

Marina Nell, San Rafael, CA

Lunch at La Grenouille

The image of the entire MUGGER clan sporting "Señor Frog" t-shirts (11/29) does not quite discredit the Ugly American myth as you seem to have intended it to.Try again.

Larry Eldridge, Manhattan

Voice in the Desert

MUGGER: The next time some limp-brained yahoo with an air bubble in the vein writes to you loudly hailing that Al Gore won the "popular vote," ask them this question?"How do you know?"

If anything, this election cycle has proven conclusively that every state in this union has a flawed, inaccurate and easily manipulable election system. There is simply no way to know who won, or even, at this stage of a sad and expensive game, how to define "win," because as near as I can tell The People, by and large, are over government. Sick of it. Tired of it. Have blown right past the Mafioso tactics and the strong arm. They've left federal and state bureaucrats right flap-dab in the dust, wondering what the hell happened.

No freakazoid Demoncrat can possibly claim with a straight face that Al Gore "won" the popular vote. If they do, hunt them down and sew their lips shut. They're genetically impotent and have been found guilty of pissing in the gene pool.

And who knows what the Republicans have been doing? Not a single soul reading or even editing this wonderful publication can claim with authority that they have any idea what actually goes on behind closed doors. For God's sake, people: George Sr. and Billy "Windows" Clinton were yukking it up at the White House 200th anniversary dinner just two days after their handpicked progeny went at each other hammer and tong. (I say "Windows," because once he's installed, you'll never be able to delete him.)

You don't know who won. You don't have a clue what deals were cut and what necks were twisted behind the scenes. In fact, you don't know dick, because you will forever be on the afterdeck watching the wake of this Ship of State, trying to divine the meanings of the wake of its passage. The press lied to you about nearly every election result as it happened Election Night. How many times has the popular press lied to you about major events with hundreds of eyewitnesses? And yet you beanheads continue to claim Al won the popular vote. HOW DO YOU KNOW? HOW DO YOU KNOW? Because someone told you?

Gee. My mother, when we lived in Palestine, told me hair would grow on my palms, if... And so far... Well, never mind about that. She was wrong, okay?

Get a life. Get a grip. And whip the rubberheads every chance you get. But be honest. That's what we owe one another.

Avi Yazul, Salt Springs, NV

Bughouse Boycott

I cannot tell you how offended I am on my behalf and on behalf of the mental health community by Alexander Cockburn's 11/22 "Wild Justice" column demeaning mental illness. Mental illness is not a joke.

Name Withheld, Oklahoma City

Add Pun and Cliche, And You're a Rock Critic

Mike Bruno: Great 11/22 "Music" piece. Love the strong voice. Everlast sucks.

Matt Hilburn, Fairfax, VA

Danny (O)kay

Tony Millionaire's struck a vein with this Napoleon theme in his "Maakies" (11/22). Keep it up, you twisted fuck. Also, kudos to Danny Hellman for his nipple-drawing ability in his illustration for John Strausbaugh's 11/29 "Publishing" column.

Mark Duffy, Manhattan

Show More Pink

Re: Deirdra Funcheon's 11/22 feature: "Castro's Children: Cuba's Youth Study, Party & Scrounge." In respect to the poverty one witnesses while traveling through Cuba, and the haste that the American press takes in blaming it on the communist government, aka Fidel:

I wish just once someone would mention the extreme poverty existing in, say, the rest of the Caribbean or perhaps all of Central and South America. And then there're these little other continents, Asia and Africa, the majority of which embrace a "free" democratic state, and yet have nowhere near the same quality of life sustained in Cuba. Its advanced medical and educational establishments are on par with most of the Western world.

We are so quick to focus on a few fleeing Cubans, labeling them as political exiles, or as defecting from the ruthless throes of communism. What about the thousands of Mexicans and Haitians and others arriving in droves on the shores of this country to try their luck at our little game of capitalist roulette?

Ms. Funcheon's piece was a little kinder than I've seen in most papers, but there was still an underlying thread of disgust for the whole Cuban system. Please, in the future, check out the rest of world's living conditions before passing judgment.

Drew Koning, Manhattan

Analytical Cubism

Thanks to Deirdra Funcheon for that incredible article about Cuba. It harmlessly told of a different way of life that so many here don't understand. (If money is not the center of everything, we don't understand.) Free medical, dental and schooling, and no crime, are the priorities there, which says that they care about their people.

Without Castro, would Cuba be another Haiti? No system is perfect, and you give and take either way. Both systems can and should exist in this world. We can learn from them on things like the environment and family values, too.

Anyway, thanks again.

Marshall Browne, via Internet

Morningside Depths

I just read Jada Yuan's 11/22 "New York City" piece, "Aggrieved Minority," about Columbia's conservatives.

I am always amazed to hear leftists feebly searching for a way to condone an American administration's accepting campaign donations from the communist Chinese.

Yuan's tactic of mocking the normal tendency to outrage is clever. It relieves her of the hopeless task of forming a logical defense for an action that would land the most junior soldier or defense worker in prison.

My question is why? What is so liberal about communism anyhow? It's not stylish or antiestablishment anymore. Just crude, old-fashioned, cruel and, worst of all, stupid.

John Spooner, Milpitas, CA

Action Figures

Re: Petra Dickenson's article "Unfair Advantage" ("Taki's Top Drawer," 11/29):

When standards are waived for minorities in educational institutions, those minorities are put at a disadvantage in the real world. The fact that these things happen is not a secret; the effect is that a degree in the hands of a member of the minority is devalued.

I work as a hiring manager in a Fortune 500 company, trying desperately to hire degreed engineers. Step one in the hiring process is evaluating thousands of resumes from educational institutions. There are far too many resumes to allow interviewing all the applicants. Rough guidelines are set with respect to GPA, among other things. If it becomes plain to me, and it is not yet, that a minority with a 3.5 GPA is not the equal of a nonminority with a 3.5 GPA, you have seriously devalued the degree awarded to that person, whether deservedly or not. For the good of the business, which I have a personal stake in, I have to hire the best people to maintain an advantage over my competition. Do I spend my company's money to interview a minority with a degree, taking a chance that the degree has been justly awarded, or interview the nonminority knowing that the degree has been justly awarded?

Affirmative action wrongly shelters people from the real world. If one grows up and is educated in an affirmative action cocoon, the shock of the real world of business and head-to-head competition will crush the spirit of once-eager new graduates. They will and do see that real world as racist, when it is not. And at that point it is too late for a proper education.

Gerry Waschuk, Atlanta

Sic Transit

I thoroughly enjoyed William Bryk's "Notes on an Old Map" ("Old Smoke," 11/8), especially the information on the 3rd Ave. elevated line, which was before my time. I do remember an elevated line in the Bronx that was known as the number 8 line, traveling only within the confines of that borough. In 1974, I passed by one of the streets where the line ran, only to see it in the process of being torn down. Thanks to Mr. Bryk, I can now say that I have seen the 3rd Ave. el, and a piece of history in New York City transit.

Nina Bogin, Queens

Luck and Money

As an admirer of Taki's work for years, I am very happy that he is publishing with you. If I may suggest, I would love to see another book soon?perhaps a collection of essays. One of my favorites of all time is still Princes, Playboys, and High-Class Tarts. My copy is about worn out from reading and rereading, and lending to friends. And I hope one day we will see an autobiography.

I wish him the best of luck always.

Tim Moore, via Internet

The Trouble with Harry

I thought Japan-bashing had become passe until I opened your 11/15 issue to Lionel Tiger's "Japan, Inky" ("Human Follies"). It's hard to reckon what Tiger's point in writing this was, except for the gloating satisfaction of giving 'em one last kick when they're down.

Most incredible are the last couple of paragraphs, in which Tiger foams about Japanese denial of past atrocities: "...an entrenched and bitter orthodoxy that refuses to accept unflattering facts, let alone moral and financial responsibility for ghastly behavior."

Tiger has failed to look in his own backyard before rooting for garbage in someone else's, for this sounds like a description of the good old U.S. of A. itself. He must have slept through the "Enola Gay" debacle at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum, when some of the country's top historians were censored because their proposed exhibit was at odds with some people's fairytale version of history, in which the false "moral perfection" of U.S. leaders rivals that which the Japanese imagine of their emperor.

Tiger also must have attended school abroad, or he'd be well aware of the nationalistic mythology that is routinely taught under the guise of "history" in U.S. schools.

"A community that can't honestly face its past is unlikely to plan its future with realism and humility..." No kidding? Maybe we can start setting a good example, since we're a world leader and honestly face our past.

Tiger's parting gasp of Yellow Peril nuclear paranoia (it's been done before, and better) inspires a mirthless guffaw in this citizen of the only country ever to use nuclear weapons on human beings.

Chris Sorochin, Brooklyn

Soledad Brother

Re: John Strausbaugh and Andrey Slivka's 11/29 "Editorial":

God knows I feel safer knowing that Robert Downey Jr.'s considerable talents will be available only to the director of what passes for the "school play" at Soledad. I was interested in the phone call that prompted the local heat to interrupt what I can only believe was his experiment in comparative consumerism (meth vs. coke). The Nov. 29 L.A. Times article about the incident, unlike the New York Times version that same day, included a reference to the (false) anonymous phone report of guns as well as drugs in the hotel room. Obviously, someone knew how to get the local police really excited.

Robert should never have stiffed that bellhop when he checked in.

Roger Balt, Brooklyn

Jerusalem's Lot

I have a question for Charles Glass ("Taki's Top Drawer," 11/29):

Suppose, for a moment, that the Israelis decided that the way to deal with the Palestinians was simply to kill them. Not to expatriate them, not to rule them with an occupying army, just to exterminate them. Period. And suppose the Israelis attacked, with superior firepower and numbers, and every intention of doing just that.

Now, continuing our hypothetical case, suppose the Palestinians fought back and, against all odds, they won. They repelled the Israeli army, and managed to take control of all of Jerusalem. And further, the defeated Israelis showed no desire to truly make peace, but kept on declaring (in Hebrew) their desire to kill every Palestinian man, woman and child.

How likely do you think it is that the Palestinians would ever give Jerusalem back? How sane would they be if they even considered it?

That is the situation the Israelis found themselves in when, defeating a consortium of Arab countries openly bent on wiping them out, they captured Jerusalem in 1967. And that's why they're understandably reluctant to give it back.

And finally, to answer some more of Mr. Glass' sneers: if you let your children attack members of an army, your children will probably get hurt. But, if your intention is to get international sympathy through victimhood, that result will probably not bother you. The Israelis don't fire on demonstrating Jews because demonstrating Jews don't generally attack them with stones, machine guns and explosives. Armies in democratic states don't generally fire on people bearing nothing more threatening than nasty signs.

Michael Ladenson, Philadelphia

Soup Bones

Another loopy column from Lionel Tiger ("Human Follies," 11/29). How can someone be an "angular" thinker?

"This postelection ballet will long be studied for its representation of the various forces a huge country has to integrate to move smoothly from individual electoral desire to a national result." In other words this mess is just the ordinary election process working itself out.

No. It's happening because Al Gore is filing a bunch of lawsuits in a futile attempt to overturn the results of an election. There are two parties in this dispute: Al Gore and everybody else. The others on the Gore team are surrogates, including Lieberman. The whole thing will be over the minute Gore stops his tantrum and faces reality. It's Al Gore who is standing in the way, Al Gore who is the problem.

We've had close elections before. We've never had this before because in the past one side always conceded, even if they thought the other party cheated. They conceded largely because of the feeling that dragging it out would be bad for the country and would do more harm than good. Not Gore. He couldn't care less about anything but himself. Bring down the stock market, cripple the government, everything is me me me.

The Florida Supreme Court's decision was flawed not because they're Democrats, but because they ignored the law and rewrote it to suit themselves. If they had done so to favor Bush they would be equally wrong.

Each ballot cast is not that important. Gore and his drones keep saying it is because they want to stall until they can manufacture a win. Like all lawyers they will take any old position and advocate it passionately if it is convenient for them.

In any election using the current technology the vote count will not be perfect. But the law doesn't say to count the votes until you get perfect totals. It gives precise instructions for how to count and then you abide by those results, whatever they are.

The only thing that matters in Florida is which side is ahead after the votes have been counted according to law. You had that after the first machine recount and Bush won. Now let's get on with the transition.

Joe Rodrigue, New Haven

Hello Kitty

Re: Damon Liston's 11/22 letter to "The Mail":

Damon Liston's letter was curious, not so much for his critical analysis of MUGGER's column, but for his manner of insulting. I noticed that when Liston got really pissed, his weapon and ultimate insult was using the terms "pussy" and "princess," which he used as though these were derogatory adjectives.

He obviously has a problem with females, so I would like to tell Mr. Liston that being called pussy is good, because pussy has nine lives.

Marie Caesar, Bronx

Doin' His Thing

MUGGER: I am a 72-year-old woman in Hutchinson, KS, and I get my laughs and my stability from your column. Thank God or Fate or whatever for you, at this time. The only thing I can find wrong with your writing is that it isn't daily. Thank you for being you.

Charlene Bottomley, Hutchinson, KS

Ducks in a Rowe

MUGGER: You are the best writer around. (Mostly because you agree with me.) Keep it up. I look forward to your column every week.

Ron Rowe, Pacific Grove, CA

Warren Commission

You, Russ Smith, are a fool and I have no time for you, but I will agree with the one thing that your writings clearly suggest: Bush may be equal to Harding in morals, but not in brains.

Josh Barkley, Sun Valley, ID

Air Supply

MUGGER: I guess being totally and completely wrong about everything hasn't let any air out of your gigantic ego. After incessantly telling us that Hillary Clinton's bid for the Senate was "doomed," and that Bush would win really big, you now offer great (actually second- and thirdhand conservative) insights into the future of a Bush presidency. Oh, thanks!

I noticed recently that you offered the following opinion of Michael Kinsley: "a worm I'd rather not discuss" ("e-MUGGER," 11/3). This from a man who calls George Will boorish! When has Will ever dumped such gratuitous, puerile and totally unsupported trash into his column? Never. Will's column is marked by intelligence, insight and graceful writing, qualities utterly lacking in your pulp.

One thing I'll say in your favor?you're not partisan. Anyone more esteemed, liberal or conservative, is likely to be the recipient of your coarse and vulgar jealousy.

Your columns are completely worthless.

Name Withheld, via Internet

Beater of Paul, and Merry

MUGGER: You can be good at pointing out the foibles of those on the other side of the fence, as in your short bit on the hypocrisy of so-called feminists not defending Katherine Harris from those who criticize her style of dress (11/22). What makes your writing ultimately unsatisfying, though, is your inability to see anything but white hats on your side. You're an advocate?nothing particularly wrong with that, unless you're a reader looking for something with a little nuance.

You deride Paul Begala, but you're really quite like him. His folly is suggesting that people would only be dragged to death behind a car in a state like Texas, while yours is portraying a fratboy who was in the right place at the right time as real presidential material.

Chris Beck, Seattle

Gore = Hitler

MUGGER: Correct me if I am wrong. Do the tactics practiced by Al Gore & Co. seem a bit familiar, or is it just me? Wasn't confusion, misinformation, misdirection and political mayhem the same modus operandi that enabled Hitler and the Nazi party to gain control of the elections in the 30s? Who'd of thought!

Well, never fear. Gore may be able to steal the office, but he will never, in my opinion, be the president of this great nation. After all, the office has been vacant for eight years.

Thanks for your time and great articles. Keep up the good work.

Jim Farren, Round Rock, TX

Mao-Mao-ing the Flak-Catchers

MUGGER: I share your take on Al Gore's persona. Plus, Gore gives off would-be dictator vibes. In some news photos he resembles doctored Chinese propaganda pictures of the elderly Mao.

On the other hand, I think you're over the top in your estimation of Bush. His demeanor during the election crisis has often seemed that of an overwhelmed mediocrity caught in a job too big for him. But in a toss-up between a Supreme Leader and the boss' son, the son is probably the safer bet. Too bad this election boiled down to such a negative choice.

Carola Solomonoff, Saugerties, NY

Russ Smith replies: I must clear something up. Although I've been a George W. Bush partisan for two years now, it's not because I think he's the second coming of Calvin Coolidge. I do believe he's a capable, affable and shrewd man who'd perform admirably in the White House. But mostly I've backed him because I thought he could win. It's obvious now how difficult that task is for anyone who dares challenge the Clinton/Gore/Boies team. Any other GOP candidate would've lost by 8 points. Including John McCain.

Dr. Frankenstein of Tribeca

MUGGER: Your bashers, Gore's defenders, will come a-runnin' at your last column. These people who suffer from poor vision have no doubt passed by what is taking place on Wall Street, and to the many Johnny Lunchbuckets out there.

Gore, like Clinton, has become a socialist, and would anyone inform us where socialism has worked?

Back to your column. This is more political than people realize, and has international repercussions, such as the pact Gore signed with the Russians.

You can take anyone from Russia, dress him up in a three-piece suit?as was done with the marketing firms on Wall Street?and they are still Russians. They are guttural pigs, who will continually take two steps forward, and when caught, they will take one step back. That means that they are one step up.

Gore is the same?he is a guttural pig. So is Lieberman. They have become two people we should not trust even if they are standing on a stack of Bibles. (In their cases, unopened, of course.) They would not know where to look.

So what we now have is an election that's partisan and in complete disorder, which is what the socialist Democratic party has become. Keep Gore out of Dodge, and get the rest of them out of Dodge.

Please inform Al Gore to act his age rather than his shoe size.

Frank and Kay Hodgson, Raleigh, NC

Blue Bayou

MUGGER: I would like to drop a few lines to thank you for your forthright and very often brutal honesty. I recently discovered your column and have enjoyed your commentary, especially during the shameful and embarrassing fiasco currently playing out in Florida. I am a proud conservative and we (other conservatives) need journalists such as yourself to keep the truth flowing.

Thank you.

Phillip W. Fontenot, Lafayette, LA

Newsflash: Gore's a Dick

MUGGER: Your consistent attacks on Al Gore have proven to be quite prescient.

As a registered Republican, I crossed party lines to vote for him, and now regret it. Like Clinton, he doesn't understand that a statesman must act more unselfishly than a private litigant. Also like Clinton, he has dragged the country down into a morass of legal wrangling with his bad-faith interpretations of the law.

But whereas Clinton, the consummate showman, at least delivered a titillating scandal about thongs and blowjobs, it's just like Gore to make scandal boring. His comment that the polls don't matter, because his victory is a purely legal issue, is proof that he has a political tin ear that could hamper his ability to govern. Sure, he's more intelligent than Bush, but that doesn't make him smart. (As you said all along.) It's a sad day when "Gore is no Bill Clinton" is an insult rather than a compliment.

Jendi Reiter, Manhattan

Arc de Triomphe

John Strausbaugh, as usual, provided us with fascinating reading in his 11/15 "Publishing," column, on the subject of animal rights lawyer Gary Francione.

I am an animal- and nature-lover who regularly takes care of the stray cats at my workplace, feeds birds and so on. I don't doubt the good intentions of most animal-equality people (their moral judgment is another matter). I'm also sure that Mr. Francione does good work in some areas. Like most self-declared leftists, however, he is woefully wrong about the "religious" view of life.

The Bible, which Mr. Francione apparently sneers at, does provide for the protection of animals from cruelty in many passages. Even the powerful King David reacted with outrage upon hearing a prophetic story about the cruelty of a rich man toward a poor man's pet lamb (see 2 Samuel:12). And the Lord Jesus said that even the birds are taken care of by God (see Matthew 6:26). He then went on to say that human beings are worth much more to God than animals. This is for God's own sovereign reasons, which (and this will be a shock and an affront to many arrogant human beings) we have no moral right to question.

The Bible also prescribes the most quick and relatively painless forms of death for the animals that God deems fit to be eaten by humans. This stands in marked contrast to the secular (and therefore Francione-approved) "authorities" who allow the torturous cruelty toward livestock that Francione is justifiably opposing.

The Word of God had it right long before the animal-equality crowd was overexposed to Eastern religions (with their paganish deification of all things, which worships the creation instead of the Creator), was overeducated by liberal professors and became full of their own "brilliance" (instead of God's eternal Wisdom, which I urge them to actively seek, for their own soul's good) on the subject of man's relations with nature.

MUGGER should not be bothered by the constant ridicule of his election predictions. It takes a lot more courage to make predictions in an internationally read weekly paper, and thus go way out on a limb, than it does to make fun of and insult someone.

Jack Seney, Queens