Badillo for Mayor? You've Got to Be Kidding; Caldwell's Too Nice to the Tampa "Refugees"; Thomas Disch, Jew-Hater; Lay Off Nolan Ryan, MUGGER; Gunning for Richardson; Iannone's a Gender Traitor; Strausbaugh's a Helpful Weirdo; More

When I saw that cover?Herman Badillo for Mayor?I wondered if New York Press could really be that out of touch with reality. By the time I got to the part about "the performance of Giuliani's police department... was by and large exemplary" I knew something was out of whack. The endorsement goes on to say, "Why the Mayor was so defensive and brittle after the tragic shootings of Amadou Diallo and Patrick Dorismond is a mystery."

I'll help you unravel that one, Sherlock. Herr Rudolph has made a point of supporting the police no matter what they do, encouraging ever more brutal situations in our city. Being a good cop in New York right now has to be a hell of a lot harder than being a bad one. You think the teachers' union is corrupt? The reason Giuliani is so defensive isn't just his "vindictive, petty, mean-spirited or schizophrenic" nature. It's because the above-mentioned murders, and others committed by on- and off-duty police, are the logical conclusions of his circle-the-wagons-around-the-cops mentality.

Michael Power, Bronx

You Mean, Who Was...

Who is this Claude La Badarian? Will someone please explain it all?

Name Withheld, Manhattan

These People

I agree that the story of the ship the Tampa ("Hill of Beans," 9/5) is newsworthy, but please get the whole story. These people flew to Indonesia from various countries and then, after paying a lot of money, set sail to land in Australia illegally. When their boat started to sink the Tampa came to their rescue. At that time they were in international waters. When Indonesia said that they would take them back the captain headed there.

These people "stormed" the bridge and made the captain fear for the safety of his crew and himself. When the Australian government went aboard to inspect things, there turned out to be no seriously ill people onboard. These people have passed through at least 10 different countries where they were safe. They are not refugees. They are illegal immigrants who have paid a lot of money to be smuggled into Australia and if we allow them in they will use the courts to stay here for at least six years. They start riots at the detention centers and destroy property, or they escape. This has become a regular thing here and I, for one, am sick of it.

We Aussies will give a helping hand to those in need and we have done so on many occasions. Per capita we take more refugees than any other country except Canada. Our record speaks for itself.

Marcia Allen, Sydney, Australia

And Shorter

Thanks for printing the most original Jew-hating story I have ever read ("After Postville," 9/5). The twists?a saintly gay suicide, goy-hating Chasidim dedicated to the Third Worldization of America's Heartland, a righteous bombing of their coven/synagogue?were wonderful. What a hateful, hated people those Jews are. The recent election of a Lubavitcher (still a fraction of Postville's population) to the town council over a longtime local means nothing. They probably bought some votes or stuffed the boxes. I have read The Turner Diaries. Congratulations, Mr. Disch. Your story was better.

Barry Schechter, East Brunswick, NJ

Nolan Fan Strikes Back

MUGGER: "The absurdly lionized Nolan Ryan" (8/29)? Tell you what: You find a Major League pitcher within 1000 strikeouts of Nolan Ryan, and then you might find a few takers. Until then, this Texan has 5714 reasons (many eyewitnessed, including #5000) why that statement is absolutely preposterous.

Michael Rampy, Ft. Worth

Killjoy

Did Tanya Richardson ever consider that perhaps the pimple puss in camouflage was an out-of-work actor hired to give the folks on the package deal an "authentic gun club" experience ("New York City," 9/5)? I've been popping off rounds there for the last six months and never have seen this camo-critter. Anyway, good article, but she should have pointed out that handguns are not part of the deal. For those, it's an amazingly long and convoluted bureaucratic journey to obtain a pistol license. No hands on a handgun unless your papers are in order.

Melanie Coronetz, Manhattan

Why Taki Goes to Gstaad

When will you people ever get your facts right? Taki's statement that Harvey Weinstein is "so ugly and vulgar he'd be denied entrance to an Albanian whorehouse" ("Top Drawer," 9/5) clearly implies that Albanian whorehouses would let anyone in, with the exception of Mr. Weinstein. In fact, Albanian whorehouses are at least as exclusive as whorehouses in Macedonia, Ivory Coast and Luxembourg, as I know from exclusive and reliable thirdhand sources. How about some journalistic integrity for a change?

Wallace A. Showman, via Internet

Apple-Pie Radicals

Re Carol Iannone on Seneca Falls ("Taki's Top Drawer," 9/5): At the time of the Seneca Falls convention not only did women lack the right to vote but, as a group, they were barred from most professions and paid significantly less than male workers for the jobs they were allowed to hold. In some states women did not even have the right to dispose of their own property. Moreover, it was considered unacceptable at that time for a woman to even express her views in a public forum. The Seneca Falls conventioneers tried to change all this. If that makes them "radicals," in whatever sense one wants to use the term, then so be it, and God bless them.

I suspect that many 19th-century feminists, from the Grimke sisters to Lucretia Mott, saw themselves less as so-called radicals and more as devout Christians trying to have a positive effect on their communities. Inspired by the ideals of republican motherhood, which accorded moral and political value to women's roles as the mothers of future citizens, many women believed they could and should be allowed to speak their consciences, particularly on matters of social injustice. Many women viewed their public activities as extensions of the maternal and religious roles, which were to foster a stronger and ultimately more caring democratic society. This all may seem "radical" and subversive to Iannone. I don't know. It sounds pretty "apple pie" to me. (Note: It took another 72 years after Seneca Falls before women finally got the right to vote.)

Christine Geiser, Hoboken, NJ

Hay and Horse Manure

MUGGER: Did you catch Tom Friedman on Charlie Rose recently? What journalistic BS. He set up and knocked down more straw men than Dick Nixon, all in the name of the wonderful 90-plus percent West Bank peace offer turned down by Arafat. I wish Charlie would take on you or Arnaud de Bourchgrave on this issue.

R.T. Carpenter, Panama City, FL

Takes One to Know One

Thank you for John Strausbaugh's excellent article about my work ("Publishing," 8/29). All too often, journalists are only interested in dismissive jokes and asides when writing about "fringe" people and subjects. Strausbaugh obviously has a sincere regard for the occasional weirdo. I say keep him.

May I add the contact information for my zine, The Excluded Middle? The address is POB 481077, Los Angeles, CA 90048, and the website is www.excludedmiddle.com.

Greg Bishop, Los Angeles

The Punk Rock Walter Benjamin

After reading George Tabb's "critique" of the Ultimate Fighting Championship ("Music," 8/29), all I have to say is that the day Carmen Electra wants that sexist homophobe is the day they find Chandra Levy alive. George, get over yourself.

Tess Williams, Manhattan

Tripmaster Smith

MUGGER: Your lines about the Stones (8/29) bring to mind sitting in a folding chair in Chicago at a Stones concert in 1969. Roger had driven his go-fast Camaro up; he was with that longhaired girl he filmed running naked from a Corvette heir. I was in the backseat, with the 15-year-old daughter of the drama club's divorcee den mother.

Mick strutted in a black leotard with a gold Leo emblem, nervously flashing his scarlet scarf. "Street Fighting Man" was their finale, and I recall that we all stood on our steel folding chairs. We didn't throw them, but roared back south in the Camaro, very dark and wet in the backseat. More than Dylan or the Beatles, or any of the dead from Janis, Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix up to and including Jerry Garcia, Mick Jagger sings the body electric. Thank you for the trip back.

Phil Dragoo, Santa Fe

Accomplishments, Schmaccomplishments

In citing JFK's lack of accomplishments, letter-writer Sheridan ("The Mail," 8/29) was much too kind in giving Kennedy a win in the matter of the Cuban Missile Crisis. The Russians shipped out the missiles in Castroland only because JFK agreed to remove our own missiles from Turkey and ltaly. Kennedy's real and only accomplishment, therefore, was that he achieved the pinnacle of becoming the darling of the press. Otherwise, Sheridan wouldn't be confused or snookered.

Frank Freda, Manhattan

Well, All Righty Then

I smiled out loud when I read Kelly McMasters' sweet piece, "Close Shaves" ("First Person," 7/25). I discovered the joys of a baby-smooth scrotum much later in life (in my 40s), but have become very fond of the look and feel. A shaven pussy has become so commonplace that it almost seems that having pubic hair is a fetish. What's good for the goose is good for the gander (and perhaps the goose in the bargain?every lover for whom I have plucked has been appreciative and enthusiastic).

Yes, I did say pluck. It's not nearly so winceful as it sounds, can be done incrementally, lasts longer and there's no stubble.

Name Withheld, Columbus, OH

Patriot in the Northwest

MUGGER: Thanks for writing into your column the first part of "The Star Spangled Banner" (8/29). Even just reading the words and hearing the music in my head sent chills down my back. The words of that song always make me cry, too, knowing how brave and determined and out-matched those first patriots were.

Peggy Whitcomb, Salem, OR

Animals Are People Too

Re: "Gamecocks of New York" by Dennis Jordan (8/29). I notice a link among people who seek to justify their love of cruelty. They don't take responsibility for their values and conduct. They blame Nature or Society or their Upbringing or their Poverty or their Wealth or their boring Middle-Class Life. They blame Dad, Mom and/or their School. And they always blame their victims. Thus, Mr. Jordan.

"It's nature's way." Roosters: "It's what they do." Is that why some men rape women and beat up their wives and why slavery was legal until a century and a half ago in Western society? Until a few decades ago, American police departments said domestic violence was not a crime, but "nature's way." Aristotle argued that slavery was "nature's way." In the early 1960s, my father told me that separation of the black and white "races" was "nature's way." So why don't we just let nature have its way? Leave cruelty and bigotry and rape alone. No need to worry about the victims.

Since we have 16 roosters?two of them former gamecocks?living amiably together with 120 hens at our sanctuary in Virginia, and since I have been keeping chickens, ducks and turkeys successfully for 12 years, I can assure readers who do not know these birds that only in the rarest cases do roosters engage in prolonged, or even any, combat. Their occasional faceoffs and showdowns simply dissipate into their many other daily activities, like foraging and dust-bathing and looking out for their hens. Sen. Wayne Allard's bill to ban interstate transportation of birds for cockfighting will become law because America is outgrowing the phase of our history represented by Mr. Jordan.

Karen Davis, President, United Poultry Concerns

And Feathers in Their Caps

I bet the women who wrote in to protest Dennis Jordan's excellent piece of writing ("Gamecocks of New York," 8/29) all have "Celebrate Diversity" bumper stickers on their cars.

Tim O'Brien, Scituate, MA

He Loves Cecil Adams And He Votes

This is two weeks in approximately one month that your paper has not run "The Straight Dope." I don't expect much from a free newspaper, but "The Straight Dope" is the single reason that I have picked up your paper for at least 10 years now. Every week that "The Straight Dope" is missing makes me one pissed-off reader. If the column is now bimonthly, please let us readers know.

On the other hand, thanks for Knipfel and Tabb, and I still miss David Lindsay's "Patent Files"?any chance of his returning in some form? One last question: Who actually reads MUGGER? I've tried (countless times) and never once have I succeeded.

Michael Gerber, Manhattan

D Generation

I'm still a huge fan of New York Press, but I have to say your website has nothing on villagevoice.com. The Voice posts prime content from next week's issue on a daily basis, while the "Daily Billboard," while often good for a laugh, is simply what happens when Jim Knipfel downs a Red Bull and skims the New York Post. Your recent baffling decision to slice the Internet-only music reviews from your already content-starved site doesn't exactly bolster your status in the alt-weekly wars.

Those reviews were always readable, intelligent and absorbing. Your critics approached music with passion to spare, but they had a sense of perspective. They didn't use music as an opportunity to unloose a slew of low puns (a la the Voice) or make the annoying mistake of romanticizing barhopper sleaze-rock (a la Richardson and LeeKing). Hopefully their absence from nypress.com will prove temporary.

D. Swinton, Manhattan

The Chock-Fullest

Although this letter falls into the area of nitpicking, I would truly appreciate your forwarding it along to the estimable Taki. Let me quote his 8/29 column in which he is a crew member aboard the superboat Stealth. "With the gun, Kenny as usual had us out first, and took a port tack right away while everyone else was going to the right."

As even the least able-bodied seaman knows, when you are on a port tack away from the starting line you are going to the right while those on starboard sail to the left. More generally, I have been constantly amazed over the years at the broad swath of athletic achievements through which Taki has, theoretically, cut?and at a championship level, no less. I would bet that his trophy room, and I believe that somewhere between Park Ave. and Cap d'Antibes there exists such a room, is chock-full of mementos to his vanity. I hope there is a trophy for sailing, and I would also hope that the largest trophy in his collection depicts a semi-tragic Greek throwing a large Black Angus over his shoulder.

John Gutierrez, Manhattan

 

But Then It Wouldn't Be A Screed

Carol Iannone believes that feminism, like the PLO, has no moderate faction, just the one extreme and the one less extreme ("Taki's Top Drawer," 9/5). That observation might come as a surprise to Christina Hoff Sommers, Wendy McElroy, Nadine Strossen, Joan Kennedy Taylor, Camille Paglia and Cathy Young, all of whom are at once feminists and reject standard feminist orthodoxy.

I'm not a feminist either (hey, I'm not even a woman), but let me put it to our asexual dominatrix this way. Consider a woman living in fear of a violent, brutal, disgusting husband, a "man" who taught his children exactly two valuable lessons in life: duck and cover. Would you consign her and her children to a life of fear? That happens to be the kind of home I grew up in, until?thank God?a divorce happened. Thanks to a woman's right to seek a quick divorce, I'm in a lot better shape than had America nipped its feminist experiment in the bud.

Iannone, I dare say, knows a good deal less about the origins of feminism than she lets on. But then again, a highly selective use of facts seems to be her style; witness her recent ridiculous attack on the Evil Hollywood Menace after remembering a few clips from Pulp Fiction (8/15), a movie now seven years old. I myself am on the right, so tell Ms. Iannone not to waste her time preaching to the choir. I know the tune by heart, having written for National Review, Policy Review, Human Events and other conservative organs. Just tell the woman to check her primitive, ad hominem hatreds at the door the next time she sits down to write a screed.

Carl F. Horowitz, Ashburn, VA

Loves Taki's Drawers

As a New York Press loyalist I just wanted to register my disapproval of the smaller "Taki's Top Drawer." Go back to the heady days with the broadsheet around the tab and pack it with more politics. Hit hard on frauds in the media and politics. I understand all too well there is a recession, but the Press still looks profitable to me. Hire people like M. Wolff and then fire him to generate publicity. Launch an attack on Howie Kurtz's mom. Beat up Pinch Sulzberger. Do anything, just don't get smaller.

Tom Phillips, Manhattan

A Fan's Lot

MUGGER: After watching a recent Red Sox-Yankees game, I can understand your disappointment ("Daily Billboard," 8/31). Cone pitched his best game and in the end watched the Yankees win on a one-hitter, one strike away from a perfect game. When you give up four hits and one run, you should win, unless you are the 2001 edition of the Red Sox. I guess it was not Jimy after all.

As a native of the Washington, DC, area, I am a Redskins fan and for the past decade I've had nothing to cheer. Marty Schottenheimer, (who I think is one of the best NFL coaches) has inherited a shell of a team and has to deal with George Steinbrenner Jr. As for baseball, my hometown team moved twice, so I adopted the Kansas City Royals. Like many other Kansas City teams, they are now becoming also-rans. As for basketball, I grew up with no Washington pro team, so I adopted the Celtics. This worked out well for the next two decades and I never changed my allegiance, even after the old Baltimore Bullets moved to Washington. Then the Celtics fell in love with Ricky Pitino, who showed that he may know how to coach but he couldn't manage a team as GM. So right now, I have three losers.

Good luck with your Red Sox. Maybe the curse will be lifted under new ownership.

Tom Donelson, Marion, IA

Where's Mike "Scuffy" Scott When You Need Him?

MUGGER: I was disappointed when you didn't publish a post-Labor Day column, but I'm young and I got over it. You did write about your Fear and Trembling and The Sickness Unto Death feelings concerning the demise of your once- and soon-to-be-again beloved Red Sox in that "Daily Billboard" piece on 8/31. The bottom line is, "it sucks to lose."

Like yourself I have suffered for what amounts to most of a lifetime, hoping for my beloved Astros to finally get over. Maybe this is their year. You can take a little solace in the fact that the Red Sox have at least played in a World Series in your lifetime. I am still waiting for mine. As a matter of fact, I think the "Stros" are going to win their division and should win the National League. If that were to happen I'd holler, "Daddy! Sell the cattle! I've died and gone to heaven!" If they fall flat on their faces and don't get to the dance, I'll feel "like I've been eat by a goat and shit off a cliff." I'll hold the crying towel for you in Texas. Promise you'll hold it for me in New York.

Tracy Meadows, Brenham, TX

But Still...

MUGGER: It was good to read something intelligent about Bill Buckner for a change (8/29). As a New Yorker in Boston I don't get that very often. I have been trying for years to explain to people here that the whole play wasn't Buckner's fault for several reasons:

He had bad legs and shouldn't have been in there playing defense in that situation. Mookie Wilson was very fast and, given the condition of Buckner's legs, it's no certainty that Buckner would have beaten him to first base. It appeared to me that he looked up momentarily to see whether the pitcher was coming over to cover first and where Wilson was.

It's virtually impossible to talk intelligently about baseball with anyone up here. When I tell folks that even as a Yankee fan I thoroughly enjoyed the game last year when Pedro Martinez beat Roger Clemens on Trot Nixon's ninth-inning home run, people just think I'm strange. I felt badly for both Mike Mussina and David Cone after that great game two Sundays ago. Mussina for losing his perfect game, and Cone for losing that game on a ninth-inning error during a great comeback year after it appeared that he was all through.

As far as I'm concerned, the "Curse of the Bambino" is nothing more than the worst front office in either league for at least as long as I've been following baseball, dating back to 1945.

Edward Friedman, Marblehead, MA

Mike Housing-man

MUGGER: I enjoy your column greatly, even the family stuff. Recommend you stay in Sea Pines or Harbor Town next time you try Hilton Head (8/22).

Mike Hausmann, Alpharetta, GA

Yasir's Not His Baby

Scott McConnell's temper tantrum against Israel ("Taki's Top Drawer," 8/29) will delight anti-Semites, self-loathing secular leftist Jews, the State Dept., The New York Times and other Israel-haters like "Palestine Peter" Jennings of ABC, otherwise known as the Arab Broadcasting Company.

McConnell tries to sanitize the Egyptian migrant serial killer Arafat and his minions, who are romanticized by some in the West but universally despised and feared by every Arab regime in the Middle East. When Jordan and Egypt invaded the "West Bank" and Gaza in 1948, they never gave the Palestine Arabs living on these historically Jewish lands their own nation in the 19 years until the 1967 Six Day War. They oppressed the Palestinian Arabs living there and kept them destitute and uneducated. After 1967 Israel gave them schools, universities, clinics and hospitals.

When Arafat's terrorists tried to take over Jordan in 1970, King Hussein ordered his armed forces to wipe out the PLO. Five thousand were slaughtered in what the Palestinian Arabs still mourn as "Black September." Most of those who escaped fled to Lebanon. Saudi Arabia and Kuwait deported all of their Palestinian Arabs because they were a fifth column that supported Saddam Hussein in the Gulf War. All Arab countries deny employment and citizenship to Palestinian Arabs. Most are confined in refugee camps.

Arafat murdered thousands of Christians in his Lebanese PLO terror state set up by the survivors of Black September. In 1982 the Israeli army under Ariel Sharon defeated Arafat in Lebanon after years of attacks on northern Israel. The State Dept., always on the side of the Arabs, forced Israel to give Arafat safe passage to Tunisia. We are still paying for the stupidity and dishonor of the Arabists of Foggy Bottom who saved Arafat and the PLO even though he murdered many U.S. citizens including Ambassador Cleo Noel Jr. and his Charge d'Affaires George Curtis Moore in Khartoum in 1973.

McConnell calls the land that was the site of the Jewish kingdoms of Judea and Israel thousands of years before Muhammad was born?the land that's had a continuous Jewish presence for 3800 years?the "occupied West Bank and Gaza." Ninety-five percent of the Palestinian Arabs living on this historically Jewish land are under the corrupt, dictatorial rule of Yasir Arafat; McConnell has the gall to write that Israel is "a brutal occupying power for most Palestinians."

McConnell does not tell us that all Jews were expelled from Arab countries and no Jews can live in an Arab nation. He also does not say that Israel allows one million disloyal Arabs to live in Israel as citizens who vote and serve in the Knesset. There is little doubt that a state of Palestine would invite forces in from Iran, Iraq, Syria and other Arab regimes and launch a new war in the Middle East.

In every speech he gives in Arabic, Arafat promises to wipe out Israel (a country that does not appear on Arab maps) and raise the flag of Islam over Jerusalem and the Judeo-Christian Holy Land. McConnell's slanted diatribe can only influence the ignorant and uninformed, antinational cosmopolitan leftist Jews and the anti-Semites who try to disguise their hatred of Jews by embracing the blood-drenched Arafat and his jihad against Western, democratic Israel. There is little doubt on whose side Scott McConnell is in what the historian Samuel Huntington calls a "clash of civilizations."

George Rubin, Manhattan