Commie Press Abuses Elian; Ted Rall Complains; Cabal's Weaponry; Nine Out of 10 Readers Agree, the Times is Trash
To whomever wrote the piece about Elian Gonzalez ("Best Hairstyle to Avoid," 9/27): To keep this note on the same level, so you will not encounter any problem in reading it, short and simple not to strain your mosquito brain, you are a fucking asshole. And most probably a fucking communist to boot.
Marcos Duran, via Internet
Your Surname's a Palindrome. Cool!
Writing for New York Press must be a fairly bitter pill to swallow. After all, it's gotta be tough on the ego to have to pay your J-school loans by selling ad space to overweight transsexual prostitutes. It's understandable that you feel resentment due to your professional circumstances. What isn't so understandable is when you lob some of that anger toward Elian Gonzalez, a six-year-old kid who saw his mother die and is just plain lucky to be alive. Taking pot-shots at his haircut and his ethnicity, while indicative of other troublesome symptoms, likely provided only minimal therapeutic value.
I'd like to suggest instead that you engage a good headhunter to help you with your career pursuits (it appears you need some help), and perhaps make an appointment with a board-certified psychiatrist to help you deal with your need to spew worthless bigoted vitriol.
Al Salas, Manhattan
Nice Try, Jenn
Dear New York Press: It's great to see that you're still publishing. Anyway, I was looking through your "Best of Manhattan" issue (fantastic idea?did you pick that one up at an alternative newspaper convention?), and between your hysterical cracks about Irish bartenders and your timely look at Survivor-style living I discovered that you don't like The Stranger anymore ("Best Sign of Alternative Weekly Entropy," 9/27). That was difficult to take. But my frown was turned upside down by your hilarious quips about Elian Gonzalez's hair. You guys are good?really good.
Nice "Best Of Manhattan" cover (9/27). You're losing your minds, right? There's medication for that now.
Tony Millionaire, Los Angeles
We'll Apologize Tomorrow
In your 9/27 "Best of Manhattan" issue ("Best Sign of Desperation from the Village Voice"), you accuse cartoonist Tom Tomorrow of getting suckered by a "false story planted by the Democrats during the '92 election"?the famous tale of President Bush's cluelessness when confronted with a supermarket checkout scanner.
You owe Tomorrow an apology. Videotape of that encounter was zapped around the nation on the evening news on every network, and there's no mistaking Bush's amazed expressions of surprise?unless, of course, you're accusing those clever Dems of faking the whole tape.
"Could it be that Tom Tomorrow is just as willing to lie as any good Democratic operative?" you ask aloud. Tomorrow, whether you agree with him or not, is no Democratic operative. He's endorsed Ralph Nader in this election, and he often critiques Democrats in his work. You're the ones lying about Tom Tomorrow, and your questioning of his integrity is beneath contempt.
In the same breath, you question my "claiming" that the Louisiana GOP supports David Duke. While you're busy writing out your mea culpas to my colleague Tom Tomorrow, bang out another copy for me: David Duke has held, and now holds, party office in the Louisiana Republican Party. Political parties don't appoint officeholders whose politics they oppose. And his support down south does run deep. How do I know? David Duke told me personally.
It's sad to watch the devolution of New York Press, epitomized most recently by your selling off your entire cover to advertising. You used to be a paper that happened to have a right-wing point of view. Now you're a right-wing point of view that happens to have a paper.
Ted Rall, Manhattan
Let's Go Nonprofit
I admired Lionel Tiger's 9/20 "Human Follies" column on advertising in schools. I sincerely wish everyone saw the situation with the clarity that he does. I wonder if there is any solution to commercial omnipresence other than well-directed parenting. I agree that because children are required by law to go to school, they should not be subject to the statistical scalpels of advertisers. But how can we expect anything different, when you can't even read the online version of New York Press without being bludgeoned by flashing ads?
P. Wilson, Tokyo
So Were We
Thank you for the distinction of "Best Flatiron Pizza" for our restaurant La Pizza Fresca Ristorante in your 9/27 "Best Of Manhattan" issue. We were entertained with your blunt and humorous writing style.
Massimo Vitiano, Manhattan
Age, Guile, Gun
Thanks for Alan Cabal's article in praise of middle age ("The Best Things About Being a Middle-Aged Guy in New York," 9/27). Even here in the hinterlands my sentiments are the same?although I will probably opt to carry a 9 mm in my Mean Old Man stage.
And keep paying that Doug Henwood fellow. He's one of the only political economists who make sense.
Alan Cabal has done it again. His musings on middle age are crashingly naff. Apart from his continuing and somewhat obsessive references to the nubility of ladies half his years, his intention to "pack" a combat-modified .45-caliber handgun when he is 65 is most disturbing. As someone who has had the experience of handling most of the popular small arms of the latter half of the last century, I do hope he reconsiders. The Colt is a fine weapon in the hands of a youngster, especially one who has engaged in robust sport, but I would not recommend it for a mature man. Better the furled brolly with a sharpened tip, what? And perhaps a moby with 911 coded on the "direct" button.
John Carroll III, Richmond, VA
Taki'll Turn Her
I love Taki, but he would probably not get a lunch with the lovely and talented Helen Hunt ("My Dream Lunch," 9/27). Doesn't he know she's a lesbian?
Where is Taki? Youth wants to know. We need more Taki. Not just a crumb once a week. Surely he can write at least two columns weekly. And what's with this restaurant stuff in your "Best of Manhattan" issue?
Vern Trotter, Manhattan
William, Sound
I thoroughly enjoyed William Bryk's 9/27 essay, "Tales of a Great City." His style of writing reflects insight and intelligence combined with subtle humor, and is most entertaining as well as informative.
I don't live in New York anymore, so all I know of New York Press now is what I see on the Web. So tell me: Is that it for your "Best of Manhattan" this year? Page after page of bitching about the Times?
So what if The New York Times has a liberal bias? Feel free to read the Wall Street Journal, the Daily News, the Post or, if you can get the pages unstuck, your beloved Weekly Standard. Who gives a shit?
Didn't you guys used to be fun?
Lou Kesten, Lorton, VA
Real Smooth
New York Press has been a little shy of content, I think, since the switch back to all-tabloid. (And ousting Ben Katchor for Neil Swaab? Why not just rerun "The Angriest Dog in the World"?)
So this "Best of Manhattan" was a most refreshing surprise. Only skimming thus far?looks great?but p. 158's gaffe is jaw-dropping, unless a Jim Beam ad's very recently replaced the Maker's Mark billboard I'm familiar with ("Best Billboard").
Naming names isn't part of your "Best Of" tradition, I know, but I hope your teary-eyed, bleary-eyed fabricating boonehead 'fesses up to his or her whiskey shame. A return to the Old Kentucky Home for research purposes may be warranted. Just steer clear of the vats of hot wax.
Chris Beneke, Brooklyn
Contesting Paris
The bizarre description of life in Paris found in Andrew Baker's "Slack Paris: La Vie Gangsta in the City of Darkness" (9/13) contains paranoid exaggerations of the normal hazards of urban life (traffic, street crime, etc.), emphasis on the atypical or isolated incident and its share of inaccuracies.
For example, the author claims that he and a companion watched a passing parade of prostitutes while seated at a cafe on the Rue du Faubourg-St. Honoré "in view of the Arc de Triomphe." No way. There are virtually no sidewalk cafes on the Rue du Faubourg-St. Honoré, an upscale shopping street (high fashion, antiques, pianos) and the address of some major embassies and the presidential palace, surrounded by gendarmes. Scarcely the area to attract the unbuttoned behavior the author describes. Moreover, the Rue du Faubourg-St. Honoré is some distance from the Arc de Triomphe, and from this street it would be a physical impossibility to watch the sun dissolve "through the Arc's distant portal."
The author's fanciful rearrangement of the city's geography is typical of his weirdly distorted psychedelic vision of a city that is, in actuality, an eminently comfortable, safe and civilized place.
Theodore Allison, Paris
Andrew Baker replies: If Allison were as careful a reader as he is elegant a writer he would recall the opening of my piece, wherein I concede that the cliches of which he is so fond?that Paris is civilized, charming, chic and cultured?do have some basis in fact. He would also take into account my own questioning of the frequency of the incidents I observed and my initial desire to dismiss them as having been isolated or at most coincidental. It must be troubling when an interloper does not embrace the received wisdom about a city as thoroughly mythologized as Paris. All the more so when he has the gall to write about it. But an honest examination of any place, even on a personal basis, requires that stereotypes be forfeited in the service of truth. Even when the truth is not pleasing.
As for Rue du Faubourg-St. Honoré: On my next trip in I would be happy to accompany Allison to the spot I write about. As we stroll among the trannies he can rest assured that I, like himself, am a man of high parts and that together we shall partake of nothing more psychedelic than Muscadet.
Disgusting Bitch
Hey MUGGER, you right-wing cocksucker: the "leftist" New York Times consistently persecuted Clinton over the Whitewater nonissue (9/27)! You are either illiterate or a Goebbels-style disinformation specialist! Here's hoping you get gang-raped in an alley and are infected with the AIDS virus!
Sangeetha Chandra-Shekeran, Chicago
A Snuff of Pinch
MUGGER: Your 9/27 piece on the deterioration and present deplorable state of The New York Times is right on the mark! For those of us old enough to remember when it was "the paper of record," the decline is especially discouraging.
MUGGER: I quit my subscription to The New York Times years ago in disgust. I read it off the Web mostly for the drop-jaw factor. Keep up the good work.
Mike Baron, Fitchburg, WI
Wallpaper
MUGGER: Loved your 9/27 column about The New York Times. You nailed it to the wall! Bravo! And three cheers for you! No one ever said it better!
Gene Kinney, Roswell, GA
Pinch Drunk
MUGGER: Great piece last week. Start a continuing column on New York Times screw-ups and bias, updated weekly. Maybe even an Internet site. Anyway, I enjoyed it.
Frank Brown, Branford, FL
Yesterday's News
MUGGER: Between you and Ira Stoll's smartertimes.com, I've canceled my subscription to the Times. Good job. It's about time people started nailing that paper.
Paul Rinkes, Chicago
Pinch, Our Ass
MUGGER: Great column about the Times. I wish everyone in the country would read it. I'm e-mailing it to all my friends.
Jim Dimock, Mission Viejo, CA
Sensing a Pattern?
MUGGER: Articles like yours help me keep my sanity. Thank you. I never buy The New York Times anymore.
Arlene Shipley, via Internet
Rubbed Raw
Still at it, hey Mr. MUGGER? So young. So bitter. Why not simply say fuck The New York Times and let it go at that? Why vent spleen all over the place so that I want to call 911 to rescue you? Do you have health insurance? Relax. Deep breaths.
Fred Lapides, Orange, CT
Soup Bones
It's always pleasant to read a good attack on The New York Times, although it seems incredible that anybody takes it seriously anymore.
Sometimes when arguing with someone it becomes clear that the other party is a screwball, and you tune him out. The Times passed that point years ago. The op-ed page in particular, with the exception of William Safire, is simply unreadable; it's like listening to Eleanor Clift.
MUGGER mentioned one egregious example of Times cluelessness, the 9/21 article by Steven Lee Myers, "Gore's Service Does Not Keep Vets From Bush."
Perfectly understandable. First of all, Gore's "service" was purely pro forma and all servicemen are well aware of this. He was a coddled senator's son and didn't do anything in Vietnam. It is absurd to think that his tour of Vietnam would entitle him to "automatic credibility."
Second, coming after President Bush, a former Navy pilot himself and a fine Commander in Chief, Clinton and Gore did their best for eight years to decimate the U.S. military. Under their leadership the military was underpaid and overdeployed, not to mention Clinton's "Wag the Dog" episodes. How many soldiers are now living off food stamps? Whose fault is it that the best and the brightest in the armed forces are leaving the service in droves? These experienced people cannot be easily replaced.
Regardless of what Gore says on the stump, he has already made his contempt for the military clear. Not only that, the military as a whole, being unusually patriotic, take a dim view of the Draft Dodger and the disgrace he has brought down on the Oval Office, while Gore praised him as a great president and only criticized him when it became politically expedient to do so.
George W. Bush may not be a war hero, but he doesn't need to be to get the serviceman's vote. The important thing is that he has none of Gore's baggage. No military person in his right mind is going to vote for Al Gore. So there's no need for Myers to tar Bush as having the undeserved support of the military. But that's the Times for you.
Joe Rodrigue, New Haven
Tom's Turn
Great Alexander Cockburn article about Thomas Friedman ("I and I: The World According to Tom Friedman," 9/27). I am so glad that someone out there thinks the same thing about him that I do, and had enough guts to say it out loud.
Like my uncle used to say, time wounds all heels, and Friedman's time has certainly come.
Michaele Hailley, Orlando, FL
Beat Him Harder
Alexander Cockburn's denunciation of Tom Friedman was all too kind. It all comes down to this: Friedman is boring and earthbound and absurdly simplistic, living proof that two Pulitzers are worse than one. If any bumbling ass of a managing editor can make a critic, as the saying goes, than it must take even less talent to make a New York Times op-ed columnist. Cockburn's tale was so good, in fact, that one can even forgive him one amazing lapse of judgment: How could anyone actually miss A.M. Rosenthal?
John Howard, Sacramento
Congressman Eats Mule, Dies
Christopher Caldwell ("Personal Bests," 9/27) seems rightfully unimpressed by New York's Congressional delegation. May I suggest he take a look at Jerry Nadler to have his fears confirmed. Nadler passes himself off as a great humanitarian, a friend of the oppressed and a fighter for human rights.
And so he is, except when his commitment to humanity might cost him a few votes. Take the Middle East, where Nadler never demonstrates any concern for Palestinians and their plight. As I write this, Jerry is fighting for legislation that would end U.S. aid for Palestinians if Arafat unilaterally declares a state. Now, Jerry never said word one when Israel unilaterally constructed new settlements or when Jewish settlers unilaterally terrorize Arabs. In fact, I challenge any reader to find any Nadler statement that expresses any kind of concern or anger over Palestinian treatment by Israelis. The irony, of course, is that the Barak government is far more forthcoming than West Side Jerry. Clearly Nadler preferred Netanyahu, who Nadler never once criticized.
I can't decide if Jerry Nadler is merely pandering to the Orthodox Jews in Brooklyn (and hoping that Manhattan doesn't notice) or if he is really one of my fellow Jews who is able to see injustice everywhere except when the perpetrators are Israelis. Either way, we should call him on it. The last thing we deserve is a reactionary nationalist in Congress. It's time for him to go.
Ernest Deckner, Manhattan
Acts of Will
I disagree with New York Press' high opinion of George Will ("Best Hyperbole for an Overrated Senator," 9/27). I believe the only reason ABC has him on their Sunday-morning show is because he, like the other liberals on the show, loves to blast Republicans. The only difference is that he blasts them for not being conservatively pure enough. ABC's idea of political diversity is to have three liberals (Sam on the far left, George on the middle left and Cokie on the near left) and a conservative who loves to pick at and belittle conservatives. This way they can have their cake and eat it, too. They can say they have a conservative on the show, but at the same time be assured that they'll have four people attacking the conservative position. When he's not attacking conservatives for their lack of purity he's pedantic and boring.
Marvin Coverdell, via Internet
Carnegie Hillbillies
MUGGER: Your excellent 9/27 piece about The New York Times was wonderful to read. You might also have added to it the scandalous "holding back" of the sleepover story that the Times was ready to run long before the debate. But that would be just the tip of the iceberg. Thirty years after Tom Wolfe's great "Radical Chic," which covered the celebrated dinner party that Lenny Bernstein gave for the Black Panthers, it is good to see that the limousine liberals have not lost their ability to take hypocrisy to new heights.
Out here in West Texas, we see Bush in a very positive light, although the Times seems to think we live in Bangladesh, sucking filthy air, drinking noxious water, all while busily executing saintly innocent minorities. The decline of the Times, which was caused by the inbreeding of their ownership, continues apace. It is not a moderate voice anymore, but has taken on the "bleeding heart liberal" aspects of Dorothy Schiff's old New York Post, a newspaper that killed itself with its paleo-leftist agenda.
What is frightening is that a bizarre demagogue who may have a mental problem as well as certainly having a moral problem is about to be endorsed by the Times to become President of the United States. What I think would be a good use of soft money would be a nation-wide campaign with the theme "Is Gore Nuts?" Just a loop of his lies and general weirdness along with a Wilford Brimley-like avuncular voice-over would do the trick nicely. Or maybe having crazy dishonest people as President is just another form of workplace diversity?
Jim Levy, El Paso
Ooo! Sassy!
MUGGER: As a reader of New York Press since the very first issue, I feel I must respond to your 9/27 column. It's sad to read an old curmudgeon like you spew such a desperate rehash on the Times?a paper we in New York have tolerated since we were taught to fold it correctly in Journalism 101. The Times must symbolize so much in your life that is lacking (like a Republican president) that you blame it for everything. Are they your Evil Empire, as the Soviet Union was for Ronnie Raygun? I think you know George W. Bush is going to lose (it's so obvious not only in New York, but also in all the other big delegate states), and it must be killing you.
To lose again may prove too much for your ego. It's sad that I feel like I know you enough to be so harsh, but you've put yourself out there. If you're such an outstanding citizen, you would at least mention Ralph Nader in your boldfaced name-dropping column. He gets mentioned in the Times, at least. So would you rather people in New York read the Post or the News or even the Herald Tribune than the Times? At least those papers print the news, which is more than I can say for New York Press?cluttered with ads, entertaining at best, and 25 cents less than the Post, which should account for most of your circulation.
I'm glad you are exposing the Times for its shortcomings. Maybe they'll be less one-sided in the future, but only if the Republican candidate were less detrimental to our national needs and the needs of the environment in which we live. We need people like you, I guess, and papers like yours, but people need to read the news, and the Times has some every day.
Even your e-mail address is outdated, and anyone from Baltimore who names himself "MUGGER" has bridge and tunnel written all over him.
Luke Joerger, Manhattan
Sweet Relief
MUGGER: I have been reading your column for a long time. It is one of about three that I print out so I can sit in my reading chair in the evening and enjoy.
Often your articles include scenarios that would be familiar to New Yorkers, but not to me. Because of your style of writing, I still enjoy it, even though I cannot begin to identify with the situation.
You also provide much-needed relief to my mind, burdened by the agonizing rhetoric spewed by the likes of Rich, Alter, Conason, Clymer and other scumballs, by thoroughly dumping on them at every opportunity.
If only there were more like you!
Gerry Wentz, Melbourne, FL
End of Times
MUGGER: The extraordinary bias of The New York Times is obvious to anyone who reads just about any other newspaper in addition to the Times. Unfortunately, there are still many well-educated people who see the Times as the paper. I grew up in New York City and loved reading the Times. I left 35 years ago. I still receive the Sunday edition here in Philadelphia, and check it on the Web. But its coverage of the "rats" story, Gore's lying about his mother-in-law's medication and its grossly pro-Hillary stance have been the final straw. I have no choice but to rid my home of such pollution. I found your description most accurate.
I am by no means a Bush supporter. I am primarily allergic to Al Gore and his pathetic runningmate Joe "The Puppet" Lieberman, and could never vote for them. Thanks for your most perceptive article.
Arnie Feldman, Bala Cywnyd, PA