THIS ONE IS FOR THE CHILDREN This One is ...

 

Not Quite the Thesis There, Dan

I truly hope you keep publishing articles just like this one ("Cage Match," 12/17). It shows the petulance, small-mindedness and nuttiness of the extreme left. Mr. Taibbi accuses Christianity of creating individuals and societies that are backward and primitive. Just tell, what is the primary religion of all of the economic, industrial and scientific powers (nations) in the world for the last 400-500 years? The answer is: Christianity! What culture produced the most politically advanced and tolerant societies? The answer is: Christianity! What countries provided a political/legal/justice system (liberal democracies) that is the envy of and an example for the rest of humanity? Answer: Christian countries located in Western Europe, Canada, Australia and the United States. In fact, this Christian-inspired system gives ignorant (stupid?) leftist nutballs like Taibbi the right to sound ill-informed. Without it he'd be in a dimly lit room with his private parts hooked to some crank-operated electrical device in an attempt to "re-educate" him along the party line.

Dan Culton, Waynesville, MO

 

How About the Beginning?

As an educated person of faith, I wouldn't know where to begin dissecting all of the muddled thinking in this ridiculous article obviously authored by a completely paranoid, black-helicopter conspiracy buff. His attempt to denigrate Christians ("Cage Match," 12/17) as intellectual inferiors is laughable (his brilliant use of the "F" word notwithstanding). What really struck me was his tactic of cherry-picking "Christian" atrocities perpetrated through the millennia while ignoring the millions of positive things done in the name of God. Forgive me, but I seem to have missed all of the great atheist charities that are doing so much for the world. I do seem to remember some pretty atrocious acts carried out by men named Stalin and Mao in the name of atheism, however.

Anthony Roberts, Leland, IA

 

Also Known as "Orlando"

After reading this article by someone known as Matt Taibbi ("Cage Match," 12/17), I'm not sure if its purpose was to enrage us Christians or merely entertain us. The hatred that oozes from this text toward people who are simply trying to lead lives that would please God is nothing short of revolutionary.

It is precisely this blatant hatred toward the majority of this country that would cause otherwise peaceful, loving and civil folks to take up arms and risk everything we have in order to prevent a serpent, like this Matt Taibbi, to ever have a position of influence in our country. However, I would do the same to uphold this person's right to spew such hatred. It is very important to hear what the godless among us are saying because it ignites the passion in us.

Warren Siedel, Chicago

Mississauga's March on Manhattan

It is clear that with Matt Taibbi's article ("Cage Match," 12/17), your paper has sided with those who support hate speech. It is absolutely shocking. I will be telling all of my New York friends to boycott organizations that advertise in your weekly. I will pray for you and the sad and angry author who wrote this screed.

Jim O'Brien, Mississauga, Canada

Christmas in Vienna

The article by Celia Farber about her years in Sweden ("Swedish Wish," 12/24) really hit home for me.

I was 16 when my father died, and my mother immediately made plans to go back to Vienna, Austria, where she was from. She and the rest of the family were practically on their hands and knees pleading with me to stay in Vienna. Vienna is a beautiful city, especially at Christmas time, but I knew nothing was going to keep me from coming back to New York. I turned 18 on August 27, 1960, and on September 5 I was on a Sabena Belgian Airlines 707 headed back. I was sure I had made the right decision, but I was headstrong then. Forty-three years later, I'm not sure of anything anymore.

Oh yes, the Christmas lights in Vienna were always white.

Alfred C. Mandler, Queens

Yellow Ribbon His Ass

I am shocked that Newsweek says that only soldiers have made sacrifices (MUGGER, 12/24). It's the other way around completely. Which six or seven Americans didn't sacrifice? How about the drop in contributions to charity? How about the big pain in the ass that airline travel has become? How about the cost of gasoline?

From the homeless to the rich and famous, everyone has been affected. Where are the editors of Newsweek? We are all human, but that one was just too stupid to ignore. Anyway, keep up the great work and I promise to read more often.

Carl M. Ostergaard Jr., Mendham, NJ

 

Staring into the Abyss

One odd bit from Russ Smith's column (MUGGER, 12/31) caught my attention?in particular, how he took Newsweek to task for stating in their "Conventional Wisdom" feature that American soldiers were "the only Americans asked to sacrifice anything after 9/11." He variously describes the statement as "noxious" and "false."

Smith's argument, such as it is, begins by pointing out the thousands of people who worked at Ground Zero in the months after the attacks. And clearly, those heroes sacrificed their time and sweat and emotional health to return to that hellhole day after day to perform the thankless task of recovering the dead and clearing the area. I'm even willing to overlook the fact that the workers weren't exactly "asked" to perform this sacrifice?and certainly not by the Bush administration; rather, they simply couldn't be kept away. Nevertheless, they were heroes.

MUGGER's argument starts to go off the rails when he notes that the Ground Zero crew likely sacrificed their health, too. Unfortunately, most of them had no idea that was part of the deal, due to the Bush administration's blatant, conscious distortion of the environmental conditions at the site. Accordingly, it's hard to see the inevitable health problems that many of the workers are already suffering as a "sacrifice" in the standard sense of the term. After all, if the notion of a "sacrifice" is to mean anything more than a "screwing," surely one must be aware of what one is being asked to suffer, the burden one is assuming on behalf of the greater good?

This is made clearer in Smith's next head-scratcher?asserting that anyone who lost their job (or a portion of their profits) in the general economic downturn of the past few years had also made a "sacrifice" connected to 9/11. Let's overlook the fact that the most recent recession began six months before, and ended only a few months after, the terrorist attacks. Doesn't it turn the notion of a "sacrifice" completely on its head to extend the title to someone who was fired or suffered a loss of business? No, this isn't 1941, and a "sacrifice" doesn't need to involve food rationing. But surely a "sacrifice" still has to involve a conscious decision to undertake a burden, or some measure of suffering, to benefit the common good? Getting fired sucks. It's not a "sacrifice."

It seemed to me that Newsweek was right on the money. In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, there was an outpouring of public spirit and connectedness in this country that I haven't seen before in my lifetime. The American people would have shouldered almost any burden or paid any price that President Bush asked them to, if it meant that we could make our country safer and better. Instead, all Dubya asked people to do was to go shopping with their tax cuts. It was, and has been, and by all lights will continue to be, left to the American soldier to make the only true sacrifice asked for by the Bush administration in its war against terror.

Chuck Bogle, Manhattan

Jack's Got Our Back

Once again I find myself surprised and delighted by the increasing entertainment value of your publication. Ever since the malign influence of that insufferable dunderhead Mugger virtually ceased to pollute your pages, I've found that reading New York Press is no longer an experience akin to rooting around in trash cans. Things have become so bizarre that I now find myself favoring the Press over the Voice. Strange days.

The improvement has been partly to do with the wider range of political viewpoints presented: Signorile and Taibbi in particular provide a refreshing antidote to Mugger's ravings. However, it is the extent to which you now seriously piss stupid people off that represents the biggest source of chuckles. "The Mail" has become a real highlight, with last week's being particularly satisfying. The splenetic, vein-popping blusterings of humorless arseheads like N. Stockwell Blount ("The Mail," 12/24) almost made me clap my little hands with glee. I have to congratulate you: I think the Ol' Drooler Reagan cover may actually have surpassed the classic "Suicide Jews" ("Cover," 6/18) one in the righteous provocation stakes.

Stockwell Blount and his ilk would do well to educate themselves about political cartooning. A little Gillray would be a good start; a quick run through some of the recent Iraq cartoons by the Guardian's Steve Bell would be a good finish. In the latter, the inarticulate war criminal currently residing in the White House is regularly shown as a slack-jawed chimpanzee who can control neither his spastic, flapping mouth nor his bowels. Given Bush's appalling behavior since coming to power, Mr. Bell is, of course, too kind to the foul little moron.

Soft-headed dolts such as Blount fulminate about the cruelty of a mere cartoon while saying nothing about the real cruelty of the people lampooned by those cartoons. The likes of Reagan have, by the use and abuse of their power, been directly and indirectly responsible for real suffering, real pain, real poverty, real bereavement, real death. The callous, self-centered politics of Margaret Thatcher inspired Elvis Costello to write a song in which he earnestly looked forward to her death, so that he could tramp the dirt down on her grave. And when that vile witch started to lose both her support and her marbles, satirists in the UK went straight for the throat. The tv program Spitting Image mercilessly mocked her increasingly disheveled appearance of unhinged, swivel-eyed dementia, and millions of Brits (including me) who had suffered under her government loved them for it. The actions of those with the ineffable presumption to dictate how you or I should live richly deserve the harshest, most unsparing reactions.

Political cartoons have long been gratuitously vicious towards their targets, and rightly so. Politicians have the infernal arrogance to rule us. Politicians routinely lie, spin, distort, connive and shit-stir for the most dubious and self-serving reasons, and people suffer and die because of those actions. Politicians deserve to be subjected to the most rigorous monitoring, criticism and regulation we can manage. They frequently deserve outright mockery and abuse, too. Reagan was a dreadful idiot of a president; so the fact that he has been reduced to the dreadful idiocy of Alzheimer's seems cruelly fitting. It's almost enough to make one believe in karma. It certainly deserves a smug, mocking cartoon.

Jack Rawlinson, Brooklyn

Flocking to Shepherd

A special thank you to Matthew Callan for his touching and well-executed piece about Jean Shepherd ("New York City," 12/24). It awakened some wonderful memories of years gone by, and came like a magical gift.

I had come to the USA in 1968 on a publicity tour of a musical in which I had just starred in London, and my very first "date" in New York was Leigh Brown, who was then Jean's production secretary, and later his producer. Leigh and Jean taught me the sacred mysteries of Route 22 in New Jersey and the rituals associated with Library Paste.

Out of the studio, as we made our way to the street, Jean was usually silent, though he once did nod at Geoffrey Holder, with whom we shared the elevator one evening. Geoffrey nodded back, of course, and we headed for the Blimpie Base.

There was no mention in the article about Leigh, and it should be known that she was his entire support system. She transcribed articles he wrote for magazines when he was dangerously close to deadline. She consoled him when his then lady-friend objected to his parking his motorcycle in the hallway of her building. She knew the name of every stunt horse used in motion pictures. She protected him, inspired him, encouraged him and promoted him. Long after I stopped seeing her, she married Jean?and that is the way it should have been.

I learned of Leigh's death through friends, and then of Jean's through the media. But I can still hear his voice?and I can still hear her talking about the adventure of visiting Jean's mom in Hammond, Indiana as Jean guffawed in the background. A happy holiday season to you, Matthew Callan.

Ned Stuart, Manhattan

He Did Like The Ladies

The fact that the writer of this column would use Bertrand Russell's quote ("Cage Match," 12/17) simply shows his own negligence. Bertrand himself never faced the real world. He simply lived within his own foolish world of sexual lust and intellectual oblivion. It is sad that such drivel would be published under the auspices of journalism. When someone attacks two of the world's greatest humanitarians as if they were scoundrels, it not only reveals the self-infatuation of the writer, if one could call him such a thing, but such ignorance of fact that it is laughable. I have no problem with those who do not believe in God and would like to have their views heard. What troubles me is that the slanderous remarks by this writer show his incredible lack of intelligence. He has been duped into believing he is intelligent merely because he has read the philosophy of Russell, Rousseau, Gollancz, Marx and even perhaps Ibsen. I feel sorry for how stupid Mr. Taibbi made atheists appear. You should permit an intelligent atheist to write a column to help with damage control to the atheist community.

Charles Dilley, Littleton, CO

Concerned Citizen

Signorile: Thank you for taking the Bush administration to task along with their friends in the corporate media who pimp for them.

Turning on television news makes me so angry and disgusted that I rarely do so anymore. I have written dozens and dozens of letters to viewer services and individual shows and have yet to receive a response that shows they care about what their viewers' concerns are or about the contribution their nonsense is making to undermining our democracy and weakening our nation. I am very concerned that not enough people of voting age realize what these thugs are up to and have forgotten how great it was to live in this country a few short years ago.

Carol Davidek-Waller, Kirkland, WA

On the Cross

The writer of this article ("Cage Match," 12/17) is entitled to his opinion. However, if this had been written about Jews, Muslims or other faiths, many people would be screaming. The writer is seriously biased. Yes, Christianity and other religions have had people and policies at times that abused, hurt and killed others. But I would argue these are political decisions, not religious ones.

Looking at the history of the world, on the whole, Christianity has had the most positive influence on world history and social and technological development as well as the positive influence toward a free-market capitalistic property-based economic system.

Other religions have not had as much success. Look at the rest of the world in terms of social development, economic success, racial harmony and technological development. The West, in particular the United States, is evolving faster socially and has vested a greater effort in facing humanity's demons of hate and intolerance and protecting individual human rights while unleashing humanity's creativity and power to create and enrich both spiritually and materially.

The writer has a problem with other people believing things he does not believe in. If New York Press continues to print such hate-mail, fine, do so. But remember, you cause many readers to wonder whether your staff harbors such hatred and rage in their hearts as well.

Mr. Matt Taibbi really needs some counseling. I hope if he is an employee of yours he gets it. If a conservative said half of what he said he would be fired or threatened with disciplinary action in many companies these days.

Paul Myers, Rochester, NY

First-Time Caller

I never write letters to the editor, but Jack Pretzer's letter, "Live, from Sin City" ("The Mail," 12/31), should have been written as a main feature. It was eloquent and right on. You have a few good and insightful folks at the Press, but your letter writers are, for the most part, outstanding?even those I disagree with.

David Christian, Eagle Point, OR

Get the Thorazine

WHERE THE HELL IS TAIBBI??? I'm havin' withdrawals!!! HHHHEEEEELLLPPPP!

Gail Bentley, Manchester, NH

Stuck Inside of Mobile

My thanks and appreciation to you and yours for Alan Cabal's article, "Nine Hundred and Eleven Missing Pieces" ("Feature," 12/31).

The bravery of New York Press to stand up gives me new faith in my fellow man. You, and the Americans who turned down millions of dollars in compensation in exchange for turning their faces away from the truth, will stand as tall as man has ever reached.

I have heard that one shouldn't argue politics with anyone who buys their ink by the barrel. That door swings in two directions. Only publications like New York Press can awake the sleeping giant. Only the sleeping giant can stop the final destruction of our country. With the grace of God on your side, let your presses build the scream to a roar of defiance. This is our last grab for the brass ring.

William Borgstrom, Mobile, AL

Readers Attack Each Other!

This concerns "tough guy" Jack Pretzer of Las Vegas, who starts with juvenile name-calling and progresses to mass disinformation ("The Mail," 12/31). I wrote what I thought was a friendly-toned and well-thought-out letter regarding Matt Taibbi's pro-atheism essay. I included some of my own disagreements with the establishment, from a Christian viewpoint. The response from the first atheist to directly address me? Hostility and slurs. Myself and another Christian are "idiots." Says a lot about the personality of some atheists, I think.

As for Pretzer's points, George Washington is recorded as being a devout Christian in numerous histories. Thomas Jefferson, while in official charge of Washington's schools, prescribed the bible and the Watts' Christian Hymnal. At least one Library of Congress curator has stated that Jefferson was at least some form of Christian.

"Separation of church and state" appears nowhere in the U.S. Constitution and was not dreamed up in its full force until an unholy alliance formed between liberal judges and ACLU lawyers in the 1900s. The First Amendment refers only to the state being disallowed from putting one Christian church over the others.

God is honored in the Declaration of Independence. The document that kicked off America as we know it, signed by all those men who you said were atheists or non-religionists, deliberately honors God.

James Madison was recorded as stating that there was considerable room for the government to promote religion in American society. The Christianity of John Adams is attested to very well in bios I have right here on my shelf.

The first pilgrims had disagreements with other Christians, but were devout believers. Why else do you think every original U.S. colony had its own official church?

Finally, in the 1800s, the Trinity case decision by the U.S. Supreme Court declared that this is a religious people, a Christian nation.

I could go on and on, but I already try New York Press' patience too often. Those who are interested should see truthsthattransform.org.

Jack Seney, Queens

Not in AP Style, smarty pants

"The answers lay scattered in shreds and pieces..." How about..."The answers lie scattered..." Happy new year!

John Dickenson, Danville, VA

Mr. Mayor, 2020

While I appreciated your cover stories on the World Trade Center ("Feature," 12/31) I must let you know that the trite pronouncements of Douglas Davis?"the boxy Twin Towers were ugly, blah blah blah"?made my eyelids heavy. I thought you lads fancied yourself rebels over there!

Cliches are often true, of course, and a single boxy tower would've been hideous, but the Twin Towers were one of the most iconic sights on Earth, unlike the ordinary Empire State Building. They appeared alien obelisks rather than just another damn office tower, and few skylines could be drawn with two simple straight lines. When you got up close, they grew even more unique, as the vertical ribs made it impossible to note the number of stories, giving the buildings a magical, elusive and abstract nature.

We do not need another building with a spire atop it. The Chrysler Building is indeed lovely, but that doesn't mean we should keep imitating it. Also, Libeskind is a hack. We need two twin towers that are 20 stories taller than the originals, armed with missile launchers. We should build offices only up to the 80th floor, and make the next 50 floors a hollowed-out atrium with a reflecting pool (in both towers). This solves all problems: two enormous memorials of emptiness where the people worked and disappeared, and that greedy prick, Larry Silverstein, doesn't have to whine about not being able to rent the 99th floor out, because there will be no 99th floor. And I get my damn skyline back.

And of course that acid-head Alan Cabal left out the name "Giuliani" when talking about all that government secrecy and failure. The psycho put a 6000-gallon tank of fuel in the lobby of the 47-story 7WTC building (illegally), and now you and I are going to have to reimburse Silverstein's insurance company a billion dollars because our crooked mayor fucked up. (There's a ton more dirt about Giuliani causing the destruction of all three buildings as a result of his negligence?but that wouldn't make an interesting article, now would it?)

Please don't lose sight of the big picture: Terrorists destroyed the most famous skyline on Earth temporarily. Our Republican bosses and their rich developer campaign contributors are going to destroy it permanently. Your eventual mayor,

Christopher X. Brodeur, Manhattan