Neal Pollack's Hilarious, But Should Be Killed, Along with Irony; Best of Manhattan Blew, Except for the Good Parts; MUGGER's Back, Better'n Ever; Green's Sending Them to Bloomberg; Jews vs. Palestinians, Pt. CCXXIV; More

Neal Pollack's piece this week ("One Against the Taliban," 10/10) was so funny that I was accused of disrupting the workplace by laughing so hard. I wanted to e-mail it to about 400 people. Thanks, it was marvelous.

Candace Laws, Boston

Another Nail in Irony's Coffin

While reading Mr. Pollack's "One Against the Taliban" I began to wonder about the sanity of an editor who publishes such slipshod, self-gratifying crap as this. I mean, it was hard enough to get past the nauseating, misogynistic "I slept with a fashion editor" first paragraph.

Your author speaks of his wit and sensitivity, but I'm still waiting for signs of either. This is a rotten series of self-important comments, followed by trite crap. More effort was put into pointing out that Pollack has a Palm VII than into discussing the actual horror he is presumably attempting to write about. Moreover, it is appalling that his focus is consistently upon himself. I understand that he is probably some old head that rarely gets laid, but I don't think that the people of this city care in the least about that drivel at a time like this. And we have to swallow yet another story of him "making out" with some assistant art director. He is so impressed with his pseudo-New York artist lifestyle I'm surprised he can lift his big fat head to type long enough to finish a story. ln short, you should seriously consider hiring a writer of real talent, not one who interjects every single paragraph with his egotistical bullshit. I know you're a free paper and that means we shouldn't expect much, but in this case you have brought to life the old adage "you get what you pay for."

Kimberly McDonald, Manhattan

And Another Genius Heard From

Re Neal Pollack ("One Against the Taliban," 10/10): Where did you find this putz? Are all of you Jews mentally disturbed?

Sam Monte, Philadelphia

They Taste Best with Hummus

Andrey Slivka, darling, you wonder whether those conniving, demonic, superhuman terrorists are going to hit a Brooklyn middle school next ("Daily Billboard," 10/8). Actually, what you forget is that Muslims prefer the meat they eat much younger. In fact, Middle Easterners in general love to eat babies. They steal them, roast them and eat them (or am I mixing that up with the blood libel on the Jews so prevalent not too long ago in our venerable, civilized, wonderful, secular West?).

Just to clarify: the terrorists did in fact make demands. They made demands about Iraq, Palestine/Israel and U.S. support of Saudi Arabia and Egypt. If our media chose not to show or translate the demands, don't blame the terrorists. And if you want "genocidal nihilism," look no further than the Holocaust, and remember that it was perpetrated by the Europeans. How about Pol Pot's Cambodia or Suharto's East Timor (both our clients out in the savage world of the naked primitives)? And for fuck's sake, say something original instead of parroting an insipid combination of liberal claptrap (touted by the likes of Hitchens and Ignatieff) combined with the ignorant apocalyptic pronouncements of those perennial establishment "experts." Just in case you don't get it, yes, that is sarcasm in my tone.

Laleh Khalili, Manhattan

Andrey Slivka replies: Eh? I remain serene in my no doubt ignorant conviction that bin Laden's bunch is nihilist filth and is capable of anything. I wasn't aware that Middle Easterners eat babies, but the preference of Muslims for younger meat might account for my colleague Alan Cabal's sympathy for the Palestinians, since he shares this proclivity. And there's no doubt about it: Pol Pot, Suharto and the Holocaust were bad.

Political Snapshots

MUGGER: Right on about the Ralph Lauren ad (10/10). I thought pretty much the same thing when I saw it. He makes fairly nice clothes, but the carefully cultivated fake image is ridiculous. Just give (if you can) and be done with it.

This reminds me that my girlfriend was once working a soup kitchen when Mark Green showed up to do little more than be photographed holding a spoo