Abel Ferrara Disses a Sister; Readers Welcome Gender-Blind Caldwell, Chide Roosevelt-Blind MUGGER; God Did Too Write the Constitution; De Mortuis Nil Nisi Bonum, Strausbaugh; More

RE Olivier French & John Strausbaugh's feature last week ("Abel Ferrara," 7/3). Among other roles in life, I have assumed that of Posthumous Publicist for my dead wife Zoe Lund. As pointed out to me by another fan, I think it's a travesty that Zoe Lund was not mentioned at all in the article on Abel Ferrara. Following Abel's sorry attempts at filmmaking (Nine Lives of a Wet Pussy and Driller Killer) in the 1970s, Zoe's stunning performance in Ms. 45 is what finally gave him some recognition and credibility. This is totally overlooked when the article mentions "early Bs like Driller Killer and Ms. 45." Ms. 45 is still regarded as something of a cult classic (more so in Europe than here). Abel had nearly given up looking for a female lead, and when 17-year-old Zoe appeared at his door, his first reaction was "This is her." (He didn't know it at the time, but the fact that she had been raped a year earlier by a professor at Mount Holyoke College and never reported it no doubt enhanced her performance, providing an outlet for her suppressed rage in the character of Thana.)

Bad Lieutenant was another major step up in Abel's career. Though their initial deal specified joint writing credit, it was written in spite of him, as opposed to with him. I watched (and helped) Zoe write scenes every day at home, then go over to Abel's loft to go over revisions. She would return near dawn, wracked with frustration at trying to get him to pay attention to the script. The final screenplay evolved to a great extent on the set, as described by Zoe in a 1997 essay at www.lundissimo.com/Zoe/docs/BadLT-ScriptWriting.html. The junkie character (played by Zoe) was critical in her influence on the Lieutenant's path to salvation. Her performance was indeed conceived "live." For her onscreen shot, I slipped her two bags of the "real stuff," as she refused to inject the sugar concoction made up by the prop man, and her "Vampire Speech," rising out of an on-camera nod, is treasured by many admirers. (It was being played on late-night radio in California during the 90s, and several musicians have approached me about using it as a voiceover for musical endeavors.)

I feel strongly, as many others do, that it's important that her contributions to Ferrara's work be recognized and remembered, even if Abel now seems comfortable with excising this often-irritating creative influence from his history, now that she's no longer around to speak for herself. More on Zoe (and Abel) at www.lundissimo.com/Zoe.

Robert Lund, Brooklyn

John Strausbaugh replies: The late Zoe Lund was indeed a rare screen presence and her performances in Ms. 45 and Bad Lieutenant deserve the cult following they developed. In our interview we focused much more on Ferrara's new film than on past work, which may help to explain why her name didn't come up.

Vive Les Beans!

It was through The Wall Street Journal's Best of the Web that I found Christopher Caldwell again ("Hill of Beans," 7/3). Hurrah! I look forward to checking out your website from now on to find him and other of your writers! Thanks for publishing Caldwell. Sounds to me like he's taken his gloves off! I like it!

Zabelle Huss, Paris, France

More She Mail

Christopher Caldwell: Great to see "Hill of Beans." Hate to quibble but I'm quite sure (unless there is more than one) that Arnie Arnesen (aka, Deborah Arnie Arnesen) is a "she," not a "he."

Thomas R. Hall, Brookline, NH

No Big Deal

MUGGER: Love your columns but you should be aware that the Roosevelt Hotel was named for Theodore and not Franklin. In fact, the Republican headquarters in NY county is (or was) in the Roosevelt. If that fellow really stayed at the hotel, he would not have been confused?the hotel doesn't keep it a secret.

Dean J. Vigliano, Manhattan

Russ Smith replies: I didn't mention who the hotel was named after, just reacted to Robert Kuttner's FDR fantasies.

OG Nazis

Mike Signorile: Thank you for a wonderful article ("The Gist," 7/3). I was happy to see that Paul Weyrich was displeased with the possible election harm. I believe he is one of the original Nazis, as is Henry Kissinger, and I think both of them carry a lot of clout when it comes to bureaucratic decisions.

Marcie Davis, Otterbein, IN

Boris the Spider, R.I.P.

Leave it to John Strausbaugh to use the death of John Entwistle to further propagate his "geezers gotta get off the stage" thesis on your "Daily Billboard" (6/28). Of course, he may be right in this case, but to many of us, the death of arguably (actually, there's little argument) the greatest of all rock bassists is more of an occasion to be sad than to go "nyah, nyah" to Roger and Pete.

As the recent so-called Concert for New York City demonstrated, Daltrey's a little ragged in the upper range and Townshend?well, he can't really play anymore, can he? Entwistle, alas, was what he always was, the best musician in the Who.

I share some of Strausbaugh's misgivings about carrying a band's torch on way, way past its halcyon days. Guess I'm just not as anxious to kick people in the teeth when they're down. Strausbaugh won't get fooled again, for sure, but, as the video excerpts that VH1 is now running demonstrate, the firemen at that Concert for NYC were far more energized and thrilled by the Who than by any other act. And I'd wager that many of them would say these Brits pushing 60 gave them one of the most memorable days of their lives?even if "Won't Get Fooled Again" and "Baba O'Reilly" had very little to do with their contemporary reality.

Norman Prince, Manhattan

Something's Making Someone Look Dumber

RE Don MacLeod's "Daily Billboard," (6/28). MacLeod says Bush is stupid for thinking that God, not we ourselves, gives us our rights?

"All men...are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights..." By his own logic, MacLeod must think the Founders were "dimwitted" and "illiterate" and "ill-informed" too.

Spluttering morons like MacLeod will never leave off criticizing our President's intelligence. Of course, they are not fit for it. If only they realized it just makes them look dumber.

I.J. Meyers, Jerusalem, Israel

Don MacLeod replies: Meyers quotes the Declaration of Independence, not the Constitution. The Declaration, I might remind him, has no force of law; the Constitution does and it never mentions God or any other deity.

And Agita

MUGGER: That Lewis Lapham list should have included Barbara Kingsolver and Stephanie Fowler, too (7/3). Looks like he slipped. Thanks for your column. I look forward to it every week. I hope Matt Drudge gets over his grudge and reinstates you, but that's not important. We can just go to www.nypress.com and log on there. By the way, I think it's great that the same paper can have you and Alex Cockburn at the same time. Talk about diversity.

Dana Stahl, Sandusky, OH

A Prick & a Brat, You Say?

RE Taki's "Stoppard & Freud" ("Top Drawer," 6/26). What a prat. You pay this guy?

John O'Donoghue, Oxford, England

The Clintonian MUGGER

MUGGER: It is exceedingly unpleasant to hear you sounding like a liberal?Beinart had you pinned ("MUGGER," 7/3). Color blindness is not a "sentiment," as you put it; color blindness is a principle. American policies are color blind or mistaken. You are correct that affirmative action is crap but you don't seem to understand why: it's because every human person is equal and his rights are absolute. We cannot punish or reward anyone based on things we guess about him based on his appearance?he has a right to be judged aside from that. Tell me racial profiling at airports doesn't involve idiot feds and their guesses about which skin gets what. You're saying racial profiling is okay sometimes, absolutely wrong other times?that's moral relativism. You noted "we're at war"? Yes, and fighting to defend what? That stuff we believed in before the war? War is when moral principle matters most, and we've seen what's happened when people claimed morality was subordinate to popular will.

Doublethink, self-defined imperatives, responsibility conveniently assigned elsewhere, indifference to history?my God, man, leave that stuff to Hillary. It's been difficult lately for me to find the moral consistency in your positions. Your dismissal of Beinart was preceded by a dismissal of fliers promoting Harvard events "(in) solidarity with Palestine." You said they were "disgraceful." Shouldn't the U.S. support people forced off their lands by invading armies? Or are you saying a state that stole land from 700,000 people by chasing them away or killing them, that's kept those people from coming home for 50 years and insists it will keep doing so even though the right of its refugees to get back what was stolen from them is absolute?we should support that state? MUGGER, what in the name of God did we fight Hitler for, if not to prove self-defense cannot be used to justify military conquest? Don't those people in the West Bank camps look at all familiar to you?

John T. Foster, Brooklyn

Because He Owns the Paper

Why don't you drop Taki, this social-climbing Greek, before you lose all of your Jewish readers!

Zachary J. Belil, Manhattan

Your Crap Sucks More

John Strausbaugh: I don't understand why my "First Person" article on performing court-mandated community service in California has been discarded in favor of the overly sentimental, adjective-laden prose of John DeVore's "Better Red's than Dead" ("First Person," 7/3). Why not choose a piece that is uplifting and celebrates the human spirit instead of sucking the reader into endless misery? First, the "powerlessness in the face of disease" theme was already exhausted by Dave Eggers, among others of late. Second, why the hell is all the setup of Texas necessary? DeVore goes on and on repeating the same description of Texans: they're power-hungry and like their guns. No shit. Don't we all know this? Why does New York Press, a very solid paper that writes about things out of the ordinary, continue to lower the bar in its "First Person" columns? If you're going to publish crap like this, why not publish my crap?

Nick P. Yulico, San Francisco

WorldConned

Alexander Cockburn: According to opensecrets.org, the Democrats received the majority of cash from WorldCom from 1990 to 1996. That just happens to be the time that the Democrats had the presidency, the House and the Senate. In 1990, 72 percent went to the Democrats; in 1992, 59 percent; in 1994 63 percent; in 1996 they received 62 percent of the money compared to Republicans getting 38 percent.

If the Democrats want to play this game, then the facts can quite possibly turn back on them to their own detriment. In this day and age, anyone can look up the contributions themselves. We don't have to take the words of the left-leaning press as gospel. An investigation of Xerox, Global Crossing (the company that made DNC Chairman Terry McAuliffe rich and then filed for bankruptcy), Enron and WorldCom will show exactly who was getting the corporate dough. Without corporate money the Democrats couldn't win elections because their voter base does not contribute enough in individual donations, as opposed to the Republicans who rake in tons of $25 donations. If you took away their corporate-linked donations they could hardly put up a candidate. Where would Al Gore be without the lawyer corporations and the telecom industry? Please answer that, Mr. Cockburn.

Christie Smith, Boulder, CO

Bar Exam

MUGGER: I doubt I have ever seen a more accurate, applicable, yet self-evident truth than you provided at the close of your column (7/3). You wrote: "If Hillary Clinton, Barbara Boxer and James Jeffords can win the voters' approval, it's obvious the bar for public service is at an all-time low." This will provide more than sufficient recognition of a very fruitful career! Thanks for making my day before the fourth of July!

Jerry Dunn, Greenville, SC

Glad to Be Back, Chris?

I'm glad to see Christopher Caldwell is back in New York Press ("Hill of Beans," 7/3). But his argument that the high poll ratings for Colin Powell and Donald Rumsfeld show the administration's popularity to be "absurd, arbitrary and shallow" (because these two officials "stand for diametrically opposite strategies" regarding the war) is itself arbitrary and shallow, if not absurd. There's no inconsistency in giving high ratings to Powell and Rumsfeld if one believes any of the following: (1) The differences between the two officials are overstated; (2) the differences are real, but a good, balanced strategy arises from their interaction; (3) the differences are contrived, and are part of a good cop/bad cop strategy for dealing with the miscreants of the world. Each of these is plausible.

Kenneth Silber, Manhattan

Maybe He Was Unsuckable

RE "Eileen Dover's "The Blowjob Quiz" ("First Person," 6/26). Fairly clever. What's her ex-husband's first name? Ben? Let me see if I have this right. Ms. Dover freely and frequently provided enthusiastic pipecleaning services prior and subsequent to her 20-year marriage but never during? It seems to me that she should be reported to the Consumer Protection Bureau for violation of the "bait and switch" laws. If she'd continued to occasionally perform the sword-swallowing trick the poor, frustrated bastard might not have divorced her.

Name Withheld, Rye, NY

Matt's a Big Sissy

Matt Drudge: You are a big fat baby. Any knucklehead with 10 minutes of experience would be able to find New York Press online without your link. That's not the issue. In removing the link you diminish your own credibility by only providing access to writers and articles that don't hurt your feelings. Wimp.

Chris Difrancesco, Clinton Corners, NY

Declaration of Independence? Constitution? Which?

RE Don MacLeod's "He Didn't Really Say That, Did He?" ("Daily Billboard," 6/28). I've really tried to stay clear of the tedious tempest in a teapot that is the Pledge of Allegiance ruling, but MacLeod's comments on the subject forced me off the sidelines. It is one thing to be wrong about American history and the Founding, a common-enough error, but to be so damn arrogant and rude about it begs for clarification.

None of the Founding Fathers was so foolish to believe that men "get their rights from each other." Indeed, the Founders were highly suspicious of the majority of men. They universally held that the principal function of the state is to protect individuals and their property from the privations of their neighbors. To the founders, it was the Common Law?the passed-down wisdom of the ages?and the courts that were the individual's best protection from human avarice and violence. One could accurately say that men get their protection under the Common Law and the courts "from each other," as Mr. MacLeod might say: a social philosophy that governed English society since the Magna Carta.

The Founders' true innovation was the idea of "inalienable rights," rights that could not be taken away by the majority or the state because they were derived from God, not given by man. This concept is fundamental to the revolutionary idea of individual rights. The Constitution was designed to ensure that these inalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness would forever be protected from the tyranny of the state or the majority. To suggest otherwise evinces a profound misunderstanding of the Founders' intent.

Were Mr. MacLeod's interpretation of the Founders' intent accurate, our rights as enumerated under the Constitution could be alienated at any time if the majority or the state were to will it to be so. This is the converse of the Founders' intent. What is troubling about the Pledge ruling is that it suggests that many jurists agree with Mr. MacLeod. That is to say, individuals only have rights, such as the right to utter the words "under God" in a government school, to the extent that the state or fellow men suffer it. The Founding Fathers would have scoffed at that notion and would have wondered why they had risked life, limb and fortune to cast off one tyrant only to assume the yoke of another.

Daniel J. Hogan, Worthington, OH

A Long Wait in Brooklyn

MUGGER: Last week you wrote, "If Hillary Clinton, Barbara Boxer and James Jeffords can win the voters' approval, it's obvious the bar for public service is at an all-time low." You forgot Ronald Reagan and Duhbya, the two biggest morons to ever inhabit the White House. I assume that your column detailing the sordid financial dealings of the two draft-dodgers who now occupy the White House will be forthcoming, although I won't hold my breath.

Bruce Brodinsky, Brooklyn

Tempting

MUGGER: I noticed your interest in college for your kids in the last article you wrote (7/3). If you are looking for one of the few conservative, forward-thinking colleges, do not overlook Hillsdale College, Hillsdale, MI. This is the college that refused federal funds in the 80s and fought the government in court. They won their case for rejecting affirmative action by not taking federal funds. I think the enrollment is around 1200. Hillsdale has a great conservative graduate network. If you send me your mailing address I will sign you up for their free Impress newsletter.

Kenneth Parady, Grand Rapids, MI

WoMANly

Welcome back to Christopher Caldwell?you've been missed ("Hill of Beans," 7/3). By the way, referring to New Hampshire Democrat activist and dingbat Arnie Arnesen as "he" is understandable, but wrong. While Ms. Arnesen is spectacularly homely and looks like she cuts her hair with a machete, she is recognizably female. Her species, though not her gender, is open to debate.

Tim O'Brien, Scituate, MA

Around the Horn with Duffy

Been reading your paper for 10 years; your last issue was great. Thank you, J.R. Taylor, for letting us know what the hell happened to Double Whammy ("Culture," 6/26). John Strausbaugh's feature on Jim Goad, "Bad Man," was excellent journalism. Taki is wrong; Lucien Freud is an excellent painter. Russ Smith, glad to hear you're a realistic Sox fan. Their staff is Pedro and punt. Derek Lowe? He's made exactly zero postseason starts and will implode. I forgot how much I liked Jessica Willis' writing. More of her on the "Daily Billboard," please (6/28). So George Tabb's your investigative political reporter/sociological analyst now? Great. Also, I thought he gave himself the "Pussy" nickname.

Mark Duffy, Manhattan

Rued Awakening

MUGGER: I have only recently begun reading your paper online and find I enjoy it quite a lot, especially your column. Someone up your way picked up on a letter to the editor I wrote and asked my permission to reprint it in New York Press. It was about the Pandora's Box of gay marriage. Anyway, I said I did not know what New York Press was, and the writer, evidently deeply wounded, never responded. Now I know and see why you wanted the letter.

Ned Wynn, Healdsburg, CA

So He's Heard

MUGGER: I read your column religiously, and during my 14 years in New York City would practically camp out by the New York Press boxes late on Tuesday nights to be sure to get a copy before the indignant locals of my (you can guess which) neighborhood would begin their weekly "thought police" recycling operations. I am on currently on temporary assignment in Europe, and your online version truly sustains me.

I noticed that in your recent item on Mr. Kuttner of the The American Prospect's comments on the Roosevelt Hotel that both he and (in an out-of-character journalistic lapse) you assumed that the hotel had been named after former U.S. president Franklin Delano Roosevelt (7/3). As the hotel's own website explicitly states and the hotel's logo (which connects the two "o"s in "Roosevelt" with an arch that clearly evokes TJR's classic pince nez) clearly implies, the hotel is named for TJR rather than FDR. This was a "gimme" for those of us of a certain era whose American history classes didn't present us with the 1492-1929 pamphlet before plunking the 1930-present phonebook-sized revisionist textbook on our elementary school desk.

Employing the same logic, perhaps if Mr. Kuttner had been stuck in a traffic jam on the FDR Dr., he would have penned, "I gamely accepted this lesser mode of transportation not as demeaning confirmation of the right's two-class vision for society, but as recognition of my esteem for FDR."

Had it been the TJR Dr., he doubtless would have directed his driver to exit at 34th St., and hopped on a helicopter to the Hamptons forthwith.

G. Talbott Miller, Reading, PA

I Love Taki

TAKI: You rock!

John Barlett, Palm Beach, FL

I Hate Taki

President Bush has it absolutely correct in his rejection of Arafat in any peace negotiation. How many innocents does Arafat have to murder before you stop calling yourself a "moderate"? If you are a moderate, then all the moderates can roast in hell. Oh, and one other thing: fuck you, too, Taki, because you really are sounding pro-terrorist and anti-Semitic.

John Dumont, San Jose, CA

Megalon!

Frankly, I have no problem with a court ruling that the words "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance are unconstitutional (separation of church and state) and must be deleted. The ruling was a godsend to the best congressmen money can buy: they all got on tv holding palms greased with campaign contributions on their hearts while facing the flag and reciting the Pledge, proving once again that such "patriotism" is indeed "the last refuge of scoundrels." Because with the other hand they're transferring billions of our tax dollars to toxic special interests and evil foreign governments, while they can't find a few million to keep Amtrak on the rails or educate our children. As I say, I welcome the judgment, because while I do believe that America is under some entity, I'm not at all sure it's God.

T. Weed, Hoboken

Down & Out in Beantown

MUGGER: Now that you've hit your midseason prediction on the head (never mind the 2-1/2 game prediction in the 6/24 issue)?you previously predicted that the Sox would be down two at the end of June?I hope that your preseason prediction will hold. However, as a seriously superstitious Bosox fan, I refuse to repeat the prediction.

Gordon Smith, Pleasanton, CA

Alton Loves Beans

RE Christopher Caldwell's return to New York Press: Thank you!

M. Van Voorhis, Alton, IL

Yeah Yeah Yeah

MUGGER: This is from the website of the Roosevelt Hotel: "Named for President Theodore Roosevelt, The Roosevelt Hotel has had an impressive heritage for being one of Madison Avenue's finest hotels since its opening in 1924. With over 1,000 guest rooms, including 30 luxurious suites, the classic styling of yesteryear has been seamlessly blended with the modern conveniences of today"

So not only was Kuttner wrong on the quality of the hotel, he didn't even get the origin of its name correct!

David E. Stutzman, Manhattan

Kooked

Yeah, Clinton's economic boom was a con job all right and you know who engineered it and benefited from it? Largely it was Jews. Clinton's top staff jobs went disproportionately to Jews. The people putting out the phony economic data in the government were Jews. The banks who issued IPOs on ventures that had absolutely no plan for making money are Jewish owned. The Wall Street brokers who sold shares to the public and hyped them are largely Jewish-owned brokerage firms. The media?which is almost totally owned by Jews?also hyped all the Internet-related firms. So why don't you call it what it was. Not just a Clinton con job but a Jewish con job meant to sucker non-Jews into buying worthless stock with Jews selling early and making out like bandits, leaving everyone else to hold the bag. Come on, call it what is. Remind you of the Weimar Republic? It should.

D. Hodson, Ventura, CA

Russ Smith replies: On occasion, it's worthwhile to print garbage like this, just as a reminder that the United States, like any other country, is riddled with misanthropic kooks.

Class Dismissed

In Taki's "European Bureaucrooks & Kangaroo Courts" (6/5), I found his hypothetical examples of xenophobia and racism involving derogatory names ("frog, wop and kraut") trite and misleading. Perhaps Taki is better informed than I am about European social thought, but my gut instinct tells me that the EU's proposed legislation against xenophobia and racism is far more inspired by the color-based versions of these phenomena?imposed historically from "light" to "dark"?than it is by name-calling among white Europeans. The former sense is really the only direction in which racism can be defined, anyway, once it is seen as the ideological (and often institutionalized) instrument of oppression that it is. (In fact, given this definition, if a person of color dislikes whites in reaction to history's scars, this is not racism in the true sense.) I am willing to concede to Taki that the EU probably wouldn't want discrimination among its whites any more than from a white person to a person of color; however, by focusing only on the first possibility and neglecting the second, the article was blatantly skewed on this issue.

Steve LaGreca, Long Island