A Real Green Party Dan Neel's article "Burnt Out" (12/22) reminds ...

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Dan Neel's article "Burnt Out" (12/22) reminds me that the battle against the moral majority continues even in so-called liberal New York City. What adults listen to, consume, inhale, perform, read or view in the privacy of their own homes or workplaces is their own choice. Our civil and economic liberties prosper best when Big Brother stays out of the bedroom and marketplace.

During Prohibition, the war against alcohol was a total failure. The only ones who benefited were Al Capone and organized crime. Over the past decades, government at all levels has wasted hundreds of billions in our useless battle against illegal drug consumption.

We could have secured our borders against the mass migration of illegal aliens for a fraction of this cost. The free marketplace will always provide what consumers desire, despite the best efforts of Big Brother and the moral majority.

Why not allow marijuana use and include a sales tax on legal distribution? This revenue could be used to offset any medical costs for those who may abuse this substance. Funding could also support research to find cures for cancer and other diseases. This would also free up our law-enforcement community to fight real crimes against victims and property. Assist those who suffer with the terrible side effects of chemotherapy by allowing them access to marijuana.

Larry Penner, Great Neck

Birking Off

Just finished "Jesus Wore Birks" by Alexander Zaitchik (12/15). How dare you insult Our Lord with such a cheap headline. You can write what you will, but when I'm confronted by such a degrading headline, I'm outraged. Such a cover line could only have been written by Christians who have forgotten their roots or by non-Christians. How do you think the Jewish community would react if you had used a headline like "Moses Masturbated"?

I'm a professional writer and have toyed with cutesy headlines in the past to get attention. But I always dumped the idea because I'm a pro who is aware that genuinely good writing does not need to resort to offensive tricks to have an impact.

If you insist on slapping us Christians in the face with such disgusting verbiage, I will do everything in my power to see that you are permanently taken off the street. And I have a track record of effectiveness to prove what I mean.

Susan J. Trammell, Manhattan

Onward Christian Givers

Celia Farber is atypical of today's stereotyped in-your-face American Christian, even though she is not Christian ("Do They Know It's Christmas?" 12/22). I ask-where is the outreach of the Christian churches to take up the slack for the absence of Christian themes in public places? The whole idea was to appropriately place the true spirit of "Christ's birth" in the church where it should best be demonstrated (i.e., not a nativity scene in a Macy's window).

Our forefathers were not perfect. From the beginning, they allowed far too much of a Christian theme to infiltrate a secular governing body founded on the premise of religious pluralism. When we attempt to correct these flaws, what does it all turn into? Christians screaming in horror that God is being banished from our nation. It's as bad as a healthy, capable "couch potato" demanding welfare assistance.

This is the opportunity for Christians to influence all others with their expressed dedication to their true faith-open their church doors to the world to celebrate the most important event of Christianity. But what do we really see? A huge population of believers who are exposing their lack of confidence in promoting their own religion, without dedicated government support to prop them up. What is it the Bible says-"oh ye, of little faith"? Where is the spirit of Christian "giving" during Christmas, when all we hear is a spirit of "complaining" from Christians?

Joseph P. Griffey, Auburn, AL

Paging: Art Dept., Art Dept?

I enjoyed reading Jeff Koyen's take on The Sluts written by Dennis Cooper (Books, 12/22). Unfortunately, the photo accompanying the article is of Radley Metzger's DVD collection, reviewed elsewhere in your paper by Saul Austerlitz. The same picture correctly appears with the latter review.

Barry S. Levy, Manhattan

Still Raping After All These Years

Concerning "Save the Tomato Children!" (12/22): This is the first of Paul Krassner's writing I have read since his great rag The Realist in the late 60s in Los Angeles. I still remember some of his stuff: a comic strip showing a Jewish guy on the corner offering a black prostitute, "...fifty cents and a cup of tea." Or the reporter whose editor tried to censor his writing about the "four R's" (rape) at the public school: He depicts the rapist as saying to his victim, "please assume the supine position and present your nether extremity"; he concludes his resignation letter with, "So if you don't like this, you can go be intimate with yourself."

Glad to see Krassner's still at it. But then he probably can't help it-it must be genetic. He was born with an extra irony gene and an extra sense of the ridiculous/absurd gene. And so, like homosexuals, it's not a choice-he was born like that.

Mathew Silverton, Jacksonville, FL

Our Kind of Rotten Animal Bastard

Fire Matt Taibbi. Do him and all of us a favor and fire the rotten bastard. He hates Christmas ("Burn Christmas Burn," 12/22)? So bloody what? Is there nothing else you can run in your newspaper except this dreck? You should be ashamed. What kind of rotten animal bastard would suggest doing malicious acts to an eight-year-old girl?

Put a Megan Alert on this sick, deranged man. He has zero journalistic integrity or credibility, and you should feel ashamed for giving that man a forum. And once you fire him, resign your own position: You don't deserve the responsibility and power of being a newspaper editor.

Nicholas Costalas, Brooklyn

Rotten Animal Bastards, Unite

Matt Taibbi's "Burn Christmas Burn" (12/22) should be required reading for anyone even thinking about watching It's a Wonderful Life.

Howard Meyers, Los Angeles

Currying Favor

I read Matt Taibbi's article on the Bhopal tragedy, and it is very nice of you to put it in print ("Sorrow in Danbury," 12/8). The Bhopal tragedy was indeed one of the biggest tragedies in this country. Great article. I am forwarding it to my buddies, some of whom survived the disaster.

Rajeev, Pune, India

How's This?

What is it with Matt Taibbi's name-dropping fetish? Two weeks ago, Taibbi wrote, "friends of mine, like Katrina vanden Heuvel of the Nation" ("The Whole Orange Thing," 12/15). A few months earlier, he wrote, "with all due respect to the Washington Post's Howard Kurtz, who was polite to me when we spoke on the phone earlier this year?" And so on and so on. The fact that Taibbi is friends with vanden Heuvel or that Kurtz was polite to Taibbi is totally irrelevant to his argument, but apparently highly relevant to his ego. Taibbi is becoming the Liz Smith of the edgy-journalism world. Maybe you guys should start bolding the names he drops, to make sure we readers have no doubt that Taibbi now has friends in high places.

Taibbi's volte-face on Michael Moore, which always confused me, now makes a lot of sense. A couple of years ago, when Taibbi was with the Buffalo Beast, he described Michael Moore as the 42nd most loathsome American. Michael Moore was "an unfunny, egomaniacal blowhard?[who] wears his dissident credentials not on his sleeve, but on his head and his waistline: his mesh baseball cap and fat body are now the leading brand-ID marker for political discontent among the narrow, incestuous 'enlightened left' demographic? Moore shows that a media darling is a media darling is a media darling."

For the past few months, Taibbi has become one of Michael Moore's most shameless defenders. You can't criticize Moore without expecting a broadside from Taibbi. I can only conclude that Taibbi is trying to suck up to Moore in the hope that some day, in a future column, he'll be able to write, "Last week, when I was talking with my friend Michael Moore?"

Will Misamore, Washington, DC

Shut Up, You Stupid Edmontonian

I would like to comment on Matt Taibbi's "The Whole Orange Thing" (12/15). If I were to pepper this letter with f-words addressed to the editor and/or Taibbi, I doubt it would be published. What kind of a pretense of a journalistic product are you, then, if you permit outright abuse of an individual and an entire people? Sounds exactly like hate-mongering to me. As I had never heard of this publication, I went on the website to look at letters from your readers. This saved me some work, as I can simply repeat the feedback already addressed to you regarding other columns.

These quotes, from issue 50 can apply equally well to Taibbi:

"...article written by a proclaimed reporter containing profanity and crass dialect is a disgrace... It is not surprising that the entire article was rude and harshly opinionated, because the person writing it is exactly as such."

"Shut up, you stupid racist."

It seems you've got a trend going, and if you're happy about it, then I guess your comeuppance may be visited upon you later rather than sooner. But come it will.

Dana Ovcharenko, Edmonton, Canada

The Cult of Humanity

I refer to Alexander Zaitchik's article "The Falun Gong Show" (12/15). He states: "Few non-cult groups can mobilize such sustained dedication from its members." This is most malicious. The Chinese government labeled Falun Gong as "cult" to justify its brutal persecution, and Zaitchik is helping the oppressor by also labeling Falun Gong as "cult."

Zaitchik has no sympathy for a group of people who are dedicated and committed to their faith, and sacrificed greatly to appeal to the world at large and to New Yorkers like you, to raise awareness of the sufferings of Falun Gong practitioners in China.

Zaitchik also has no clue when he writes: "The Chinese government's plan for Tibet is Falun Gong oppression writ large, with a whole culture threatened." While we all empathize with the suffering of Tibetans, he misunderstands the scale and meaning of the Falun Gong persecution. The entire population of Tibet is about three million, but there were between 70 to 100 million Falun Gong practitioners in China when the crackdown started in 1999. Add the family members of these practitioners, and a few hundred million people's lives were affected. Sure, the Tibetan culture is worth cherishing, but in the case of Falun Gong, it is "truthfulness, compassion, and forbearance," moral values common to all human beings, that are being wiped off from the heart, mind and soul of the 1.3 billion people in China.

Zuan Lim, Singapore

Give Gong A Chance

I'm responding to Jack Murray's mindless critique of Falun Gong ("The Mail," 12/22). This guy is just plain mean. I wonder what he would do if his benign beliefs were outlawed by his government and his family members were, as a result, tortured and murdered? He hasn't appeared to even try and understand or realize that these Falun Gong people are trying to save their friends and family who are being tortured in labor camps in China by Chinese police because they practice Buddhist meditation. (I looked this up with the United Nations, and they have documented the torture scenes that they are showing us on the streets).

Take a little time out of your day, learn something about the world we live in and offer a little sympathy to those who deserve it. I did a lot of reading about Falun Gong (even tried to read their book) and they are peaceful people with peaceful beliefs being "eliminated" by Chinese Communists, while the world's countries are muted by their hopes of a booming Chinese economy. They deserve sympathy. So what if they're in Manhattan, doing their meditation and holding information booths? The Chinese government is torturing them for their form of belief, and they have no other way to stop it. It's genocide; have a heart.

I'm happy to support the Falun Gong people, no matter how many flyers they give me. They are really kind people. I would rather many more came to Manhattan if it meant sparing the lives of innocent men, women and children.

David Miao, Toronto

Actually, He's Quite Strapping

Matt Taibbi is a pencil-necked geek-I wish that Ukrainian he mentioned in his piece had broken him in half ("The Whole Orange Thing," 12/15). This article is the biggest bunch of useless horseshit that he's ever written, and that's saying a lot because of all the useless horseshit he has written in the past. Taibbi sits in his cubicle and looks down on some people who are trying to improve their situation after centuries of oppression. Of course Yushchenko is no Thomas Paine, but a lot of sincere and eager people of all ages and different backgrounds look to him as a symbol of their ability to move forward.

Anything coming out of Russia is suspicious. The Russians despise Ukrainians, and they're generally going to have many positive things to say about the situation; their empire is falling apart and they feel they are too good for this to be happening to them. So what if USAID and other groups support NGOs in Ukraine? If they're not contributing directly to the candidate, what is improper?

Jeez, you piss me off.

Michael Jaworsky, Whitefish, MT

Will the Real Will MarshallPlease Stand Up?

Letter writer Steve Albert apparently is not someone who knows who the hell Will Marshall is ("The Mail," 12/8). Will Marshall was not employed by the Christian Coalition and he does not write the Bull Moose blog. The person who fits that description is Marshall Whitman!

Who the hell is Will Marshall? I hope somebody will also explain to Albert that the Monroe Doctrine was not a review of Some Like It Hot.

Jerry Skurnik, Manhattan

Psst: Taylor's Deaf

Just read J.R. Taylor's review of Jason Ringenberg's album Empire Builders ("Posers Are Red," 8/25). I have to say it is a perfect example of lazy journalism. Did he even listen to the album? If he did it was obviously with a very biased ear. He doesn't so much review the record, as slag off Jason Ringenberg.

I enjoy New York Press for the most part, but this really turned me off.

Eamon Kinsella, Wexford, Ireland

High Hopes

It's ironic to note the pessimism of some medical-marijuana activists in blue states when, almost concurrently, a major poll in red-state Texas revealed that 75 percent of adult Texans support legalization of medical marijuana (Dan Neel, "Burnt Out," 12/22).

The Scripps Howard Texas poll in fall 2004 surveyed 900 adult Texans and found out that 81 percent of Democrats, 67 percent of Republicans, 70 percent of those in their 40s, 81 percent in the 18 to 29 age range, and 72 percent of senior citizens favored legalization. The margin of error was 3.3 percent.

It would be a cruel turn of events if Texas legalized medical pot at almost the same moment that California and New York gave up on it. Even worse, of course, if the Supremes rule against Angel Raich.

Daniel Falconer, Austin, TX