MUGGER's Colored Xmas Lights Poll: 100% Pro; O'Connell Kissed Upstate Ass; Taki Waffles on the Waffen; Willis and Van Halen Continue to Rule; Transpondering Scrambling; Signorile and Other Duped AIDS Journalists; More

MUGGER: I also read Michael Kelly's column in The Washington York Post about "white" vs. "colored" lights (12/19). Shame on you, you lumenist pig, for ridiculing the latter. Everyone knows the proper term is "lights of color."

Howard Hirsch, Carson City, Nevada

Get Lit

MUGGER: Hooray for colored Christmas lights! White lights look like you're having a sale at your house. Christmas lights are also contagious?we used to be the only tacky ones, but now our block is lit up like a Christmas tree.

Jan Hutchinson, Tempe, AZ

Texas Love

MUGGER: Just wanted to say Merry Christmas. I discovered your column last year during the campaign. I enjoy it and look forward to it every Tuesday. Best to you, Mrs. M., Junior and Mugger III this holiday season.

Brian Herrick, Houston

AIDS Myths

Michelangelo Signorile: When journalists insist on steering away from thoughtful debate, and turn what could be a noble profession into one of the rankest forms of whoredom and political pandering, a line is crossed ("The Gist," 12/12). As far as AIDS journalists are concerned, the great bulk of their "facts" come from the handily dispensed packets of corrupted science passed out by the pharmaceutical companies. Most wouldn't even call that scratching for the truth, let alone digging for it. Though one should not condone acts of violence or even veiled threats of such barbarity against anyone, breaching such a line of entrenched propagandering and profiteering at the public's expense becomes nearly impossible using accepted forms of civil discourse.

Though understandably upset by the new AIDS activist, you might better serve yourself and the public by fostering a climate of open exchange, rather than his smug brand of activist bashing. The reason AIDS researchers and reporters are leaving the fold (slinking away in disgrace) is due to their inability to support their HIV=AIDS hypothesis with valid scientific corroboration, not because they've been driven away by the insane ACT UP fringe element.

Meanwhile, people go on living in fear and dying of ignorance, oh yes, and the toxic pharmaceutical cocktails. Why? The medical establishment is unwilling to pull the plug on a nearly 20-year charade and admit it was wrong.

William Carl, Manhattan

Social Dis-Ease

Michelangelo Signorile's "And The Band Played On II" fails to mention that Michael Petrelis is in trouble because he can prove the San Francisco-based CDC syphilis alert is a bogus lie. Syphilis rates are surging among heterosexuals. Michael Petrelis has been disproving officials with their own numbers for quite some time. And officials don't like it one bit. I won't speculate why authorities aren't waging an information campaign in the heterosexual "community." However, the real question seems to be: Do late-night irate phone calls and clogging the Mayor's fax machine warrant the incarceration of two HIV-positive gay male activists on a million-dollar bail? I don't think so.

Ronnie Burk, Brooklyn

It's the Chunky Monkey

Jim Knipfel: Very nice article. I used to think that I was turning off streetlights, too ("e-Slackjaw," 12/19). I was walking a lot on hot summer nights, going to the all-night drugstore for a pint of ice cream to cool my brain after hours at a terminal.

I kept noticing that streetlights were blinking off with a distressing regularity. I worried that something was going on. After a couple of weeks of this, the thought occurred to me as I was making another 2 a.m. stroll for a fix of Chunky Monkey. Streetlights go out all the time for various reasons. I notice them (and don't notice that the same thing is happening randomly, all night long for miles in every direction). I only notice them when I am present, and wrongly think it's associated with me/my telepathic powers/aliens who are stalking me.

Of course most people don't notice this, because they aren't outside, on foot after dark. The ones who do undoubtedly don't run out to tell their friends about their mysterious secret powers. Various reasons suggest themselves: it's not a secret power if you tell everyone, the NSA and FBI would track you down to study the uses for your cerebral cortex, the mother-in-law would tell all her relatives that you're a loony, and it might be kind of neat to meet aliens, if they were nice. Love your articles, Merry Xmas.

Matt Conway, St. Louis

That's Rich

Taki: "Rich Sport" was a great article ("Top Drawer," 12/19).

Paul Vandivort, Lakewood, CA

We Doubt That He Will

Taki wrote: "In fact, had I been Irish and of age, I would have fought with Division Charlemagne, a sort of German Foreign Legion comprised of those opposed to communism" ("Top Drawer," 12/12).

Division Charlemagne is actually the 33rd Waffen-Grenadier-Division der SS Charlemagne (Franzosische Nr. 1). Taki is implying that he would have volunteered for the Waffen SS.

The Waffen SS has many volunteer foreign divisions, including Walloons, Flemish, Dutch, Hungarians, Latvians, Estonians, Russians, Ukranians, Croats and so on. They did try to recruit from British and American prisoners but found very few takers. Information on all of these units is available online.

Like Mr. Taki, I am very anticommunist. I might even agree that the Nazis were less of an evil than the communists. I find it easy to admire the courage and skill of German soldiers, including the Waffen SS, during WWII. I think that makes me about as tolerant an audience as Mr. Taki is likely to find.

However, I would never go so far as to say that I would have fought for the Nazis, not even against the communists. I think he should consider a retraction or apology.

Ray Spitz, Atlanta

You'll Take What You Get, And Like It

Please stop misquoting me every time I send a friggin' letter that way you did last week ("The Mail," 12/19). I distinctly remember writing "...facets of good filmmaking," not "facts of good filmmaking," as you so ineloquently typoed. It matters, okay?

C. Zwyer, Manhattan

Multi-Facted Dislike

Bravo to C. Zwyer ("The Mail," 12/19) for the brilliant indictment of "composer/creep" John Williams. Williams has been ruining movies with his overwrought aural excrement for decades, and it's high time someone called him on it.

I don't know when Zwyer went to the Ziegfeld for A.I., but at the first screening last summer it was I who booed when Williams' name appeared in the credits?and I received not only knowing laughter, but applause from fellow audience members who had suffered for hours at the hands of Spielberg & Williams, the Dynamic Duo of tearjerk/kneejerk emotional manipulation. A.I. had two great performances (Osment & Law), and a few gorgeous sets (Rouge City comes to mind), but in the absence of a coherent script (among other gaping holes in the plot, the parents were too doting and brain-dead to notice their monstrous human son torturing the robot boy?) or a clear vision (what was up with the Close Encounters aliens reimagined as Brancusi sculptures?), I found it intolerable.

Similarly and more recently, Chris Columbus' uninspired, pedestrian direction of Harry Potter left me cold, but it was Williams' score that really sucked the life and magic out of J.K. Rowling's modern classic. I'm joining the boycott.

Sylvia Fein, Manhattan

Killin' Time

Tom O'Connell: Thank you for writing what most of us in Ulster County hope will be Blake Killin's swan song ("New York City," 12/12). His Ulster County Townsman is the laughingstock of Woodstock and all the "next" Woodstocks around here. His tissue-thin weekly hasn't ever provoked a lawsuit because no one takes it seriously?even when he falsely accused the good people of Pine Hill of sabotaging their own water supply. Killin represents the worst of a shriveling squad of locals who would bulldoze the Catskills to make a buck.

Even the most ruthless developer would prefer to have his own home surrounded by state land. The state and city have done a miraculous job of preserving clean natural wilderness. We certainly don't want to become a paved-over plastic chain-mall, even if it meant a smattering of minimum-wage burger-flipping jobs.

Blake's papers turn yellow with age as they sit on the rack, giving new richness to the phrase yellow journalism. The xenophobic rantings of Blake's hobby-exercise has only helped unite the old and young, Republicans and Democrats, progressives and conservatives alike. It's no surprise that our newly elected town board reflects the desire to preserve our rich heritage and the exquisite beauty of the Catskills. The election was a landslide.

New York Press makes a Killin'. Which public relations firm bottle-fed your writer such foolish, flattering pap?

Dave Channon, Shandaken, NY

Search Till You Drop

How can I be so dense that I can't find a recent article in your paper? It seems to me that, just recently, I was reading some comments of John Strausbaugh's (gosh, I think they were his) about the ridiculousness of aging rockers, and he painted Neil Young with this same broad brush. I was in my office at the time, and the powers that be have the habit of looking over your shoulder, so I figured I'd reacquaint myself with Strausbaugh's comments from my home computer and respond thusly. But I can't find it. I don't see a way of pulling up all of one author's pieces, paging through the archives of recent issues hasn't turned it up and a search of "Neil Young" shows nothing recent.

Well, anyway, in my opinion Neil is still a cool rocker who is always capable of turning out yet another relevant classic (even though his new song, "Let's Roll," really does suck). New York Press is a great paper, by the way.

Jerry Peragine, Harrisburg, PA

The editors reply: Go to www.rocktilyoudrop.net for a few excerpts from John's book on the subject. Prepare to send hate mail.

Cock Swap

Alexander Cockburn's right ("Wild Justice," 12/19). It is unseemly to aver that the U.S. has killed as many innocent Afghans as died in the Sept. 11 attacks. It is also dead wrong, and surpassingly naive. The count only comes close if you take reports from the Taliban at face value (like the one about fighting to the death and facing us down just before they hightailed it in tears). Most of the villages "bombed" by the U.S. showed no bomb craters at all. It could not possibly have been the Taliban who killed some folks, looking for Ms. Amanpour to come shed a few CNN tears, now could it? We get no credit for stopping the hundreds of executions carried out by the Taliban, rescuing the women who will no longer be sold into slavery or for the lives our aid has saved in Afghanistan over the past years. Alex has his ratio wrong: One honest and accurate journalist is worth 1000 Cockburns. Trade ya.

Mike Offit, Manhattan

We Heard that About Dubuque

New York City undoubtedly has more than its share of monikers, but I never, ever imagined "Most Polite City in America" ("Daily Billboard," 12/18) would be among them. In a post-9/11 world, I guess anything's possible, but I doubt even the most stalwart Gothamites buy that, and many would probably consider it an insult.

As a former resident of the Quad Cities, I am compelled to mention that there are actually five Quad Cities: Davenport, Bettendorf, Rock Island, Moline and the oft-forgotten East Moline. So say what you will about the logic behind a quartet of five, but at least Quad Citians are damned polite. Dubuque, on the other hand?that's a different story. Keep up the excellent work.

Matt Loehrer, Olathe, KS

The O.J. Aquatic

What a murder in California has to do with the theft of Palestinian land in the Middle East escapes me (Carol Iannone, "Taki's Top Drawer," 12/19). Is it that the strong prevail over the weak? Is it that the victim is to blame? Is it that money buys justice? The true moral equivalent of black American reaction to the O.J. aquatic was the Palestinian refugees dancing for joy on Sept. 11. Deplorable, but understandable considering the racist, sanctimonious, self-righteous hypocrisy so exemplified in Iannone's article, that they have had to contend with on a daily basis.

John P. McEvoy, Manhattan

Left Jab

Just a few years ago, Alexander Cockburn counseled the Democratic left to be of good cheer, even in dark political times. Indeed, those are when there is "[a]ll the more reason not to lose heart," and to remember that, as he paraphrased a favorite passage from Claude Levi-Strauss' Tristes Tropiques, "There is abundance if we arrange things differently. The world can be turned upside down; that is, the right way up. The Golden Age is in us, if we know where to look, and what to think."

Writing two months ago, surveying the national response to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, Cockburn reported being "heartened, far beyond what [I] would have dared hope, by the domestic political and social reaction to the terrible events of that day. The American public did not exude rank national chauvinism," or a "sense of absolute moral and historical self-assurance" about the U.S. role in the world. In no way do I sense this to be the case today," he wrote, "and that's the most heartening omen of all."

Now, the same Cockburn holds that he had always thought "one absolutely certain fact, beyond all dispute or question, is that...Sept. 11 had no silver lining, no unexpectedly beneficial fallout" ("Wild Justice," 12/5) and has had devastating consequences for the left. "We will spend the rest of our lives trying to recapture lost ground." He concludes with bleak finality that the Golden Age lies in the likes of U.S. Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX), a Libertarian whose views on government are suggested by his call to abolish the minimum wage (and countless other protective labor legislation), and whose taste for tolerance by his assertion that virtually all black men (95 percent was his guess about DC residents) are "semi-criminal or entirely criminal."

Cockburn announces this latest political enthusiasm in reaction to a Los Angeles Times op-ed I wrote with Katrina vanden Heuvel, the editor of The Nation, on the political effects of Sept. 11. Vanden Heuvel and I argued against the common view that the present period precludes progressive politics in America. We claimed instead that Sept. 11 and its aftermath, despite their obvious terrors, in fact generated a new audience for such politics, by finally questioning some of the dogma of neoliberal orthodoxy, e.g., its contempt for "society"; its faith in markets and profit-seeking corporations as the best source of civil order; and its confidence in unilateral militarism as a favored tool of foreign policy. We urged progressives to take this opportunity seriously.

From this, Cockburn bizarrely concludes that we "don't give a hoot about the Bill of Rights"; prefer "coercive big government" to "personal and social freedom"; and are enthusiasts of the sort of authoritarian, not to say murderous, social order variously offered by Italian fascism, Henry Ford, World War I Prussian Germany and Nazi concentration camps.

But there is no necessary contradiction between defending individual liberty and fighting for the public policies?minimum-wage guarantees, universal access to healthcare, affordable quality education, etc.?needed to give individuals the capacity to make freedom real. We can and should do both even as, yes, we should also be vigilant that the affirmative state does not pave a "road to serfdom" among the citizenry, much less punish freedom's exercise. And we should not lose hope for building a society worth living in, even under these darkening skies.

Joel Rogers, Madison, WI

Unmentionables

"Taki's Top Drawer"?a Levantine crypto-fascist with a prison record and a taste for the SS (officers, of course), an urbane uxoricide without a prison record, a Brit twit and a purloiner of library books. What could the awful man keep in his bottom drawer?

Rex Nichols, Manhattan

Ingrates

JESSICA Willis: This article speaks for every true VH fan ("Music," 12/12) who still cannot go a day without hoping to hear on the radio "Big News from the Van Halen camp," then pulling over to listen to whatever the big news is. I love the way Edward speaks through his guitar, and I hate the way he fails to speak to his fans. We all deserve better than he has given us. If it's over it's over, just fess up; speak, mighty Edward! It doesn't really matter why the band cannot seem to reunite or move forward in any way. It just matters that they show some respect to those who helped them become the greatest hard-rock band in the world.

Steven M. Sawyer, Sacramento

Roget Rocks

Nice article by Jessica Willis on Van Halen, but tell her to put away the thesaurus.

Andrew Powell, Las Vegas

And DLR Uber Alles!

JESSICA Willis: Great article! You are not the only one who misses the mighty Van Halen! I have faith that we'll hear some old-school rockin' tunes soon. Eddie forever!

Fred Gebert, Sea Cliff, NY

Whose Reuben?

If your restaurant reviewer Paul Leschen thinks the Reuben's restaurant on 38th and Madison ("Food," 12/12) invented the Reuben sandwich, he might be persuaded to believe that Elvis Presley invented the atom bomb.

It was actually invented in the original Reuben's Restaurant on E. 56th St., which had gone out of business long before the 38th and Madison Ave. Reuben's started up. The inspiration for it was Arnold Reuben Jr., who took over from his father, the restaurant's founder, and who died only a few years ago in Florida.

I consider myself blessed that I did have a Reuben at the original restaurant and for dessert I had some of the cheesecake that the restaurant was equally famous for.

David A. Weiss, Brooklyn

No Pun Intended?

Michelangelo Signorile: Just when I was starting to feel those guys were getting their First Amendment rights trampled (even said as much last night to my buddy Gilbert Baker?aka Betsy Ross?last night), I read your piece, "And the Band Played On II" ("The Gist," 12/12). Thanks for setting me straight. It's a great article.

Mark Rennie, San Francisco

Everybody's an Expert

I have long been a Taki fan, dutifully reading every issue of the Press and Spectator to get my weekly dose of common sense. But I must take strong exception to his version of history in "Who's a Traitor?" ("Top Drawer," 12/12).

When equating American traitor John Walker with a rogues gallery of yesteryear's spies, our cantankerous Greek friend inexplicably attempts to exonerate England's most famous wartime quisling, William Lord Haw-Haw Joyce.

First and foremost, Taki claims, "Joyce was an Irishman, and Ireland was neutral during the war." Wrong. As he himself points out, Joyce was born in Brooklyn (legally making him an American) to British and Irish parents. Joyce landed in Ireland at the age of three and, because of Republican attacks on his pro-Unionist parents, immigrated to England at the age of 15.

After bizarrely lamenting that he was born too late to join the Waffen SS Charlemagne Division (erroneously labeled an "anticommunist unit"), Taki treats the reader to a crude lesson in sedition law: Perfidious Albion hanged Lord Haw-Haw on the basis that he had a British passport, ergo he was a traitor. Now that's a hell of a stretch, even for the hypocritical English. Based on the historical record, it is a stretch to determine that Joyce was somehow an Irishman, having only one Irish parent and having spent a majority of his adult life in England. Joyce carried an English passport and, during his German radio broadcasts, even feigned a posh Midlands accent. Not exactly a devout Fenian.

But Taki's greatest offense is casting Joyce as a benign treasonist who chose the Blut and Boden path simply to spite the British. In history texts, Taki tells us, Haw-Haw gets an undeserved screwing. It was more a case of the enemy of my enemy, not mein Fuhrer right or wrong. There is little evidence to support such a claim. Joyce was a doctrinaire Nazi, having left Oswald Mosley's British Union of Fascists to form the British National Socialist League. It was around this time that Joyce penned his lumbering Mein Kampf-style manifesto, Twilight over England, replete with an anti-Semitic chapter on the Jewish problem in England. During Haw-Haw radio broadcasts, Joyce often fulminated about Downing Street's Jewish plutocrats and the cabal of Jewish Mafioso pulling FDR's puppet strings. This, I'm afraid, is mein Fuhrer right or wrong, not misguided Republicanism. Perfidious Albion hanged a punic Nazi who was a fascist to the end. Indeed, as he was led to the gallows Joyce said, "In death as in life, I defy the Jews who caused this last war: and I defy the powers of Darkness they represent."

He was, after all, a Nazi for the anti-Semitism, not the pallid anti-Albionism.

Michael Moynihan, Brooklyn

Give Him Time

A MUGGER Merry Christmas?thanks for some great reading this year. You absolutely must comment upon Jerry Rivers' latest public exposition of liberal hypocrisy and basic dishonesty.

John Lindley, Long Beach, CA

Fight for the Color, Tracy

MUGGER: Your prognostications ("MUGGER," 12/19) about the state of the nation in two years were very interesting, and I hope will prove to be accurate. I look forward to the future battles in New Hampshire as the presidential race for 2004 takes shape. I'm not really sure why I am looking forward to that particular contest between those Democrat foes. I liken it to watching a football game in which I don't particularly care who wins, or maybe to background noise sleeping with a fan on. If Al Gore decides to run again it will be very interesting to see where he goes with his efforts to reinvent himself. I can only imagine the whoppers he will come out with this time. Maybe Al can get George O'Leary to manage his campaign. Their combined powers of enhancement would produce a resume for Al Gore that would make his claims of inventing the Internet look like a moment of flatulence in a whirlwind. Pardon my callous cynicism right before Christmas. My poor departed mother would be scandalized.

Your thoughts on Christmases past were enjoyable. I particularly liked the Dicky Howard anecdote. We all have milestones in our lives that we should turn our memory to at this time of year, even if the memories are of coming of age, and the bittersweet emotions that accompany our loss of innocence. Like you, I grew up in a colored-light world, but my wife has the upper hand at Christmas and I have reluctantly converted to a white-light world. Some battles aren't worth the casualties.

Please extend my holiday greetings to your staff at New York Press and of course to your family. Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Tracy Meadows, Brenham, TX

Color Him Festive

MUGGER: Heartwarming article. My seven-year-old daughter is asking probing questions (too many nonbelievers at school, I suppose), while my five-and-a-half-year-old son is still a believer. But when you hear the kids discuss how reindeer fly, or learn how to fly, you get a warm feeling at their innocence. Loved the bit about Junior sleeping next to the Christmas tree. Michael Kelly will love this?I have multicolored icicle lights on my house! Two rows?upper porch and lower porch! And, boy, are the hypersensitive going to open up on you about the African-American lights?good thing you own the paper! Even with no Santas around, I gotta believe New York is beautiful in December, what with all the lights everywhere. We really want to bring the kids to New York in some future December (should I wait for the next real Republican mayor?). Finally, Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to you and your family.

Gordon Smith, Pleasanton, CA

Brimming with Christmas Spirit

MUGGER: Have to tell you, I'm beginning to wonder if you're the only sane voice left. You're consistently right on target, and anyone who bleeds for the Bosox as I do is definitely aces in my book. Pokey Reese? Carlos Baerga? Willie Blair? Jesus, please put the bullet in Duke once and for all before he can do more harm! I'm waiting for the big Chief Bender signing, myself.

Where do I begin? There are so many pinheads in the media world that you expose, to my great glee?that idiot Joe Conason is particularly loathsome and should be sewn into a bag with wild dingoes, and I'm waiting for the day someone slips some lye into Molly Ivins' bottle of hooch, although at this point she's probably so embalmed she'd barely raise a fart in protest. The Jann Wenner stuff (12/12) was on the money?he is a boob and a buffoon of the lowest order, and Rolling Stone has been a complete rag for as long as I can remember (I'm 32). I stopped even casually leafing through it a couple years back when I saw the cover line, "The Verve and the Return of Rock and Roll"?excuse me? The return of rock and roll, courtesy of a flaccid bunch of Brit-pop nancy boys? I guess what Jann was getting at was that the "rock" was what was in his pants when he saw the cover shoot of Richard Ashcroft, the Verve's frontman, and the "roll" was what everyone's eyes did when they saw that abomination. And don't get me started on Wenner's pathetic Clinton/Gore suckup act or any of the Mensa-level hatchet jobs he has done on the right. Does P.J. O'Rourke even write for them anymore? Now there's a funny guy who makes sense!

Well, I humbly submit another name for your list of pathetic pieces of work: Helen Thomas, the so-called "dean of White House correspondents" (a title that, I gather, you get automatically if you've been there since the Millard Fillmore administration, even if you have been making a complete jackass of yourself the whole time). Talk about a piece of work?and they say Reagan has lost his marbles. Have you had the extreme displeasure of reading any of her horseshit columns since 9/11? Rip, rip, rip. Bush this, the Republicans that, moving toward a police state, loss of civil rights, Ashcroft is Hitler, blah, blah, blah. This from a woman who probably still fouls her Depends every time she thinks about Bill Clinton making goo-goo eyes at her, or Jack Kennedy, or John Quincy Adams, for that matter. Truly a reprehensible person and a complete jackass who has earned not one iota of the respect heaped upon her. I think her waiting seat in hell has moved from the Joe Conason circle of Dante's Inferno to the truly elite Michael Moore section.

And one more, if I may, although I know this is ground already well-covered by you. Someone please send in the SWAT Team to talk Maureen Dowd away from her keyboard. There's a nice padded room and a enormous syringe chock-full of moose tranquilizers waiting for her somewhere. I read the Times online (like I'd pay for that crap) and before I hit the Dowd link (which I never fail to do, because her column has become funny in a Mystery Science Theater 3000 kind of way), I wonder, "Hmmm...which pop-culture reference is poor, crazy old Maureen going to beat to death like a baby seal this week?the Bushes as the Corleones, a dozen bad Fredo references or something equally pithy about 'Rummy' Rumsfeld?" And she never fails to come through with something so completely inane and stupid that I almost hate myself for going there. When she runs out of Godfather material, will she move on to Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo? Porky's, maybe? Am I imagining things, or does she actually have a Pulitzer on her wall? Who'd she kill for that?

Well, I won't waste your time any further. Just wanted to vent to the one sane voice left on the planet. Keep on knocking them dead, pray for the Dolans to buy the Sawx and, for the love of God, write something about Helen Thomas, who I hear was Strom Thurmond's babysitter until Strom's mom and dad caught her banging William Jennings Bryan on the davenport. To this day if you sneak up on her and recite a line from the "Cross of Gold" speech, she'll wear out those Depends again. Yankees suck!

Name Withheld, Fairfield, CT

We're Still Working on that One

RE MUGGER's review of Bias in the Dec. 13 Wall Street Journal: If the book's up to the review it'll be eminently quotable (took me 'til the day before yesterday to comprehend the meaning of "all the news that's fit to print").

Storrs Warinner, Las Vegas

Flag Flub

MUGGER: I enjoyed your article on Jann Wenner, myself now being 53 and having "grown up" with the magazine in my native San Francisco. Did you take note of the cover of the Oct. 25, 2001 issue? (It is one of the ones displayed on the cover of the most recent issue.) It is not a real big thing, but the flag is wrong. Whereas an American flag is supposed to have four red stripes up, up meaning extending from the blue field, and three down, the flag on the cover is the opposite. Again, no biggie I guess. But somewhat telling. Then again, I still believe that Lee Harvey Oswald did not act alone.

Stanley B. Rudnick, San Mateo, CA

Left-Wing Propaganda

MUGGER: I'm also fed up with Rolling Stone magazine! I recently wrote a letter to the magazine asking them to cancel my subscription because of their politics. They not only blew me off, they sent me two copies of their "special" 9/11 edition! Did you take a look at that cover? On the "flag" they are using, I counted 51 stars! Maybe I shouldn't be surprised, coming from anti-American libs who didn't have to take American history class!

I have been receiving free copies (a gift subscription?I would never actually pay for it!) of the mag for about 10 years. I recently got all the old issues out of storage and noticed that almost to the day of Clinton's inauguration, the magazine had this "Hey! Our Guy's in charge! We can do what we want to now!" attitude. This attitude has turned a once "must-read rock 'n' roll lifestyle manual for 16-year-old guys who desperately want to be cool" magazine into a decadent, debauched, ultra-left-wing training manual for brain-dead youth. The music reviews are written by young punks with little musical training or knowledge of anything other than rap. Any music more than 25 years old is foreign to them. One critic gave a good review to the rap group "The Coup"! They are the Marxist/commie group that had to redo their album cover because it showed them blowing up the World Trade Center! Keep up the good work!

Tim Abruscato, Cherry Hill, NJ

Plane Truth

When the quarterback gets sacked, you wonder, where was the protection? Job well done to George Szamuely ("Taki's Top Drawer," 12/12) for his steering the readers to Jared Israel's website, www.tenc.net, and for his excellent observations regarding the hijack attacks. He could have entitled it "911?The Number that Played You."

With the knowledge of the 12/94 thwarted attempt to crash a fuel-laden plane into the Eiffel Tower and many similar plots, we knew that landmark buildings needed protection from the air. But in 1997, the word came down to stop the coverage from the Air National Guard base closest to the previously attacked WTC. That was the base in Atlantic City, NJ. Now that's gambling!

Even though Otis air base on Cape Cod is double the distance to Manhattan that Atlantic City is, we still had protection if the F-15s flew fast. They didn't. According to the Sept. l9 Chicago Tribune, the planes flew at less than half-speed. F-15s are capable of flying at 1875 mph. The F-16s from Langley go at 1500 mph.

How do "We didn't know...," "No one conceived...," etc., come into play? A pilot is in the air with a clear-cut mission, to get from here to there, intercept or lock on target and fire.

Why dawdle? Plus, they should have already been in the air awaiting orders to go after the remaining hijacked planes. Those six to eight minutes of scrambling would've made the difference, even at half-speed.

Szamuely's column covered the story of the DC air base that didn't respond. Add to that the NY air bases at Newburgh and on Long Island that inexplicably just watched the events. Was there a plausible reason for a plane that was reported by the FAA to NORAD as hijacked at 9:16 to be still flying unmolested at 10:03?

The same people let the same people blow up the same building twice. If it were possible to do it a third time, last week's letter writer, Tom Patterson, would excuse it again.

Stephen Johnson, Manhattan

He Just Passed Through

MUGGER: Just finished your critique of Jann Wenner (12/12) and Rolling Stone. Very choice. Sure there aren't any Mencken genes in your genealogy?

Herb Smith, Baltimore

Tit Spillage

MUGGER: Nice hatchet job on Wenner, but hey, no way Britney's tits are "trivialities."

Gene Salorio, Storrs, CT

Okay, Now We're Really Confused

I wish to publicly apologize to Katie Couric. For a number of years, I thought that she was an all-out liberal. Now with her new contract, I see that she is really just another evil rich Republican. Way to go, Katie!

Tony Smith, The Colony, TX

The Imponderable

To answer Tim O'Brien's ("The Mail," 12/19) letter regarding transponders on commercial aircraft, occasionally air traffic control (ATC) will ask a pilot to turn off his transponder to limit clutter on their radar screen. This usually happens when an airplane is on approach to landing and is in radio contact with the airport tower, in which case control has passed from the ATC controller. This does not mean that the radar can no longer follow the airplane, however. Radar can generally "skin paint" the aircraft, which means the radar gets a return signal reflected directly off the aircraft itself. This can be done as long as the aircraft does not "hide" behind high terrain. But it is not as reliable as a transponder radio signal.

As for Antonio Rega's good questions about the incident ("The Mail," 12/19), I can only guess why the national command authorities were not notified sooner than they were after ATC lost both radar and radio contact with the hijacked airplanes on Sept. 11. Most commercial jets have two transponders and at least two VHF radios, so the likelihood of all these units failing at the same time is nil, which should have indicated to the controller that something more serious was going on. I would imagine that, had timely action been taken, F-15s from Otis AFB on Cape Cod could have intercepted the airliners going for the World Trade Center. But again, I don't have all the facts regarding those events.

On the other hand, I can tell Mr. Rega that all airplanes, from a Piper to a 747, fly pretty much the same way from an aerodynamic point of view: pull the throttle(s) back and lower the nose, and the plane will dive. Turn the yoke and it will bank, and then turn, in the same direction. Regarding his understandably skeptical comment comparing the hijackers' flight maneuvers with using a video game to teach a teenager to drive, flight simulators are very realistic, far more so than any video game. One can even practice flying into computer-generated "buildings" in a flight simulator. So it is conceivable that these terrorists practiced in a flight simulator.

Paul M. DeSisto, Lt. Col., USAF (ret.), Cedar Grove, NJ

New Year's Resolution: Let It Go

I find that the only sane person who has completely treated the Clintons the way they should be treated is Taki. At times, I think that I must be either insane or stupid when I rail the Clintons. I cannot understand why anyone would kiss their asses and suck up to them the way the media and these Clintonites have. We have a man who has molested and probably raped women, perjured himself before a grand jury and visited communist countries during Vietnam while he was illegally dodging the draft and writing phony letters to his ROTC connection. Why should any decent American be subjected to this piece of garbage getting megabucks for every speech he gives? I am a hardworking retail clerk who has raised four children and I feel like I have been shit on by our government for their ass-kissing of scum like Clinton and the fact that he got away scot-free with all of the shit that he pulled off. Taki is the only relief there is for guys like me.

Name Withheld, South Euclid, Ohio

Traitor Jane

Taki: I found your article on traitorism ("Top Drawer," 12/12) to be right on and I agree 100 percent. I didn't find any of your normal humor in this article but I guess this is one subject that deserves total balance. I wrote a little song back in the early 70s regarding my inner thoughts about another traitor, Jane Fonda. If you're interested I will send you the lyrics.

Kevin Carroll, Anchorage

Devilish Details

TAKI: Just for historical accuracy, your article "Who's a Traitor?" stated you probably would have fought with the Division Charlemange. Many French fought in the German army during WWII and the correct designation of this particular Division is: 33 Waffen-Grenadier-Division der SS "Charlemagne" (Franzosische Nr. 1). Politically correct or not, it was a Division of the Waffen SS and swore fidelity to Adolf Hitler. They were one of the groups that fought during the Battle of Berlin.

After the war, most of the members died either working in French coal mines or as members of the French Foreign Legion. At one time after the war the French Foreign Legion was more than 50 percent German, but that's a different story. Just a small detail.

Anthony G. Schad, Troy, Michigan

The Last Detail

RE Taki's "Who's a Traitor?" He informs us that had he been Irish, of age and not too busy playing tennis with Rod Laver, Agnelli, Aspinal, et al., he would, in WWII, have joined the Charlemagne Division to fight the commies. He describes this jolly bunch as a sort of international brigade whereas it was, in fact, composed mainly of disaffected Frenchmen who had thrown in the towel before Dunkirk, thus leaving the hypocritical Brits (with their decadent and rotten empire, of course) to carry on alone until the U.S., tardy as ever, came along to take the game over and singlehandedly win it.

Taki omits telling us that the Charlemagne Division's real designation was: 33 Waffen-Grenadier-Division der SS. But he isn't Irish and he is Greek. And what would that have made him? Considering the mayhem visited on Greece by bullyboys of the same ilk, windbag Taki might consider a more careful choice of unit in which to serve.

Noël Moore, Ponte da Barca, Portugal

Know-It-All

TAKI: Generally I am an admirer of your column, but regarding William Joyce, the Nazi radio propagandist, you desperately need a factchecker! First, William Joyce was no Irishman, and never claimed to be. Joyce was born in Brooklyn in 1906, and his family did move back to Ireland (Galway) in 1909, but far from being Irish nationalists, the Joyces were British loyalists and moved to England in 1921 after Irish independence. Joyce never claimed Irish or American citizenship, but always behaved as a Briton. For example, he joined the British army at 16 (then discharged as underage) and obtained a British passport first in 1933, in both instances claiming not to possess a birth certificate and claiming birth in Galway. What really got him into trouble was that from the time he was a university student, Joyce was a committed British Fascist, joining first the British Fascist Party, then Mosley's British Union of Fascists, and later heading up his own National Socialist League. He was an overt admirer of Hitler from the early 30s, at once anti-Bolshevist and anti-Semitic. By August 1939, he and his wife were about to be rounded up under the British Emergency Powers Act, and fled to their soulmates in Germany (not neutral Ireland, which was his other option) on his (renewed) British passport. Joyce was on German radio by that September, broadcasting propaganda to Britain, and he and his wife became naturalized German citizens a year later. Somewhat like his British passport, the "Lord Haw-Haw" sobriquet wasn't entirely his, but was given to other English-language propagandists like Wolf Mittler and Norman Baillie-Stewart; Joyce adopted it later on his "Germany Calling" broadcasts to both Britain and the U.S. Another correction: Joyce's final broadcast was April 30, 1945, in Hamburg; equipped with a false passport, he evaded capture until May 28, near Flensburg.

The trial and execution of William Joyce may have been wrong, but not for the reasons you stated. The legitimacy of his trial hinged on the following: was he an American citizen when (falsely) obtaining his British passport, and could a naturalized German citizen commit treason against the Crown? Both were dismissed by the court, and Joyce was convicted for treason as a British subject on his broadcasts made in the year between his start on German radio and the expiration of his British passport in July 1940. These decisions were controversial and "hairsplitting" in 1946 Britain as they are today. As mentioned above, the broadcasts attributed to "Lord Haw-Haw" in that period may very well not have been his, but it did not help Joyce in that for most of his life, he behaved as one of the King's subjects, he was a committed British Fascist and then he substantially contributed to the German radio propaganda machine. The injustice is that none of his contemporaries, British or American, were executed for broadcasting Nazi, Italian or Japanese propaganda. Many served substantial sentences, which Joyce abundantly deserved, whether he was British or American. (For more information on this, see Bergmeier and Lotz's superb history Hitler's Airwaves and of course Rebecca West's The Meaning of Treason).

I am also heartily dismayed that you would picture, as a just choice, a theoretical Irishman joining with the (primarily French) Legion Charlemagne (a Waffen-SS unit) to fight Communism. Joining a brutal SS unit, fighting for Hitler's totalitarianism against Stalin's brand, is hardly moral and not even understandable in context (I refer to Ukrainian and other Eastern Waffen-SS and Wehrmacht volunteers, who could point to the Soviet purges and massacres of their peoples as a reason). It is also a disservice to history. A handful of Irish went to the German side, such as a small group of Irish British soldiers recruited under duress out of German POW camps, plus a few broadcasters and spies.

Despite all this, your point regarding little Johnnie Walker is totally valid. He willingly fought against the U.S., with a great deal of forethought and seemingly obtaining special treatment by bin Laden's folks. The question of his citizenship will determine his treatment, just like William Joyce. His defense may very well argue that he, by his actions prior to Sept. 11, or by prior statements, renounced his U.S. citizenship before Sept. 11, and thus cannot be tried as a traitor in any U.S. court. We will see.

Donna Cusano, Roosevelt Island

Fast Facts

Taki's ravings against Israel and Jews have reached a new plateau. Hoping his readers are ignorant of the facts, he is now openly lying! Maybe the Greek should get a psychiatrist to treat his burning hatred of one of the smallest nations in the world and his lap-dogging of the blood-drenched Egyptian migrant serial killer, Yasir Arafat, who started his jihad to destroy Israel in his native Cairo in 1964 when the PLO was founded, and which has the sole purpose of killing Jews and wiping out Israel. Assuming Taki is a Christian, why would he want Arafat and his gang of Muslim terrorists to take over the Judeo-Christian Holy Land? In a recent column, Taki accused Jonathan Pollard of selling "Uncle Sam's attack plan against the USSR" to the Israelis ("Top Drawer," 12/12)! There is more to Taki's ravings! He writes that Israel traded the information to the Soviets in exchange for emigres! Taki is now in the same anti-Semitic fever swamp as Caspar Weinberger, who lied to the sentencing judge by accusing Pollard of the crimes of spy Aldrich Ames who, among other things, betrayed to the Soviets the identities of American agents operating in the Soviet Union. Many of them were executed by the Soviets. Weinberger wants Pollard to die in prison?as do so many others in the State Dept. and CIA?because Pollard accidentally came across proof that they were involved in secretly aiding Saddam Hussein in the Iran-Iraq war. Taki, Arafat's pet poodle, also tells us that Israeli planes sank the American spy ship, Liberty. The CIA sent the Liberty to spy on Israel during the 6-Day War. The ship was unmarked and the Israelis thought it was Egyptian. The ship was attacked by Israeli planes, but not sunk. Taki should blame the CIA, not the Israelis, who intercepted transmissions from the Liberty, which was monitoring Israeli troop movements to the Brits on Cyprus, who sent it on to the Egyptians. As dependable as the rising sun is some attack against Israel that Taki works into almost every column! Like Pat Buchanan and Robert Novak, Taki displays a pathological hatred of Western, democratic Israel while fawning over Arafat.

George Rubin, Manhattan