Kramer's Just Too Too; MUGGER Es Loco, Except About Beisbol; Sloppy Readers Blast Seitz; Willis Captured a True It Girl; More

In Mimi Kramer's review of the recent Oklahoma! revival ("Theater," 4/3), she writes that one of the actors is "much, much too gay."

Can you actually stand by and let this kind of bigotry take place at your publication? Would you allow Ms. Kramer to write that an actor is "much, much too black"? Or "much, much too Jewish"? Since you allowed this kind of slur to be printed, your readers must assume you would.

I can only hope that your advertisers read this review and choose to take their business elsewhere. I also hope your readers realize what kind of publication you really are.

As for Mimi Kramer, she is "much, much too bigoted."

Thomas Sleeman, Manhattan

Real Sleaze

I want to thank Norman Kelley for so carefully reading Shakedown: Exposing the Real Jesse Jackson.

He is indeed correct that in the first edition both I and the Regnery copy editors failed to correct the identity of Jesse Jackson's guru at the Chicago Theological Seminary whose personal archives I was able to consult at the Andover-Harvard library. He was Dr. Howard Schomer, not Dr. Harold Schomer. As soon as we saw our error in the first printed copies, we corrected it. Mea culpa.

As for the rest, the book includes 47 pages of notes and source references, single-spaced, which reference my source interviews and documentation. There are no allegations in my book; just an enumeration of the facts, none of which Mr. Jackson has refuted.

For example, in writing the segments on Jackson's half-brother, Noah Robinson, I read through thousands of pages of trial transcripts and documents, interviewed his wife, federal prosecutors and former friends and associates, in addition to pulling just about every article written on him in the Chicago newspapers over his career.

I gave similar attention to the other major stories in my book, including the extraordinary stories of Jackson's tenure as Bill Clinton's "Special Envoy for Africa," for which I obtained through the Freedom of Information Act hundreds of pages of U.S. government documents never before released, and the story of Hunter Pitts O'Dell, the former clandestine Communist Party organizer whose FBI files were so voluminous it took me three full days at the National Archives to go through them.

Kenneth R. Timmerman, author, Shakedown: Exposing the Real Jesse Jackson, Bethesda, MD

Amateur, Wannabe Its

Jessica Willis' article "Remembering Edie" ("Books," 4/3) brings to mind how times have changed. Unfortunately, we now have the Hilton sisters, Putrid and Icky, along with countless other neophytes who are deemed the new It girls. How laughable. Edie was brighter, richer, sexier and had more class even in her drug-induced fogs.

Matt Nuskind, Manhattan

Blind Justice

MIKE Signorile: I read your 20th-hijacker article ("The Gist," 4/3) and have a couple of questions that I'd like to raise. You mention executing Moussaoui will only escalate anti-Western sentiment. Should America alter our own domestic polices for the sake of appeasing other countries? Isn't that putting the ball in their court? I'm not saying I'm a huge fan of Ashcroft (didn't he lose to a dead man in a congressional election), but why is Moussaoui's execution "sick revenge" and not justice? Yes, it is an eye for an eye. That is justice. And the last time I checked the death penalty was legal. I enjoyed your article.

Nathan Rice, Brooklyn

Like, Totally!

Mr. Signorile: What a great article this week. Right on, dude! I look forward to reading your column because I always enjoy it.

Mike Marick, Hollywood, CA

We Can Relate

MUGGER: Your paper regularly publishes this guy Crispin Sartwell who writes about country music, and has also written some books about philosophy that I haven't read. I was really disappointed to learn he was a philosopher, because I usually enjoy his music reviews. Anyway, if he's any kind of philosopher, he will dedicate his next whole column to the song "Beer Run" by Garth Brooks and George Jones. It's got lines like "Lord, half the fun is a-gettin' there" (now that sums up the whole concept of a beer run better than any philosopher), and "I got a week long thirst/and to make it worse/Lord, it's my turn to drive," and a chorus that goes: "B double E double R U N." That's easy to relate to (if you're not from Manhattan) and buying a case of beer turns into Mission Impossible at 1:45 and you're driving to the nearest Hess and you see cars getting pulled over after failing similarly impossible missions. Anyway, if this Crispin Sartwell guy gets tired of writing about country, he should write about so-called "Stoner Rock," because Monster Magnet is the third-best rock band of the 90s after Nirvana and Sublime. (Yes, I am a Columbia student, though I'm not proud of it, and thank God I'm graduating in one month.)

Martin Prieto, Rochester, NY

McEverywhere

Hey, Adam Heimlich, did you know that Pret A Manger?the UK chain you reviewed ("Food," 4/3)?is owned by McDonald's! Yes, it's true.

Stephen Saunders, Manhattan

Going, Going, Gone

Mr. Smith: My comments pertain to an article you wrote in The Wall Street Journal dated 3/29, "Amusement Parks," rather than your contributions to New York Press. I didn't know how to contact you through the Journal so I am writing you here. I hope you don't mind.

I couldn't agree with you more on your viewpoint of today's baseball environment. In years past, ballparks were "plunked" in the middle of neighborhoods working around existing structures therefore causing the dimensional irregularities that gave each park character, its own identity. Today, lots are cleared or stadiums are built out in the middle of an open field, providing for the cookie-cutter designs that seem to be so popular.

When it comes to baseball, I feel as though I'm a purist in the way I prefer to enjoy the game. I resent the distractions that are present at today's parks. Amusement rides, pitching machines, batting cages, swimming pools, etc. Whatever happened to going to the park to actually watch the game? We raised our girls right in that we didn't allow them to get caught up in the hype. We enjoyed hotdogs, the National Anthem and batting practice. Both of my girls, 13 and 16, learned to keep score and follow the progress of the game at any time by reading the scoreboard. I'm sorry if I'm old-fashioned but I really like baseball for what it represents as a family activity, but that activity must include the game itself.

Throughout the years, baseball and its parks have evolved to become more fan-oriented but it seems lately that the evolution has moved off the field, past the crowd to behind the stands. Why pay good money to enjoy a relaxing summer afternoon at the ballpark only to attend a circus?

Being from Michigan, I love Tiger Stadium. She holds a lot of memories for generations of my family. It was a very sad day when I knew my family was leaving "The Corner" for the very last time. My youngest daughter caught her dad with a tear in his eye, something I'm not embarrassed about but something I would have preferred to keep to myself. Till today, every time I go to Detroit, I find myself drawn to this diamond gem for another look and I find myself leaving with a heavy heart.

Anyhow, I've somehow strayed off the real reason I'm writing. I just wanted to commend you on a great article. It's good to know that others feel the same way I do about the trends in today's ballparks. I'd give anything to return to the simple days that baseball provided us in the way of entertainment, but I'm afraid that there's no turning back. Keep up the great work!

Dale E. Kowaleski, Bay City, MI

A Slight Discrepancy

MATT ZOLLER SEITZ: Good take on the Oscars ("Film,"4/3), but one erroneous statement: "Poitier's [tribute] reel contained no white faces..." Well, the last time I checked, Spencer Tracy, Katharine Hepburn, Rod Steiger, Richard Widmark, Tony Curtis and the nuns in Lilies of the Field were of the Caucasian persuasion. And there were more white faces in the reel that I can't remember offhand. So, Whoopi wasn't "right on the money"?albeit I think she was trying to make a point that had some validity. One missed opportunity, in the Poitier and/or Redford reels: a clip from Sneakers?the only film in which they both appeared.

Robert Hawk, Manhattan

Well, More Off-White

Matt Zoller Seitz says that "Poitier's reel contained no white faces." Isn't Tony "The Defiant Ones" Curtis white?

James O'Meara, Long Island City

Matt Zoller Seitz replies: I should have chosen my words more carefully. Hawk and O'Meara are correct that Poitier's tribute reel contained white faces?the faces of white actors with whom he shared the screen. What I was trying to say was that in the tribute reel, only black performers were interviewed about how much Poitier's career meant to them, which gave the impression that Poitier was more interesting as a symbol of racial progress than as an actor. (That was Whoopi's point in comparing the Poitier and Redford tributes.) I never thought I'd agree with conservative New York Post writer John Podhoretz about anything, but his post-Oscar column nailed it. "Did Poitier's career really have meaning only to black performers?" he wrote. "Of course not. His extraordinary dignity and power gave the lie to the racist idea that white audiences could only respond to white performers and white stories." I'm optimistic enough to think that the rest of America has gotten past this kind of blinkered thinking, even though the Academy hasn't.

See His 4/2 "Daily Billboard"

I just read Jim Knipfel's very funny "Daily Billboard" (3/28) on the "Black Water" algae bloom off Florida (FloriDUH?). I recall seeing a very bad science-fiction movie back in the late 1960s, one so bad that it probably would not have been made better by ingesting any drug that left the viewer conscious. It was called something like The Creeping Green Slime (pretty descriptive of Hollywood, actually).

Anyway, the plot of this movie, so far as I could discern it, was that some mold accidentally taken along on a space station mutates and begins killing the crew?although far too slowly for my taste. After an eternity of watching doomed crew members being chased down (!) by a fungus (and why no one thought to sprinkle it with Desenex is beyond me), we see the "slime" attack Earth.

Did Jim see this awful movie, or is this theory his invention? If it is his, he clearly has a great future in screenwriting!

Jack Gold, Prudhoe Bay, AK

Lone Star Moan

Russ Smith: Bush is for amnesty, Sen. Byrd is against it, but guess which party the newly legal, low-skilled immigrants will vote for in droves ("Daily Billboard," 4/1)? California is now a one-party state, Florida is tipping Democrat and Texas is next, in spite of years of Bush's pandering.

Doug Shannon, San Antonio

Russ Smith replies: You're right, most new immigrants vote for Democrats. But that's politics. A lenient immigration policy is just the right thing to do.

El Jefe Es Muy Loco

Russ Smith: You're woefully ignorant of 21st-century "immigration" into our country. Read up on the facts or c'mon out here to Southern California and see the real world. Better hurry before it becomes part of your beloved Mexico.

I'm disgusted with your naive blustering on a subject you know very little about.

Phil Charles, Los Angeles

What Are They Smokin' In Devon?

Aw c'mon, Taki, don't be so hard on David Brock (4/3). I mean, really, there's nothing so sadly pathetic as an aging fag looking for love. He just wants to be welcome in the bathhouses again.

John T. Morzenti, Devon, PA

The Citicorp Bridge Song

I enjoyed William Bryk's column "The Bums Go West" ("Old Smoke," 3/27), but I feel Brooklyn itself played a larger role than assigned. Yes, the borough made lots of noise, cowbells and all. But when push came to shove, indifference and complacency were the rule until too late. The Brooklyn of yore as a place ceased to exist after the Herald-Tribune absorbed the Brooklyn Eagle and the navy yards closed. The East Village is more in touch with its identity.

Case in point: Ten years ago, a group of preservationists sought to bring the USS Brooklyn home from its second life as a Chilean cruiser. The WWII warship would have complemented any waterfront. Its greyhound hull, lit up at night near the Roebling's bridge, would have been a source of pride. But Brooklyn wasn't buying. The ship was lost. And speaking of bridges, if Bloomie were to sell the naming rights of the famed suspension bridge to a corporate sponsor, I'd bet a week's wages we would hear nary a whimper from Brooklyn.

Steve Lindsey, Nelson, NH

No Teddy Boy

What? The great, white beached whale, also lovingly referred to as the Prince of Chappaquiddick, is greatly overrated ("MUGGER," 4/3)? I think you're being too kind. If it wasn't for the Kennedy money, he'd be doing hard time instead of representing the People's Republic of Massachusetts, which just happens to be my home state. Glad I'm outta there.

Leonard D. Schiller, Reno, NV

How's That Curse Working Out?

MUGGER: Congratulations on your article in The Wall Street Journal on March 29. I was mentioned in the WSJ last week, and they misspelled my name (Barry Popick). The New York Times did that to me, too.

You did a good baseball issue (3/27), but you left off my Yankee curse! Six years ago, I found that the New York Highlanders became the New York Yankees in William Randolph Hearst's New York Evening Journal. I've lectured on this before the Society for American Baseball Research, and it's been in Paul Dickson's Baseball Dictionary and the new Pennants and Pinstripes.

I gave my research for free to George Steinbrenner and his Yankees Magazine, and they didn't reply. Here I was, a loyal fan, solved the name of his club, works in the Bronx even?no response! Not then, and not even now.

So I put a curse on the team that they'd never make it to the World Series.

Barry Popik, Manhattan

You Should See Her Walk on Water

Carol Iannone: After reading your clear and sensible piece concerning events in the Gospels ("Taki's Top Drawer," 3/27) and how they so easily compare to experiences in your own life, and your quite reasonable wonder at the fact that your own life has not yet inspired an additional Gospel, I had an epiphany. You are my personal savior!

Christopher Moore, Middletown, NJ

To Hell with Facts

Why does the American left spend so much time and energy defending the indefensible? Michelangelo Signorile ("The Gist," 4/3) characterizes the Justice Dept.'s decision to pursue a capital charge against the 20th hijacker Zacarias Moussaoui as "sick revenge," claims that John Ashcroft is "wildly hungry for retribution" and demeans victim families who choose to view the execution of the murderer of their loved ones as participating in "demented group therapy." A reasonable alternative characterization is that these officials and families are representative of the strong majority of the American public who support this ultimate sanction (opinion polls taken before Sept. 11 consistently show that two-thirds of the population supports the death penalty for murder) for the simple reason that the murderer has earned his punishment: he deserves to die for what he's done, and this alone is reason to impose this ultimate sanction.

As to deterrence: it is beyond dispute that there is a significant judicial deterrent effect to the death penalty. It is not uncommon for a murderer to plead guilty to a crime that guarantees a sentence of life without parole in order to avoid the death penalty. Since we can be confident that no rational criminal would otherwise do this, it appears that fear of the death penalty can, in fact, affect the behavior of a criminal. The antideath-penalty crowd would have us believe that this effect only comes into existence once the criminal is apprehended, and that potential criminals don't alter their behavior one whit with regard to the death penalty. I remain unconvinced.

Marc Wontorek, Manhattan

In the Kitchen with MUGGER

MUGGER: After shamelessly plugging Robert Bork, the least you could have done was to give us instructions on how to prepare fresh salsa tableside (4/3). Did you ask the waiter for a doggie bag to bring home the feet from your roasted goat?

Helen Weber, Oklahoma City

Too Late

MUGGER: Can you get me the best tequila bottle there is in Mexico? I'll gladly pay you back (in U.S. dollars, of course). Just make sure there is a worm inside the libation. Thank you. E-mail me.

Lee Anthony Nieves, Bronx

Foul Mail

I've never felt it worthwhile to respond to the uninformed views on politics voiced by your many wacked left- and right-wing letter writers. However, I can't allow inaccurate statements about baseball to go uncorrected. Ray Martin's brother is wrong?Mike Vail is not the former Met who got hits for two different teams the same day ("The Mail," 4/3), that was Joel Youngblood. Marvin Polonsky is also wrong in saying that former Mayor Robert Wagner ran for reelection against former Sen. Jacob Javits?Wagner opposed Javits for Senator in 1956.

Jerry Skurnik, Manhattan

It's in the Cards

Life is good and all is right with the world. Springtime is here, robins are singing and MUGGER picks the Bosox to take it all ("MUGGER," 3/27).

I also hope your choice of the Cards as World Series opponents is correct. If La Russa will manage like he did the last 60 days of 2001 they have a chance.

Bud Hunt, Kennett, MO

Talkin' Baseball

MUGGER: Read your baseball-stadium piece in the 3/29 WSJ and it struck a chord. My purest MLB memories always included a bus and a subway ride, a $4-$6 ticket and scoring the game with a pad of paper I brought from home. The game was the point, of course.

Since I get very little additional "value" from some other revenue opportunity (in-person advertising, food revenues, luxury box licenses, exorbitant parking charges, etc.) that MLB provides in order to make up for their very high expenses, and since I simply enjoy the game itself, I can make do.

College baseball played by Columbia, Pace, St. John's, etc., is very competitive and incredibly inexpensive. Absent of commercials, the game goes by quickly. The terms by which players serve their teams are straightforward. I can root with innocence.

I am lucky in that Princeton plays its seven to 10 home games each year within walking distance of my home. The last two years, they've won the Ivy League and have gone on to the College World Series.

I watch a dozen or more games each year, and have just begun taking my six-month-old son to them. None of them include the MLB variety.

Doug Rubin, Princeton, NJ

SPF 15

TAKI: BwaaHaaHaaaaHHH. Oh, God. Haaaha hahaaa haaa!

What the fucking hell are you attempting to spew ("Top Drawer," 4/3)? Your days are numbered. Flail away with all your might. The moth-eaten curtain behind which you and your ilk hide is slowly disintegrating. Hope you brought your sunscreen. It's hot in liars' hell.

Gene Clark, Manhattan

Bush's Special Bud

Mr. Signorile: I enjoy "The Gist." You seem to be one of the few columnists who possess a modicum of humanity. I don't mind reading columns by people with whom I disagree, I just abhor the shouting and high-handed vitriol. MUGGER is really a loathsome brute, or at least that's how he comes off in his column. Presumably he's not that way as a boss or you wouldn't still be working there.

As for your last column about "outing" David Brock (4/3), don't feel bad about that one that got away. But how about outing George W. Bush? Yes, you heard correctly. Back in George Jr.'s partying days, he was a real swinger. I have heard from reliable sources, in fact, that he was caught in the act with a gay man from South Africa by none other than George H.W. Bush and Barbara, who walked in on them!

I heard this from a member in high standing in the British cultural hierarchy. Perhaps if you simply asked around, you might uncover the scoop of the new century! Happy hunting.

Sal Vachon, Waterbury, CT

Trash Talk

MUGGER: So, you went to Mexico and we get to hear about it (4/3). Funny how so many "journalists" feel the need to write travelogues every time they leave town. Another bookmark hits the wastebasket.

J.D. Finnerty, San Francisco

And Strom's State, Jerry?

MUGGER: Totally enjoyed your column as always. I was particularly appreciative of the Teddy Kennedy moments (4/3). Regarding the probable Kennedy escape from wee Robby Reich's wealth redistribution scheme, one must remember that trustfunds are naturally excluded from such onerous burdens. After all, one must be careful about wealth redistribution or else poor Robert would be forced to actually earn a living wage himself!

That Gray Davis is a credible candidate after four years of failures and disastrously failed leadership is beyond reckoning; as you say, only in California and Maryland!

Jerry Dunn, Greenville, SC

Scream, Brulé

RE TAKI's "Liars & Quislings" ("Top Drawer," 4/3). You make excellent points, now please consider those liars and quislings on the right. Free-trade globalists are inveterate, greed-driven liars touting prosperity for Americans while building economic and cultural doom?fattening their bank accounts by making of Red China a U.S.-consumer-built military and economic powerhouse, to subdue and/or vaporize American cities in a future war; transforming America from an industrial/technological exporter into a service-driven, debt-strapped importer; supplanting intrinsic monetary worth with fiat money and fractional banking, to hide dire consequences of their increase-profits-at-any-cost, expansionist policies; ripping apart the social fabric of white Western civilization with come-one-come-all low-wage/high-consuming immigrants, coming from anti-white/anti-Western nations; propagandizing about reducing poverty abroad by importing Third World people here, as if American businessmen do not owe their allegiance to strengthening America; generating amnesty after amnesty upon fresh lies to enforce our immigration laws "this time!"; and undermining visa laws to increase consumption of their goods and services, which evil effort on globalists' part had welcomed diversity-minded Arabs to slam three passenger jets into American targets, plunging the U.S. into a no-end-in-sight war on terrorism. And you support free-trade globalism?

Black Tuesday (aka 9/11) had helped to prove the accuracy of presidential candidate Patrick Buchanan's political and social views, and had demonstrated how dangerously out of touch with reality both Republicans and Democrats have been: "Build Pat's wall!"

Richard Brulé, Richmond, VA

Busted Ballparks

RUSS: I enjoyed your article on "Amusement Parks" in the 3/29 Wall Street Journal. In response I would suggest that what we see in the new parks is exploitative marketing being pursued at the expense of tradition. To put it simply, it's all about the bottom line. With the expansion from 16 teams to the present-day 30-team setup the marketing gurus employed by each MLB team are speaking to a different set of conditions. Competition for the entertainment dollar has never been higher. Expansion into the Texas market alone in the 60s and 70s presented the problem of how to deal with the heat during a long summer and fall. I won't bore you with the particulars of that story. We all know the history of the Astrodome, which I consider the absolute worst place to play baseball ever created. Air conditioning be damned.

As for the trend toward making the corporate customers "The Kings" of spectators, you know as well as I do that it is simply a matter of (pardon the pun) dollars and sense. When I go to the ballpark, no matter the venue, I sit in a seat I provided for myself. I don't venture into the realm of corporate suites, and if I am unfortunate enough to sit near a corporate-outing group, I just try to tune them out.

I'm a hotdog, peanut and beer guy. If the ballclub wants to make pizza, sushi, Mexican, or whatever food available to the public, I couldn't care less. I won't stand in line for an inning and a half to get something to eat. I'll get to the park early and get my grub before the game starts and hail a vendor if I need a beer or a bag of peanuts during the game. If I have to get up and go to the bathroom, then I consider that just part of the experience.

What I don't like the most about today's usual crowd at a game is that a lot of people go to the park to be seen, and not to watch the game. I am constantly amazed at the endless parade of clones up and down the aisle at almost every game I attended last year. If they made two trips up and down, they made 20. Most of the time they created so much interference with my line of sight that it made it hard for me to follow the action with the usual ardor I bring to the park as a fan. The "Club Level" at the field formerly known as Enron is the worst section for parading clones I ever saw. So, maybe I am being victimized by corporate ticket-holders and didn't know it.

Like yourself, I am a veteran of old ballparks, and the new ones. I loved County Stadium in Milwaukee, and Tiger Stadium in Detroit and am glad I got to take my sons there before they suffered the wrecking balls of progress. Those are great memories that we will carry with us for the rest of our lives. I wish I could have seen the Polo Grounds, and old Comiskey, and Sportsman's Park and many more. The sounds and smells at old ballparks seem to be getting lost in the new ones. Time marches on and the enduring essence of baseball marches with it. Let's collectively pray that the beancounters and marketing mavens don't ruin the "Coney Island of the Mind" landscape the Major League baseball parks have been for you and me, and those who share our sentiments. Yours in baseball...

Tracy Meadows, Brenham, TX

AngelO's

MUGGER: Nice piece in the baseball issue (3/27). Here is a thought: Peter Angelos may be a filthy-rich lawyer, always looking for some poor sucker to screw, but he still has the Baltimore O's. A once-proud franchise, Big Pete has managed to run it into the ground, spending millions to do it. Baseball is one place where his ego turned out to be his worst enemy.

Tom Donelson, Marion, IA

Empirial Facts

TAKI: An interesting article on WWI ("Top Drawer," 3/27) but historical analysis has got to consist of something more than "the world would be a better place if Germany had won." Yet you accuse Wilson of naivete.

Many of the horrors that you describe came about because of imperialism and empire-building, which is exactly what the Germans wanted, too. Ultimately there was a clash of ideologies but there is no evidence to suggest that German leadership in world affairs would have been of a more benevolent kind than British or U.S. As for the Germans being the "most philo-Semitic nation in Europe," that simply doesn't make sense given that as a nation Germany was only 45-50 years old at the end of WWI. Anti-Semitism of the most virulent kind was a fact throughout Europe for centuries; to claim that somehow it had escaped "Germany" doesn't make any kind of sense. Even if German-Jewish largesse could be argued (and it can't), they certainly took to it like ducks to the pond in the 1930s. But perhaps Hitler was misunderstood.

It is not enough to assert that "X Y and Z" would not have happened because inevitably something would have happened in place of the developments you list. In which case somebody would be writing "the world would be a better place if the British had won because A B and C would not have happened." And so it goes.

Still, I enjoyed the article?apart from the sentence fragments.

Tim Kelly, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia

Obrigado, Taki

TAKI: Congratulations for this very fine article. I had the same feeling about "that" war. Thanks for it.

João Baptista, Esposende, Portugal

Those Verdammt Yanks!

TAKI: I read an interesting book a while back. It was written by George Seldes, a fellow American journalist who seems to have been everywhere during the 20th century. He claimed that he was one of four journalists who learned the "truth" of Germany's capitulation at the end of WWI. In an exclusive interview with Paul von Hindenburg, the great general, when asked what had forced Germany to surrender, stunned the assembled journalists by breaking down, weeping, pounding his fist on the table and saying (according to Seldes), "It was the Americans! They broke our back in the Ardennes!"

I'm curious, from a purely historical perspective, to know what you think of this.

Robert Anderson, Fremont, CA

All That, and Much More

I am left almost speechless by Taki's article "What if?" Almost?just enough air left to say that this is possibly the most meaningless exercise by the most criminally uninformed, malicious or downright stupid writer it has been my misfortune to read. Your publication must be desperate, morally bankrupt or loony-right?or maybe all three?to have published it.

Eric Berman, Memphis

Afro-Hungarian Empire

Taki: The fallacy of such dreams as this become evident with one question: does anyone really believe (let alone think) that black Africans would have gained their freedom from colonial powers without bloodshed, or not wanted their freedom at all? It simply does not follow that the Germany of pre-WWIwould have benevolently unraveled 1000 years or more of African history, or if that, would have "known what was best for the poor savages." This essay sounds like a Victorian dream.

Tom Barber, Burlington, VT

War Talk

I have a couple of quibbles with Taki's article that poses the question "What If Germany Had Won WWI?" In his alternate history, Taki envisions a much more peaceful and stable world, especially in Western Europe, and for the most part, I do agree with that assessment. However, Taki also claims that "The dynasties would have survived, which means there would have been no Communism with its 20 to possibly 100 million victims." Unfortunately, this seems unlikely in the case of the Romanovs, unless the Great War had been averted completely. Consider: one of the primary causes of the Russian revolution was the terrible mismanagement of the Russian military, which led to an horrific defeat suffered in the opening months of the war. Half of the Russian army was annihilated by the Germans in their first engagement. As such, Russia "sat out" most of the rest of the war as revolution swept the land, and the communists had solidly taken control by the time the war officially ended in 1918. Granted, if Germany had won WWI it could have theoretically tried to overthrow the nascent Soviet Union, but it should be remembered that the Allied powers tried to do just that for two years after the end of the Great War, and all that they ended up doing was enflaming the Russians' hatred for the West. As such, while a German victory in WWI might have severely reduced the Soviet domination of Eastern Europe, it probably would not have stopped the rise of communism, and it certainly would not have saved the Romanov dynasty.

My other quibble is in regard to Taki's depiction of President Woodrow Wilson as "a well-meaning man but criminally responsible for Jimmy Carter-like naivete." Taki is apparently referring to President Wilson's idea for creating a "League of Nations" in an attempt to prevent future wars between the major European powers. While I will not make the claim that Wilson's plan would have absolutely succeeded, the simple fact of the matter is that the League never got the opportunity to even get off the ground?a keystone of Wilson's plan was to have America act as a mediator to settle disputes between the other powers. Unfortunately, Wilson suffered a massive stroke before the founding of the League, and he never truly recovered from it. Succeeding American administrations decided upon a "hands-off" approach when it came to dealing with the League of Nations, so Wilson's dream died before it was even truly born. One wonders, however, what might have happened if the League had been set up as Wilson originally envisioned, with America taking an active role. Perhaps it still would have failed in preventing WWII, but at the very least America would have been better prepared for that war when it came.

Paul Riter, Bronx

Every One of Us

Here we go?the Dems are trying to reclaim and reframe Clinton's reputation at the expense of Bush. My, what good, upstanding Americans they are! Suddenly, Clinton was the top Osama hunter in the land, he was hot on his tail. The only tail Clinton was hot on was any female White House intern tail. Suddenly, if Clinton was still in office, we wouldn't have had a recession. The man who gave us a bubble economy, another all-facade, no-substance Clinton creation, would be able to catch Osama and give seniors a prescription drug plan without breaking a sweat. And what are most Republicans doing?bashing Bush for not putting Americans in Israel to keep the peace. God help us.

John R. McCormick, Woonsocket, RI

Shadow Vatican

MIKE Signorile: I would like to share with you some of my thoughts about the Catholic Church into which you and I were born. I have much love for Pope John 23rd and his giant step taken to bring about Vatican II, and I deplore how our present Pope has allowed the conservative members of the hierarchy to bring back (slowly but surely) years of stagnation. I believe that this is the most serious problem confronting our church. There is one organization called the Legionnaires that is working sort of in the shadows to bring us back to "The Good Old Days." Have you ever heard of this organization?

Mike, I'm writing to you quite by chance as I just finished reading your article ("The Gist," 3/27) about Brock's great book, Blinded by the Right. I'm probably a dreamer but I feel that if enough of us Catholics stick together we may still keep the windows open and let the stagnation be blown out. For too long we have allowed ourselves to be blinded by the power of the priesthood. I believe that the people are the church. Just as I believe the people are the government. Too much power to the few is the destruction of the many. Thanks for reading my thoughts.

Name Withheld, via e-mail