Man vs. Machine in re Baseball; Rumors of the Death of Taki's Column Are Greatly Exaggerated; Mideast Conflict Rages on with Cabal and Heimlich; More

MUGGER: As a transplanted Red Sox fan, I enjoy your weekly comments about baseball and your eternal optimism and love for the Sox. Just wanted to share with you the results of an experiment I performed with the help of my Nintendo GameCube and Acclaim's All-Star Baseball 2002. The game allows you to make trades between teams and play out a season as your favorite team, or to simulate an entire season.

The game comes programmed with the closing lineups from the 2001 season, and when I ran an entire simulated season, the Diamondbacks won the simulated series. So, as an experiment I made trades between all 30 teams, removed retired players and created new players to stand in for this year's rookies.

It cost me a night's sleep, but it was well worth it when each team's lineup matched the Opening Day rosters as closely as possible. I ran an entire simulated season to see who would win, and here are the results: AL East Champion: Yankees. AL Central: Tigers. AL West: Rangers. AL Wild Card: Red Sox. NL East: Braves. NL Central: Brewers. NL West: Diamondbacks. NL Wild Card: Mets.

In the Simulated Playoffs, the Yanks beat the Rangers and the Red Sox beat the Tigers, setting up Yanks vs. Sox in the ALCS. The Mets beat the Brewers and the Diamondbacks beat the Braves, setting up another great match in Mets vs. Diamondbacks. In the ALCS, the Sox edge out the Yanks 4 games to 3, and the Diamondbacks crush the Mets 4 games to 1. World Series: Red Sox vs. Diamondbacks, and the Sox triumph in six games.

I'm not saying these predictions are accurate, but I wanted to get it out there, in the event this really is Boston's year. Isn't it amazing that the power to run an entire simulated baseball season is available in a home videogame system?

I'm saving my prediction to see how accurate it turns out to be. It would just be great if someone in the media could save it too, and verify what I said in April. Mathematical proof that if the Sox stay healthy, they can win it all in 2002! Keep hope alive!

John Holderried, Brooklyn

Rumors of His Death...

Does this mean that there will be no more Taki ("Top Drawer," 5/1)? If this is so I'm truly very sad!

Janet Webb, Wollogorang, New South Wales, Australia

You Can't Handle the Truth

Why is Taki leaving? Please tell me truthfully and do not bullshit this Texican as to the real reason(s). He and Claus von Bulow are the most literate writers in the paper. Tell me.

Earl H. Bell, Powderly, TX

Fortuna Still Spins Upward

We don't always agree, but I always read Taki ("Top Drawer," 5/1). We were lucky to have him for all this time. Congrats on Derek Lowe's no hitter, MUGGER.

Jim Klein, San Francisco

The editors reply: For crying out loud, these letter writers claim to be loyal Taki readers? Taki stated at the end of his last column, "This is 'Top Drawer''s last issue..." yet also added, "I am staying on." And indeed he is. His column appears on p. 28 this week.

Eat the Rich

I loved last week's Real Estate Guide pullout (5/1), especially where you substituted any valuable information for MUGGER's usual gasbag accounts of his unspectacular and boring past and his habitual "it's okay to disrupt a neighborhood's fabric as long as you have money" ramblings ("Tribeca on the Rebound"). Also, the pathetic, lame-ass musings of Amy Harmon's poor-little-rich-girl saga were priceless ("Under My Parents' Roof"). Keep up the good work.

Saul Pressman, Brooklyn

"Dark" Victory

Mike Signorile: I just read your piece about the hidden past of Cardinal Spellman and the cardinals in the Church ("The Gist," 5/1). Wow! I am floored. Thanks for revealing to me and others what you have uncovered, and thanks for your sharp angle. Good work, my man!

Robert Irvin, St. Peter, MN

But Cabal's Better-Looking

In last week's "Daily Billboard" Alan Cabal wrote, "[Joan] Rivers' total lack of compassion and unbelievably poor taste gets her the G.G. Allin Award from this reporter" (5/3), regarding her off-color remarks about the widows of 9/11. I must state here I strongly disagree. Having known Mr. Allin and his smell very well, the "Geege" never did anything near as sick as what Joan Rivers did. Sure, he ate shit, threw it at his audience and even pissed near my bass player's head while he was asleep, but he'd never stoop as low as Ms. Rivers did. However, Cabal certainly did last week, when he denied the Holocaust in another "Daily Billboard" item, "Massacre Revisionism" (4/30). I'd compare Ms. Rivers and Mr. Cabal more to each other. Only Joan Rivers has nicer teeth.

George Tabb, Manhattan

Re: Heimlich's Maneuver

Re the "Daily Billboard." I can understand Adam Heimlich's objections ("Contaminating the Cause," 5/1) to Alan Cabal's piece ("Massacre Revisionism," 4/30) on Israel's dealings with the now-disbanded UN committee of inquiry only to the extent that any comparison of Israel with Nazi Germany is sometimes enough to cloud my own judgment.

But Cabal did not in fact say that the Holocaust never happened; he was comparing what he saw as the Israeli government's attempt to keep the truth of what happened at Jenin from coming out with the efforts of Holocaust deniers. (Cabal thereby implies that Israel has obviously and unambiguously committed a crime to hide, which is equivalent in kind though not in scale to the Holocaust; I disagree and think the comparison odious, but this is not Holocaust denial.)

More easily and credibly attacked would have been Cabal's implicit argument that any bias the UN group might have had pales before the biases and operational unfairness of the Soviets participating in the Nuremberg trials, and that since we have accepted the latter, we must live with the former. We could have a long argument about the commensurability of the two, but this would ignore a basic flaw in the argument: it assumes that a past injustice can excuse a current one. By the same logic, we must live with current anti-Semitic incidents in France because they pale before Vichy; current racial injustices in America because they don't measure up to slavery; and any Israeli criminal excesses in the pursuit of legitimate self-defense because both sides did worse during the 1948 war.

The simplest reason anyone should call himself a "progressive" is that the evident and routine evils of the past demand that we do better now; it can be a stiff price, but in return we get to be human. If we will not pay it, we will be as the Eldads of world would counsel (in one of the articles to which Heimlich linked)?but their prescription is really only fit for beasts, blond or not.

M. Turyn, Watertown, MA

Gotcha Steamed, Huh Tom?

Regarding your admonition of people who blabber in movie theaters ("Billboard," 5/1), why not go further? I hear people talking at full volume in many inappropriate locations, from plays to dance theater to folk music shows, and so on. It's even more annoying than you say, because these people don't even try to whisper! We should make a law allowing other patrons to lynch you if you do this, you selfish fucks.

Regarding the guy (was he Canadian? that would figure) who said our schools suck because they're run by the government ("The Mail," 5/1), ask this cliche-spewing idiot why our private schools and parochial schools have test scores just as bad as the public schools'! Didn't you see the Daily News expose that showed that almost all schools in NYC, whether run by the government or those rapists in the Catholic Church and other private groups, are shit? There are many Catholic schools in Manhattan that had 95-percent failure rates when its students took the standard math tests! In fact, the best schools in NYC (according to the statistics) are all public schools, and the lowest-performing schools are all private! (On average, the private schools' scores are slightly less atrocious than the public school scores.)

Don't get me wrong, I'm not defending the government. They can hardly do anything right. But neither can the private sector.

Tom Bachar, Manhattan

What, Like Athens?

MUGGER: I believe that I have written several very positive letters complimenting you on your weekly pieces. Perhaps I should abide by the adage, "If you have nothing positive to say, say nothing at all," but I can't. For someone who had not even heard of Tribeca prior to 9/11, well, I found your "Tribeca on the Rebound" piece basically of very little interest ("Real Estate Supplement," 5/1). I must admit I read it through in the hopes another subject would be considered. The interest factor contained in this piece is limited to Tribecans. I would suggest at least a 50-50 deal, with at least 50 percent being written on another topic. Just too parochial in interest. Sorry, but I truly wait in anticipation for each column, and, well, I just felt disappointed this time.

Tom Trimble, Athens, GA

Well, "Love"'s a Little Strong

TAKI: Vive Le Pen indeed ("Top Drawer," 5/1). If you like him you must have loved Hitler, you stupid old fart.

Stephen Saunders, Manhattan

Sssshhhhh...

MIKE Signorile: Great article on Cardinal Spellman ("The Gist," 5/1). I recently saw an In the Life episode on PBS about Father Mychal Judge, basically saying it was an "open secret" that he, too, was an active homosexual with a long-term lover. What gives? Are admitted gays able to be ordained if they vow celibacy, or do they not admit to their homosexuality?

Victor Starna, Valley Stream, NY

NYP Mail: the Natural High

I have been an avid reader of your newspaper since its very first edition, and though I most often feel miles apart from the general editorial thrust, I have, without fail, looked forward to reading "The Mail" and have loved the furious give and take between readers and writers. Now to the point.

Where in hell did you find Ethan Gologor? His letter ("The Mail," 5/1) about George Samzuely's "Israel's Hamas" ("Taki's Top Drawer," 4/24) is more disjointed than a Moondog sonata being interpreted by Sun-Ra and his Inter-Galactic Arkestra. My first reaction was to clip this missive and send copies to all the other graduates of Bellevue Ward 4 to show them how far we have come.

Please keep his mail coming, if possible; it gives me a sense of serenity and a feeling of quietude and well-being forged in the knowledge that somewhere there must have been a huge heist of Thorazine originally earmarked for NYC hospitals that is now available to me.

John Gutierrez, Manhattan

Disraelite

Re your "Daily Billboard": Adam Heimlich ("Contaminating the Cause," 5/1) misses the point regarding Alan Cabal's piece ("Massacre Revisionism," 4/30). Heimlich, while professing to care for Palestinians, is actually doing nothing more than rehashing the same Israeli propaganda that their hired publicity guns shoot into the mainstream media anytime any journalist with credibility has the "audacity" to question the injustices being inflicted on the Palestinians by the Israeli war machine and its society. While Heimlich is quick to mouth off about the "despotic" ruler bit about the "Arabs," he forgets the terrorist fathers of the state of Israel who had no problem killing innocent Palestinians or calling them unwanted "negros."

History has a strange way of correcting injustices. Unless the Zionists of Palestine decide on a mass extermination or eviction of the native people of the land (the Palestinians), the Palestinians will once again be the majority in the historical land of Palestine. Not even the influx of Jewish and non-Jewish refugees from Russia can turn the tide around the next time. What does Mr. Heimlich think about the fact that Israel allows non-Jewish Russians to immigrate to Israel and become instant citizens while Palestinians born in Israel proper who were evicted in 1948 have no rights to citizenship and no rights to their homes and lands, many that have been in their families' possession for hundreds of years? Will he just pretend that the horrors of 1948 never existed as so many Israelis tend to do? Peace comes through justice and truth.

George Yazenvich, Annandale, VA

One Cabal's Enough

The excesses of the Israeli state constitute intolerable violations of human rights. Alan Cabal, in "Massacre Revisionism," did what a journalist should do: tell us the truth regardless of the prevailing inclinations of the audiences. He should be commended, and more critical journalists like him should join your ranks.

Hana EL Sahly, Houston

Risible Sun

Man, Neal Pollack's article cracked me up ("Culture," 4/24)!

Michael E. Volek, Tsuyama, Japan

Homesick

MUGGER: Andy (spoiled-rotten little s---head) Cuomo is a major-league a-hole (5/1). That sense of entitlement he has is as appalling as the Clintons' and the Kennedys'. I just hope Pataki dusts his ass off bigtime. It would be quite a treat to see that spoiled little schmuck get his just deserts. He is so arrogant?it will be great to hear him blame his loss on that vast RWC, in NY no less. That is just the point: he is more concerned with his entitlement than with avenging his meathead father's loss in 1994. And his wife has that typical Kennedy attitude (only a liberal cares about working folks). Sad part is that after Pataki kicks his butt, he will represent NY in Congress. I hope it won't be in your district. As a former Queen's boy now living in Boston, I sympathize with you for having so many chowderhead liberals to put up with in NY. Up here in Massachusetts, they at least have to fight the bluebloods for face time.

Kieran Feeney, Watertown, MA

Greek Chorus?

MIKE Signorile: I just read your column about Cardinal Spellman ("The Gist," 5/1). Are you familiar with Familiar Faces, Hidden Lives: The Story of Homosexual Men in America Today, by Howard Brown? He mentions Cardinal Spellman's affairs with every chorus boy on Broadway. There is a current paperback version available through Barnes & Noble.

Vince DeFeo, New Haven, CT

What Fidelity to Women?

Taki: I began reading you in the Sunday Times of London many years ago and when you moved back to the States I kept up online. When you were no longer with them I kept running your name in search engines and was thrilled to find you at New York Press. Your insight has brought me great joy and education, and now you say: no more. You will be missed more than you know. I have quoted you so many times and sent many friends to your site?liberal, libertarian and conservative?knowing they would be hard-pressed to find real fault with a man of such experience and knowledge. My English wife sometimes found you a bit too macho in your fidelity to women, but nonetheless enjoyed your humor and honesty. No more Taki seems hard to fathom, but thank you for the great work you have done. If you are ever in Telluride, CO, please allow me to buy you a drink or as many as you would like. All the best.

Ben Blouse, Ridgway, CO

Thanks, But...

Many of us who haven't had the means to insulate ourselves from the "real" world will miss Taki, a man of privilege who saw things from our perspective. Unlike a goodly number of the pampered few, he actually does seem to know his butt from a bottlecap. Perhaps there might even be others born "booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of God" who see things as clearly as he; their taking up Taki's standard of clear-eyed candor would serve all of us well. I wish him the best.

O'Neill Pollingue, Prattville, AL

The editors reply: Once again, though "Taki's Top Drawer" is no more, Taki will still contribute a weekly column to New York Press.

Not to Worry

MUGGER: Why do you bother attempting to write about politics and dissect your peers' contributions at all? I respect that you're such a good family man and a loyal New Yorker (except where baseball is concerned, but I respect your undying allegiance to the Sox while living within their nemesis' city walls even more). But what garbage out of your pen, accusing as anti-Semitic any writing that does not promote Sharon's free rein to do whatever he deems necessary in the name of Zion (4/24). The term "anti-Semitic" has taken on all the cachet of "racist" when used by Jesse or Al. It's funny how, in the name of trying to showcase your conservative stripes, you accuse The New York Times of being both way liberal and anti-Semitic. Used to be conservatives were anti-Semitic (remember Nixon and Graham?). Another point in your favor, however, is that, despite your conservatism, your publication plays many angles. Between Taki and whoever is writing with him in "Top Drawer" that week, Michelangelo Signorile and Cockburn, there's a great variety of viewpoints to chew on. You should stop wasting time trashing the Times, though, and that goes for all of you. It makes you look a lot less intelligent than you are. The Times is like you?they have a viewpoint, and it leans a little to the left, but they do offer writing and reporting from the other end as well. Hell, I wouldn't be surprised to see Dick Cheney write his own little op-ed piece for the Sunday Times, once W is out of office, extolling the virtues of all petroleum all the time. Finally, never turn into the Voice, whatever you do.

Mike Smoyer, Hoboken, NJ

Noted

MUGGER: The best songs on Elvis Costello's debut album were the two ballads, "No Dancing" and?especially, unforgettably?"Alison" (5/1). In terms of pure tunefulness and catchy (if enigmatic) lyrics, I'd say the best thing Costello ever did was "Oliver's Army," with its wonderful bridge ("...with the boys from the Mersey and the Thames and the Tyne") and its ultra-hooky chorus.

Robert Stacy McCain, Washington, DC

Add Water?

Mike Signorile: I thoroughly enjoy the pieces you write. Thank you for writing them!

Will Klump, Manhattan

But Then, Who Is?

MUGGER: You should fire George Szamuely. He is not up to your level, it must be said. His article is blatant anti-Jewish misinformation ("Taki's Top Drawer," 4/24). Does he write this garbage to see how many responses he can elicit? Taki at least brings some semblance of fact to his reasoning.

Bim Walters, Manhattan

Taki's Never Flippant

I am disgusted by the bourgeois, apparently flippant trumping of Le Pen by Taki ("Top Drawer," 5/1). The equating of Muslim refugees to "parasites" is despicable, insensitive and dumbed-down, and echoes the dangerous propaganda of equating the Jews to rats in Hitler's Germany.

While Taki is busy eating hors d'oeuvres at his father's aristocratic soirees, hobnobbing with cultural fascists, there are literally hundreds of thousands of immigrants everywhere who are unemployed, dislocated and in impoverished conditions due to policies affecting Third World countries, the same countries that are exploited for their national resources for the benefit of the aristocracy that most probably Taki's pop is a part of.

The real reason for Le Pen's and Taki's disdain has little to do with the greater good, and is just another example in the long list of examples of the extreme hate of the poor by the wealthy. As this gap continues to widen, it will only become more apparent that class war is a new battle, and Le Pen and Taki will be there turning the gas on the homeless.

Brian Bauman, Boulder, CO

Never

Taki writes, "America, where free enterprise lives and is flourishing" ("Top Drawer,"5/1). He can't be serious. Stop, think, reconsider.

J. Beldon, Raleigh

You Know, Sox

MUGGER: As always, great reading your column. You should send out news alerts: "Hey knucklehead, MUGGER's got a new one." Don't fret about Jimmy Carter (4/24). This new business about the Saudi money he's been sopping up while playing Jesus the poor carpenter is about to bite him in the ass like a Yankee nightmare. Yankee nightmare? You know, Diamondbacks.

Skip Press, Burbank, CA

Yikes, Good Luck

I just finished reading C.J. Sullivan's article "Players' Pianos: The Shrinking World of the NYC Lounge Singer" (4/17). As a producer of a vintage cabaret show, Rouge: the New Bohemia downtown, I applaud his efforts in bringing attention to a growing concern of many of us who are trying to keep performance art alive.

The fact is, many young performers, especially in the Lower East Side, are fighting to keep cabaret alive. Their passion is to either replicate vintage cabaret from the 20s and 30s or create a modern-day interpretation. I have never met such a dedicated group of talent who are passionate about performing and supporting an art form that must be remembered. As an example, Nicole Renaud, one of the young performers in the Rouge troupe, attended the "Petit conservatoire de la chanson de Mireille" in Paris, a school run by Mireille, the foremost cabaret star in Paris. She has been hailed an "ethereal soprano" by New York Times entertainment writer Doreen Carvajal. The article was a sign that young talent preserving cabaret is worthy of support and recognition in a very competitive industry.

A life's passion is not work, nor is it easy in a city where laws prevent you from dancing at many of the venues that encourage young cabaret artists to perform. Business owners are anxious about the current cabaret laws and many have received fines. This in itself puts a damper on the essence of cabaret.

We are taking our show out of town this summer to the Hamptons, at Luna in Wainscott, where we hope to expose a sophisticated audience to the art form and thrill them into supporting cabaret venues in town.

Patrick Bonomo, Manhattan

Wild Guess: Not a Jew?

I think that Alan Cabal's articles about Palestine are fair and evenhanded. You should be commended for having such a nonbiased writer on your staff. It is refreshing to hear voices of reason coming from your press. Please keep up the good work.

William G. Shanin, Santa Maria, CA

You Go, Gerry

MUGGER: I enjoyed this article. It was very informative for someone who is not that savvy about the New York political scene. If I had any doubts about what you had said, I dismissed them when I read your opinion of Eric Alterman (5/1). I find it unbelievable that a man who dispenses such a blatant misrepresentation of the truth can enjoy the status of a featured writer on MSNBC. I always write a rebuttal to his articles.

Geraldine Jensen, Portland, OR

He Said/He Said

Adam Heimlich in "Contaminating the Cause" insists that only Zionists like himself have the right to comment on the Israeli assault on the Occupied Palestinian Territories: everyone else is simply an anti-Semite ("Daily Billboard," 5/1). The Zionists of the Israeli left, he maintains, "genuinely care about Palestinian lives" and represent a "great source of information and thoughtful opinion," presumably unlike Alan Cabal, whose criticism of Israeli hypocrisy in concealing war crimes offended him so deeply ("Daily Billboard," 4/30). Unlike Cabal, Zionists of the Israeli left, Heimlich warns, are the source of "reasonable criticism of Israel." Like Zionist clockwork he predictably goes on to demonstrate by example what happens to any and all "unreasonable" (by which he means non-Zionist) commentators: after intentionally misrepresenting Alan Cabal's argument with a malice verging on hysteria, he denounces Cabal personally as a Holocaust-denying anti-Semite whose observations inevitably arise from "blind hatred" of Jews. Heimlich points a finger at Cabal as a "lazy journalist who parrots propaganda," and quite preposterously suggests that it is Cabal's questions, rather than Israel's unconscionable actions in refusing to allow access to United Nations envoys, that "damage efforts toward peace and justice." Heimlich derides the non-Jewish leaders of the Middle East as totalitarian hatemongers who "spout slurs and distortions...to maintain their grip on power, at the cost of many lives." But the concerted and often well-financed Zionist distortion and policing of all discourse on the subject of Israel and Occupied Palestine, and the totalitarian attempts of Zionists to silence discussion with spurious, kneejerk accusations of anti-Semitism throughout America's print and television journalism, represent a far more dangerous threat to democracy than any "suicide bomber." The "slurs and distortions" of Heimlich himself, as just one cog in a concerted campaign to gain support for the Israeli seizure of Palestinian lands?not to mention the massive ethnic cleansing that the Zionist land-grab inevitably implies?are the smokescreen behind which Israel demands absolute impunity for undeniable and unacceptable war crimes.

Thomas Olson, Manhattan

Thanks, Chico

MUGGER: I know you had a point to make when you brought up Elvis Costello (5/1), but why waste the ink? I guess I've turned into my father. A friend of mine told me that if you ever say the word "chinchbugs," then you have turned into your father. So for the record, "Chinchbugs, dammit!"

Elvis Costello was never any good. If his name had been Horrace, instead of Elvis, we wouldn't be having this discussion. Finally, on a more relevant subject, the Red Sox be looking "berry gooood."

Tracy Meadows, Brenham, TX

nypress.com, amazon.com, Library

I would like to thank Taki for his brilliant essays, which I have thoroughly enjoyed reading over the past few years.

Can you tell me how best to acquire copies of his works, not only those in New York Press, but others published previously and elsewhere? Any consideration will be appreciated. Thank you.

Stephen Flowers, Gainesville, FL

Life Is a River

RE George Szamuely's "Israel's Hamas" ("Taki's Top Drawer," 4/24). In the peculiar populist political zone where right and left converge, it has become a virtual mantra: The U.S.-Israeli war on terrorism is somehow invalidated by the support these countries once afforded the fanatical Islamist politicos they now target. These critics seem unwilling, at least in these cases, to grasp a simple notion: that over time, allies and enemies should and do change, as do alliances and the reasons for them.

For the United States, funding an obscure if well-to-do Saudi mujahideen seeking to force the Soviets from Afghanistan was sensible policy in the midst of the Cold War. At the time, the United States perceived a real threat from "the evil empire"; as for the lunatic fringe of the pan-Islamic umma?it was barely a blip on the radar screen. There was no way to anticipate?or much reason to be concerned?that after dealing a Koranic blow to godless communism, Osama bin Laden's next jihad would focus on his former paymaster: the scandalously secular, Christian-crusading, Jew-controlled Great Satan.

For Israel, aiding the emergence of Hamas was, at the time, also a reasonable approach to a recognizable aim: attempting to splinter Palestinian backing for Yasir Arafat. The Israelis then believed?and this has been borne out recently by documents seized from Arafat's Ramallah headquarters?that the chairman, despite being promoted as a legitimate peace partner by much of the free world, had continued to support terrorism. They hoped a Palestinian power struggle might produce an alternative leader whom they deemed more reliable. There was little reason to suspect that, instead of serving as lighter fluid, Hamas would become an uncontrolled, unquenchable fire?the vanguard of suicide bombers and of, what Israelis consider, an increasingly widespread Palestinian willingness to die and kill for all the land rather than live with some of it; a Frankenstein's monster that, instead of throwing off a more palatable peace partner, may have, to its delight, thrown away any possibility of peace by shifting the Palestinian center, and in quick succession the Israeli one, toward greater intransigence, distrust and radicalism.

Although U.S. and Israeli approaches in each instance are not quite as straightforward as the Arab proverb, "The enemy of my enemy is my friend," they are, even for the peculiar populists, pretty easy to understand. That is, if they wanted to. Their selective understanding?and the frequency with which it applies to Israel or the United States vis-a-vis Israeli-related issues?is far more interesting and suggestive than their abjectly flawed analyses.

Adam Miller, Manhattan

Second-Time/Long-Time

I've been reading New York Press for about a dozen years off and on but until now I've never taken the time to write you about anything. Except that one time I wrote a little snippy comment about the author of the "Ace of Clubs" column, whom I've since learned to appreciate. It's nice to see him back, by the way. Howie, too.

What made me write in here is the recent unpleasantness in "The Mail" and on the "Daily Billboard" (and, if I correctly read between the lines, in "MUGGER") accusing various New York Press writers of anti-Semitism. Clearly, criticism of Israel alone is not evidence of anti-Semitism. But in the case of Alan Cabal, Taki and maybe George Szamuely, I'm afraid the accusations may have some juice.

Adam Heimlich got it right ("Daily Billboard," 5/1). I didn't notice it the first time I read Alan Cabal's "Daily Billboard" piece the day before, and his language is kind of cryptic, but damned if Cabal doesn't seem to say that he thinks that Ernst Zundel fellow has got a point. Doesn't Zundel say the Holocaust didn't happen? And wasn't it Cabal who wrote something a while back about how terrible it was that a Holocaust revisionist convention was canceled? Maybe Cabal could clear this up. Where does he stand on the whole Holocaust-as-a-hoax thing? And why is he bringing it up in pieces about Israel?

As for Taki, anytime you see that gentleman expressing grave concern for the downtrodden and the oppressed you have to raise an eyebrow. Taki himself must have had a chuckle when he wrote that stuff. And yeah, what was the point of it being Easter Sunday ("Top Drawer," 4/10)? His admiration of the Germans of a few generations ago has been made clear and he's always expressing his support of various fascists (not Al D'Amato-type "fascists," but actual, real ones). Really, you don't have to be a commie to have a problem with Le Pen ("Top Drawer," 5/1). And there's all that "Big Bagel" jazz, too. It all sort of paints a picture.

Szamuely, on the other hand, is merely anti-Israel. Still, the hysterical nature of his anti-Israel pieces have made me wonder. His claim that "The terrorist organization Hamas is largely an Israeli creation" was a new one to me ("Taki's Top Drawer," 4/24). What evidence does he cite to support this claim? Well, he says, "A UPI story last year quoted a U.S. government official as saying: 'The thinking on the part of some of the right-wing Israeli establishment was that Hamas and the other groups, if they gained control, would refuse to have anything to do with the peace process and would torpedo any agreements put in place.'" I don't know, that's not exactly a smoking gun, there. The rest of his proof is similar Ollie Stone-style "who stood to gain?" junk. Szamuely's always so skeptical of well-accepted things he doesn't want to be true and so accepting of kooky things that he does want to be true.

I like reading these guys and I don't want to believe they're bigots. I'm sure they're not. But maybe they've lately been giving in to their instincts when they should be rising above them. Or maybe, hopefully, I'm just getting the wrong idea. Furthermore, Armond White knows how to bring it! I never go to the movies anymore but I always read his columns. He's a funny guy.

Michael Dvorkin, Brooklyn

Why Not Move to France, Mike?

I enjoyed reading Taki's "Vive Le Pen!," ("Top Drawer," 5/1). Though I don't know much about Jean-Marie Le Pen, I have no problem admitting it, unlike well over 99.9 percent of our very ignorant "jump on the bandwagon" press/media jackals/pseudo-intellectuals who concoct from thin air marvelously false yet damning stories and slander against individuals who actually stand a chance at disrupting their "parasitic" way of life. Exactly the same media circus attacked Pat Buchanan with media pundits accusing him of everything under the sun without ever having read his books, and of course shunning any form of debate (the necessary ingredient of democracy) of the relevant issues (such as unchecked/out-of-control immigration) that he brought up. God forbid that someone like Alan Keyes (with more intelligence than any of his former mainstream competitors combined) would be allowed to debate national issues with the puppets chosen by big corporations and big money, as he would likely make them all look like fools. (Remember what almost happened with Ross Perot.)

But we must realize that this is not the age of true democracy and true debate; rather, it is the age of big brother and big money where lies told by an omnipotent media a thousand times over become the truth (such as the endlessly distorted and racist anti-Serb reporting from the Yugoslav civil wars). Where people actually desire to be "watched" by innumerable total strangers 24 hours a day ("reality-style tv")?George Orwell must be turning over in his grave. Where black is white and white is black because the "free and fair" media says so. Where censorship of "threatening" ideas is the norm, and where leaders are chosen by the elites for their ability to maintain the status quo rather than to serve ordinary citizens and bring this nation out of its current rut.

Michael Pravica, Las Vegas

Not So, Shure

I enjoy when MUGGER writes about baseball, as the subject interests me at least as much as politics. His 4/24 column was particularly enjoyable, because of the great many boneheaded comments on the subject of the hapless Red Sox.

1. MUGGER says that Pedro Martinez, because of his recent injuries, will likely throw a lower percentage of fastballs than before. Each injured pitcher is different, but more pitchers tend to avoid arm-twisting breaking balls in favor of the more natural motion of the fastball, and Pedro appears to be following this pattern.

2. MUGGER says that the new Red Sox ownership is "World Series hungry," in apparent contrast to the previous. However, the old owners' urge for playoff success is well documented. Not only did they spend lavishly on players, but they felt that the sale price of the team would go up if the Sox won, and that the city would be more likely to grant them the new park that they desperately wanted.

3. Mariano Rivera is simply not as dominant as Eckersley was in his prime. Rivera gives up more baserunners, more runs and loses more games.

4. I appreciate MUGGER's guts in suggesting that Shea Hillenbrand is a potential All-Star. He does appear much improved so far. However, there are three third-basemen in his league around his age (Koskie, Chavez, Glaus) who are all at this point much better hitters and fielders than Hillenbrand.

I had always assumed that MUGGER's unsubstantiated political comments and insults were a function of his special information or insight, but now I do wonder a bit whether he doesn't know what he's talking about on the serious stuff either.

Jason Shure, Manhattan

Russ Smith replies: Everybody's got an opinion on baseball and that's okay with me. But I do look forward to Shure providing a list of my "unsubstantiated" political views.

Yes, MUGGER's Gotta Toe the Line

MUGGER: I just read your article on anti-Semitism in Europe (4/24). The Europeans have a slightly freer press than you dopey Yanks do, so they see more of what is going on in Israel. If that insane porker Sharon were judged by the same standards as was Milosevic, he'd be sitting in the dock next door. His army is slaughtering children, bulldozing their bodies into the rubble, then going into what's left of the victims' homes and pissing and even crapping on the furniture! With that sly little grin, your president calls him a "man of peace." You wonder why Europeans are disgusted?

Why not wake up to the fact that in the first real war of the new century, the IDF's behavior makes the SS in the Warsaw Ghetto look positively chivalrous.

Ah, what the hell, you and I both know why: if you were to tell the truth, your masters would have you cleaning out your desk. You've probably got kids in school and car payments. Sorry I brought it up.

Bernie Busch, Brisbane, Australia

The Seney Plan

MUGGER (4/24) writes of his fellow "baseball dad" (upper-class variety, apparently) and said fellow's opinions regarding Israel: "Let the Israelis do what they have to do."

Since I also hear this sort of thing often from blindly pro-Israel pundits, I must ask: What is it that Israel "has to do"? Bomb more defenseless refugee camps that include babies and children? Shoot at more ancient Christian shrines and wound more clergypeople? Arrest and torture more innocent Palestinians in their sweeps of troublemakers and send more of these innocents home half-dead (and those are the ones who are sent home at all)?

All of these are plainly obvious Israeli acts from flatly unbiased news reports. So now, Israel should be allowed to go further in "doing what it has to do"? Before the tired old cries of "anti-Semite"?which, half the time, mean "one who disagrees with Israeli policy on any subject at all"?begin to ring out, let me say that people are dying horribly on both sides of this conflict. So why can't it be solved, already?

Israel should clear out whatever troublemaking Israeli "settlements" need to be cleared out, and then tightly and militarily seal its borders with the Palestinian areas, which should be left to develop into a Palestinian state. Another limited security zone could be created if necessary. East Jerusalem should be militarily cordoned off after an appropriate evacuation, and its fate can be negotiated later.

This could be done whether anybody?Palestinian or Israeli or hot-aired United Nations mouthpiece?particularly likes it or not, and if an Israeli seal-off of Palestine can be accomplished, then people will get over their agitation in time (the Palestinians will have a state to build, albeit a bit of a forced one; Israel's politicians will actually have to deal with issues other than the Palestinians; and America will have to help both sides, including with such basic issues as water to drink).

To the extent that America is hindering this non-bloody solution, we should stop interfering. To the extent that American economic and military aid (i.e., American taxpayer money) is allowing Israel to exist, we should be insisting on this solution's implementation.

I won't be holding my breath. It seems that Israel and its influential and well-moneyed lobbies in America have no desire for this. Could it be that the streams of cheap and exploited Palestinian labor that Israel has allowed over its borders have finally become too necessary? Or, as George Szamuely suspects ("Taki's Top Drawer," 4/24), does Israel want to do what would be called "ethnic cleansing" if it were carried out by historically Christian Serbs instead of (mostly nonreligious) Jewish Israelis?

MUGGER's friend also opined that "Bush can move on Iraq and Iran." I'm sorry, but this sounds like a cheap, quasi-hip throwaway line from some talk show on the Fox News Channel. Has MUGGER's friend considered the mass bloodshed that "moving on Iraq and Iran" would probably entail? And I don't just mean the blood of Middle Easterners. Maybe this individual has enough in common with the Democrat and Republican Party elites and their big-business connections to want to see this sort of bloody interventionism in the oil-rich and big business-addicting Mideast, but I do not. I'm much more interested in dropping Christian Bibles onto the Mideast than I am in dropping bombs.

In fact, I'm going to assume that my primitive working-classman's opinion will be given just as much respect in polite society as that of MUGGER's friend (ha-ha!), and put forward the radical notion that the taxpayer-funded American military should be protecting Christian-founded America's borders from further terrorist attacks by violent Muslims, instead of traipsing about the globe fighting ill-defined foreign wars in a military scheme that would have shocked our Christian founder, George Washington.

I also think that Americans should start turning to God en masse through the Lord Jesus Christ, which would effect a moral renewal in this country as well as saving a lot of souls. And I think that we should be using our enormous wealth, talent and technology to develop the kind of alternatives to oil that will allow us to tell the Mideast's corrupt Muslim oil chieftains to stick their liquid someplace that I can't mention because I'm a Christian now, and that will force our own oil barons to turn their filling stations into charging stations for electric cars.

And all this opinionating springs from responding to just two quotes from MUGGER's unnamed acquaintance! I guess that means that New York Press remains provocative and interesting. Keep it up, gentlemen and gentleladies.

Jack Seney, Corona, NY