Snobby Savvy Slivka; Crabby Tabb; Cabal's a Lying Elephant-Hater; Slackjaw, Our Hero; MUGGER's Right About Molly; Exciting and Inciting

ONT FACE="Plantin Bold"> Andrey Slivka’s article on the Webbys ("Webbys 2001," 8/1) was pretty much dead-on (especially the part about an entire generation’s capitulation to the money culture); on the other hand, it’s gotten pretty hip these days to heap ridicule on laid-off Web workers. Keep in mind that a lot of low-end website employees really did get screwed. Maybe not the yahoos at the Webbys, but definitely the ill-paid receptionists, assistants and customer support workers who were making $30K and under even during the dotcom boom.

It’s a much worse scene, regardless of race, when you get bounced out of a low-status, low-qualification $27-grand-a-year job (especially in cities like New York or San Francisco with their ridiculously inflated costs of living) to discover that the "economic downturn" means that finding another equally crappy job will be three times as hard. Here’s hoping the soup lines stay in the 1930s, but some dotcom casualties have grimmer prospects ahead than grad school.

Name Withheld, via Internet

Maybe Too Hip?

I don’t know that I’ve ever read a more priggish, snotty piece of writing in my life than Andrey Slivka’s piece on the Webby awards. Not that I have anything against making fun of the SF dotcommer crowd. Working in printing all my life, I have my own issues with the Internet industry and it’s destroy-the-old-dinosaurs mentality. A note: printing plants are closing all over the country. This would make Slivka sad, I suppose, considering that the people whose jobs are lost when a printing plant closes are nice, easy-to-sympathize-with working-class-type folks. Probably even some blacks, although maybe not the type who would appreciate a degrading comparison to some rich white partygoers for some self-righteous writer’s next paragraph.

But the central problem with the piece is that it is just so goddamn easy to write a snide little article about rich little turds and why their problems are meaningless. All the precious little comments about "whiteboys" and "whitegirls." Of course these people are shameless, horrible little fucks. But honestly, who cares? Who gives a fuck? Catering to the schadenfreude of others is not a good theme for a cover story. There should have been some meat in there.

Thanks for the Caldwell, La Badarian, Strausbaugh and Knipfel, though.

Caleb Wright, Brooklyn

Detail Man

I especially enjoyed and savored M. Wartella’s excellent "Stone Oven" pizza gag on this week’s cover (8/1).

Name Withheld, Manhattan

Letter of the Week

I have always picked up New York Press looking forward to articles written by Jim Knipfel. It was a wonderful surprise to come to your website and find that Jim is an energetic contributor to your "Daily Billboard" section. When Jim is not published in your weekly tome, I find comfort in knowing I can view his wonderful insights posted on nypress.com. Kudos to all your staff for producing one of the most readable and energetic newspapers in this cluttered field. Please pass on to your advertisers that this reader uses New York Press as the first resource for my buying needs. If you want, I can list purchases from "inch.com" (old ad) to Metro AirTek.

P.S. I love you too, MUGGER.

John E. Schloss, Brooklyn

From a Former Poser

I just finished reading Slackjaw, and I was totally blown away. Awesome book. Just wanted to give my praise to Jim Knipfel. I grew up in Madison and was an alternative HS poser-punkette for the whole late 1980s scene there. The NWP were my heroes: their "form of protest without the content" march to this day makes me bust up. Also, kudos to Andrey Slivka on the "Webby" story–I live in the smoking husk of dotcomville, and appreciate the take.

Candace Cardinal, San Francisco

Where’s Cecil?

Looks like you forgot to put "The Straight Dope" in last week’s issue of New York Press. Please don’t forget it next week.

Barry N. Sher, Manhattan

Hey, MUGGIE Boy!

MUGGER: I just read the "Pickin’ Up the Pieces" bit (8/1). For this effort, the selection committee has awarded you the Ed Norton Prize and Medal, named in honor of the New York City worker from Jackie Gleason’s tv show. The citation reads: "Each week you courageously climb down into the sewer of Political Writing and watch the turds drift by, netting the biggest floaters and proudly displaying their putrid contents."

How do you do it? They can’t pay you enough to read this stuff. As you say, look at them: From Alter and Fineman, to Time’s Margaret Carlson, the entire staff of The New York Times, Slate’s Jacob Weisberg, Salon’s Jake Tapper, The Wall Street Journal’s Al Hunt, NBC’s Tim Russert, Hardball’s Chris Matthews, The Washington Post’s Dana Milbank, E.J. Dionne and Richard Cohen, and The Weekly Standard’s Bill Kristol and David Brooks, this is a repulsive crew of toads and weasels.

In addition to the award, please accept my personal thanks as well. Without your ceaseless efforts, I would never know how disgraceful the idiot press is. I could guess, and I’d be right, but I’d never really know, ’cause I wouldn’t read that shit on a bet. But I eagerly await your column each Wednesday. What’s more, I’m cruising through The Wall Street Journal and I start reading a well-written and thought-out piece on a book I’ll never read about Tina and Harry. Something’s familiar, so I look at the byline. "Is that New York Press’ Russ Smith? Sure writes and thinks like him." Sure enough it’s you. Nice work.

P.S. Go Sox. We were in Boston for the ’86 debacle and to this day my bride is eager to provide Bill Buckner with the attractive piano wire necktie if she ever gets her hands on him.

Jim Klein, San Francisco

Low Blow

George Tabb: As a faithful reader of New York Press for many years now, I have endured your stories for quite a while. The latest one about the first time you got crabs ("Music, 8/1) had me laughing at you, not with you. I think now is the time you should write about your first blowjob and tell everyone who cares if your jaw still hurts.

Nina Hunter, Coney Island

Too Much Information

Alan Cabal says he’s been spending too much time in his apartment ("New York City," 7/25). Too bad he didn’t spend it becoming informed about circuses with animals. Elephants and big cats like tigers and lions "perform" only through fear of their trainers. Why else would they jump through a ring of fire? It is a fact that the USDA has charged the Clyde Beatty-Cole Bros. Circus with violating the Animal Welfare Act in its abusive treatment of elephants. It is a fact that the Monmouth County, NJ, SPCA has charged CBCBC with cruelty to animals. Elephants stand on their heads only because of fear of the bull-hook used to beat them into submission. Three of the CBCBC elephants have died in less than two years. I guess Cabal thinks they were killed with kindness.

When all those happy humans go home after watching a show filled with stupid animal tricks coerced by beatings, the animals go back into their cramped cages where they live most of their lives. Why is taking wild animals taken from their natural environments and forcing them to perform stupid tricks "Good Old American Entertainment"? Sounds like Good Old American Cruelty to me.

Sheila M. Richardson, Woodside

Courting Stereotypes

Stereotypes are great, aren’t they? According to Alan Cabal, if you don’t want animals to be beaten or otherwise abused, you apparently become a "puerile ninny" and an "idiot" involved in "dipshit pursuits like PETA and ALF."

I see. The least Mr. Cabal could do is get his facts straight. First of all, the USDA does not give the Clyde Beatty circus a clean bill of health. They have, in fact, issued multiple citations and violations. Bull-hooks are used on elephants and four elephants have died in the past four years. If Cabal would sit down in a face-to-face meeting with some of us "puerile ninnies," perhaps we could share with him the painful facts behind the lives of circus animals.

Robin Jacobson, Manhattan

Let Us Guess: Four Elephants? Bull-hooks?

I am writing in response to Alan Cabal’s article entitled "Real American Circus." Mr. Cabal does not have his facts straight. He seems to think that the USDA inspectors have placed their stamp of approval on Clyde Beatty’s treatment of animals. In reality, Clyde Beatty has received many USDA citations and violations including abusive use of bull-hooks on elephants. But reality does not seem to be a plane that Mr. Cabal visits too often. He seems to be overdosing on nostalgia; his article reads as if he is itching for his delusional "good ol’ days."

He trivializes animal activists because, in his words, "they presume to denounce any sort of working relationship between man and beast." This further exemplifies his detachment from reality. The relationship between people who work for the circus and circus animals is nowhere near equal and is in no way comparable to an employer/ employee "work" relationship. It is much more analogous to the master/slave relationship. Maybe Mr. Cabal would take no offense at that kind master/slave relationship either. His "good ol’ days" nostalgic lust seems to be founded in exploitation anyway. Maybe he also misses the days when circuses paraded people as freaks, people like "the bearded lady," etc.–because that’s what Cabal’s exalted "authentic traditional American circus" did.

Personally, I have worked briefly for the Cirque du Soleil, which does not have animals. I am an advocate of these kinds of circuses, the ones that do no harm to animals.

Joanna Marzullo, Bronx

Alan Cabal replies: Clyde Beatty-Cole Bros. Circus is, like any circus, comprised of a number of individual acts. While it is true that in the past there have been abuses perpetrated against animals by certain unethical and unsavory performers under contract with the show, the management of CBCBC has taken a very firm position against abusive animal-handling techniques and is currently operating a clean and humane show as per the USDA and my own observation. The show goes into winter quarters and takes a break every year from Thanksgiving to March. Adam Hill’s elephant partners consist of Bessie, 56 years old; Tina, 35 years old; and Jewel, 37 years old. Elephants in the wild generally live to be 30-35 years old, assuming they can manage to avoid the poachers. To suggest that these highly intelligent animals need to be coerced to perform is preposterous. They enjoy the applause and appreciate the catering as much as their human partners do.

NRA on His Deathbed

I was glad to see that Armond White appreciated Charlton Heston’s cameo appearance in Tim Burton’s reinterpretation of Planet of the Apes ("Film," 8/1). I am quite surprised, however, that he didn’t note the subtler and more meaningful subtext to Heston’s ape’s deathbed speech.

When Heston says: "Against this [technology] our physical strength means nothing," he isn’t blasting guns as forces that foster chaos, he’s praising them as tools of social change. Look at that same statement from the perspective of the humans (or any downtrodden group). With guns, slavery can be abolished. Guns are cast as the great equalizer, a tool for the oppressed with which to fight for freedom. In other words, Chuck Heston, even with all his self-effacing buffoonery, still manages to pump out the NRA party line.

In addition, bless you New York Press for including Matt Zoller Seitz’s reviews. He deserves nothing less than constant praise.

Tal Kedem, Manhattan

Prancing Monahan

While it seems incredible that an upper-crusty Franco-Armenian like Claude La Badarian would recognize a claddagh ring if he saw one ("Dining Late with Claude La Badarian," 8/1)–when he scrawls about his fascination with the "little people," does he mean leprechauns?–it’s nothing less than hilarious to read the latest resentful description of his rival–a grown man, I assume–sporting that garish accessory–not the backpack, by the way–or the rum and Coke, come to think of it–so long favored by vaginismustic Catholic schoolgirls.

If it’s any comfort, Mr. La Badarian, it sounds as if you’re not having quite all of Monahan’s problems for him. I hope you’ll let us know–that is, if you can quell your seething envy for long enough–when he shows up at the bar wearing a hiked-up Campbell skirt and barrettes.

Ken Hagan, Bronx

Rim Shot

Regarding George Tabb’s latest column in your music section ("Music," 8/1), I would just like to say that I, too, got crabs from a dirty hotel bed in Mexico. At least that’s what I tell my girlfriend.

Sydney Ripley, Manhattan

A Musical Joke

Thoroughly enjoyed "Old Smoke" once again (7/18 and 8/1). But I couldn’t help noticing a slight discrepancy: At the beginning of Part 1, William Bryk says that Daniel Sickles made Lorenzo Da Ponte’s acquaintance in 1839; but at the end of Part 2, we learn that Da Ponte died in 1838. If it’s not too nitpicky, I’d like to ask, which is it?

Ronald MacKinnon, Manhattan

The editors reply: Sickles made the acquaintance of the younger Lorenzo Da Ponte in 1839.

Blood Feud

George Szamuely: I do not believe that sins of the fathers should be revisited on the sons, but one with your name–descendant of the infamous Tibor Szamuely–should not take the side of that degenerate tyrant and murderer Mugabe ("Taki’s Top Drawer," 7/25)! Then, your "immunity" evaporates and all the bad things the name Tibor Szamuely brings to mind can be turned against you. I would think twice if I were you before cheering terrorists and murderers. (This is not to be easy on the gangster regime of Horthy that followed the Commune; that is another filthy chapter of the many filthy chapters that are the history of Hungary.) In a similar situation I would advise any Horthy descendant–should he make common cause with any bloody dictator.

Robert Peter Held, via Internet

George Szamuely replies: I don’t hold my head in shame on account of my great-uncle. While I would not defend everything he did, two things need to be kept in mind. First, in 1919 a defeated, disarmed Hungary was the victim of Western-inspired invasions by the Romanians and the Czechs, each of whom had been promised large chunks of Hungarian land as reward. As Deputy Commissar for War of the Hungarian Soviet Republic, my great-uncle achieved the near-impossible feat of mobilizing the country and–at least for a time–fighting off the invading armies. However, given the forces arrayed against Hungary, defeat was inevitable and my great-uncle paid for his defiance with his life. Second, the chaos in which Hungary found itself in 1919 was not caused by men like my great-uncle, but by the supposedly respectable politicians who recklessly led their countries into the disastrous 1914-’18 war.

Never Too Many Reasons

How tremendous to see that Mimi Kramer has taken over the theater column ("Theater," 8/1). She is a bold, intelligent and entertaining writer and will bring your theater page up to the level of your cinema coverage, which has always been awesome. Though I didn’t need one, you have provided me with another reason to read New York Press.

Travis Stewart, Brooklyn

That Blo’s Us Away!

MUGGER: Are you aware of the Blohards, a Red Sox fan club here in New York? The formal name is "Benevolent Loyal Order Of The Honorable Ancient Red Sox Die Hard Sufferers Of New York." We have periodic meetings with lots to drink and eat. The team usually provides speakers when they’re in town.

Vern Trotter, Manhattan

After We Wake Him Up

MUGGER: Please add Don Imus to the list of shills (8/1).

Carol Hunter, Shreveport, LA

More Trotskyites in the Media

MUGGER: I loved your article–especially your references to Molly Ivins and Jim Hightower (8/1). On the subject of President Bush, my wife and I cannot understand why he is not all over the country selling his programs and positions and giving it straight to the American public instead of expecting them to get it from the Marxist media. It’s a real puzzlement.

Gus Doering, Cedar Park, TX

Another Baltimoron Who Doesn’t Like Us

MUGGER: You are aptly named if the victim of the mugging you refer to is journalistic quality. I checked out New York Press expecting to find some of the best commentary going. After all, this is "if you can make it here you can make it anywhere" New York City and this is an independent paper (which should attract the best of the truly independent writers).

But what do I find? The same tiresome substitution of vitriol for wit, knockdowns for commentary and tired rehashes (dished up under new names like blue plate specials at a really bad diner) in place of fresh perspectives. In fact, MUGGER shouldn’t be singled out. The whole paper is a sad disappointment and can’t begin to hold a candle to Detroit’s Metrotimes, Baltimore’s City Paper, the Philadelphia Weekly or, incredible as it may seem, the occasional offering from the Austin Chronicle. The saddest thing of all is that there have got to be some topnotch writers roaming New York, un- or under-employed.

Cheryl Adam, Baltimore

Nothin’ But Cock

I was scouring my Internet bookmarks trying to find news sources not obsessed with Gary Condit’s penis and thought I’d glance through New York Press. Why would a NYC-based publication care about a Left Coast politician, I thought. Wrong again. Christopher Caldwell was right there ("Hill of Beans," 8/1), obsessing like a Sunday morning pundit whore, wringing every last nuance out of the scraps of news and innuendo (mostly the latter) that had emerged over the previous week.

What were you thinking? How can you possibly believe your readers want more of this crap? Are New Yorkers so sex-starved and naive they find this media-driven feeding-frenzy to be interesting? The worst part of the Clinton scandals was the entire press submerging itself in the disgusting personal lives of our political leaders from both sides of the aisle. It’s hardly a secret that our current speaker of the House has his job because he was (apparently) the only non-gay GOP member of Congress who wasn’t screwing around. Now we find that Gary Condit, a longtime political crossdresser, is a potential suspect in an intern’s disappearance. I suppose I should be grateful. Just today I erased three bookmarks because they led to websites that couldn’t stop obsessing about someone’s penis. In the future, I won’t have to waste anymore time at New York Press, Kausfiles or ABC News.

I will still visit Drudge, however. If I’m going to have to hear about penises (penii?) I might as well go to the mother of all cock-obsessed websites. With Drudge, I know what I’m getting; I thought New York Press was better than that. I was wrong.

Mark Gisleson, St. Paul, MN

Say Hi to Keely

MUGGER: What do you think about the dredging of the Hudson? How come Murray/Hamburger emphasized the "legal" aspect of the case in the WSJ and not the moral? Do you think morality has gotten too expensive? Sure, it was legal at the time to release PCBs into the Hudson, but so what? GE can afford to do the right thing and clean up the Hudson and do it right.

Isn’t that what compassionate conservatism is all about?

Louie Prima, Staatsburg, NY

Jim’s a Prince

Re Jim Knipfel’s "Paying Off Some Karmic Debts" ("e-Slackjaw," 8/1). That article was so touching–he writes so well that you can almost feel like you saw the incident happen. I know he will probably cringe at my saying this, but he comes across as being a lovely fellow. Thank you for a wonderful reading experience.

Hester Nichols, via Internet

Babbitt Won

I am still laughing at Andrey Slivka’s diatribe against us Mid-American dupes ("Daily Billboard, 7/24). Andrey: Sinclair Lewis was born in Sauk Centre, MN. Guess you didn’t hear Babbitt won and he has a really cool car. I would really recommend a trip out of your Left Coast city. Just recently people have moved to uninhabitable desert places like Phoenix and Las Vegas...shucks, we even have newspapers now and some of us have even lernt to read.

Thomas M. Paynter, Las Vegas

Honky Talkin’

Tim Hall: There is always "ice people," thanks to Leonard Jeffries ("Daily Billboard," 7/26). Of course, the problem with "ice people" is that it actually sounds too cool to be much of an insult. "Ice people," and the silly theory behind it, inspires visions of invincible Vikings, British naval officers and Roman soldiers traveling around the world, thrashing numberless hordes of the best that the Americas, Africa and Asia can produce. And what does "sun people," the Jeffries nomenclature for the sensitive and warmhearted people who live near the equator, make one think of? Right, a bunch of half-naked lazy guys, lying on their asses on the beach sipping out of coconuts while those nasty ice people are writing The Iliad, inventing the machine gun and building cathedrals and skyscrapers. I hope somebody comes up with something better, and look forward to a list in New York Press.

Mitchell Glodek, Manhattan

Like a Phoenix

Sometimes Alexander Cockburn rises above his leftist proclivities. But then he reverts to type, as in his recent "Wild Justice" (7/25) column. He parrots the line that a lawsuit successfully charged that the USDA discriminated against black farmers.

The actual facts belie these left-liberal pieties. The USDA instigated and then acquiesced in a fraudulent settlement with black farmers engaged in white-collar crime. I would refer those who care about the facts of the case to the February 2001 issue of American Renaissance.

Daniel Hayes, Rego Park

Alexander Cockburn replies: This is ludicrous. Black farmers have been screwed ever since Reconstruction and there are hundreds of reports and articles and court decisions buttressing that simple fact. It doesn’t matter which decade you pick. For example, Reagan tried to quell the legitimate gripes of black farmers by the simple expedient of closing down the civil-rights complaint division of the USDA. The real enemy is corporate agriculture. Small white farming families have endless gripes too. But they are spared the racism.

Bar-B-Q Ain’t No Joke

Alexander Cockburn writes: "In Columbus, TX, Jerry Mikeska’s Bar-B-Q sign announces SEVEN DAYS WITHOUT BARBQ MAKES ONE WEAK. In the old days that probably would have read Makes a Man Weak. Not anymore..." ("Wild Justice," 8/1).

Does this mean Texans are sheepishly correct these days, or that they don’t even understand the simple jokes they make? Does Cockburn? It’s a pun, son.

Thomas Cogan, Sunnyside

A Gentleman Never Tells

Alexander Cockburn seems to refer to the key women in George W. Bush’s life on a regular basis. We’ve been told more than once that he found George W.’s mother to be a particularly nasty woman. On the other hand, he seems to find Laura Bush divine, perhaps because of the "vulgar gossip" about her "racy 20s." Sounds fine to me, but what exactly does he know about both women that we don’t?

Todd Kenyon, Brooklyn

The Careful Reader

Re: Alexander Cockburn’s "From New Orleans to Midland" (8/1): The "scrubby old state highway" is not "Interstate 90" or even a state highway–it’s U.S. 90. Interstate 90 runs from Seattle to Boston.

Also, "...a daily production potential of 2.2 million barrels a day." As opposed to a daily production potential of 2.2 million barrels a week?

Paul Sepe, Plymouth, NH

Both, Frequently

Taki’s mongrel-like pursuit of women, continuously announced and bragged about, leads me to believe that it is his ego and not his penis that is being catered to.

Marie Caesar, Bronx

Down Mex-i-co Way

1995... Whatever happened to Zach Parsi?

Jennifer Spiegel, Phoenix

Gulping

Carol Iannone’s column ("Taki’s Top Drawer," 7/25) was an excellent piece on the misguiding influence of "feminism" on women who wish to be successful in and connected to all of life, not just to some strange, separate idea of a fiercely independent female warrior. Thank you, from a 31-year-old working female who likes guys. And, gulp, is dating one considerably her senior.

Shannon Stevens, Philadelphia

Maybe She Needs a Hard Lemonade

One of the disappointing things about your otherwise interesting newspaper is that your editors seem to think that occasional Gen-X bashing of the left is somehow cool. It is ironic I suppose, in that the generation that most fervently wanted to inspire a new moral consciousness in this country is succeeded by a generation that has absolutely no clue as to morality of any kind. (Quick example, the tv commercial where a logger’s foot is amputated accidentally and his coworker’s response is to invite him to have a glass of lemonade–it’s sad that anyone would think that that was funny, but it’s pretty representative of Gen-X humor.)

Getting back to the point and Carol Iannone’s article: First of all, the "con" of feminism is not that it falsely promises freedom for women, but that demands that men treat women as well as they do men, even though men haven’t even begun to figure out how to treat each other well.

The most disappointing and revealing example of the writer’s cluelessness is her statement that "most women...do want to please men, and realize their own highest human pleasure in giving themselves to one of them." Maybe I’m nuts but I put playing with and teaching children, learning and/or creating something new, solving problems, building things, etc., right up there with great sex–if that’s what the writer’s referring to. The reason I’m sending this e-mail is that the columnist’s attitude manifests a level of spiritual depression that should be seen for what it is, namely a disease.

G.F. Hunt, Manhattan

The Satanic Frost?

MUGGER: Don Zimmer–the Gerbil–also blew the Cubs’ chances in the 1989 NLCS with his boneheaded managing (8/1). So if the Cubs and Bosox do meet in October, at least we’ll have one thing in common.

Fred Butzen, Deerfield, IL

Not Deep in Your Heart

MUGGER: I read your reference in your column to Molly Ivins (8/1). I am absolutely appalled that we have to claim her as a Texan. She is, without a doubt, a blot on the reputation of Texas. I saw her once in the Denver airport and she looked like an unmade bed. I could not believe that anyone well known would go out in public looking like that.

Martha Hamby, Dallas

Once Is Never Enough

Today was the first time I read MUGGER. It will certainly not be the last. I loved it! Thanks.

Tom Trimble, Athens, GA

Seek and Ye Shall Find

So Charles Glass has finally found a good Jew; "heroic" even ("Taki’s Top Drawer," 8/1). He lavishes praise on the detestable Dr. Israel Shahak, who spent his entire adult life attempting to literally destroy Judaism and its offspring, the state of Israel. Shahak’s writings on Talmud and Halacha (Jewish law) were so riddled with errors, half-truths and distortions that they made my eyes cross. Almost all Israelis ignored him or thought him either misguided or traitorous. He was famous for taking phrases of Talmud out of context and inserting his own personal interpretations to make them seem stupid/criminal/hard-hearted. He would then present the text as the thinking of not only the single rabbi who authored them, but of all Jews, everywhere, since time immemorial.

Shahak spent his life in an Israel that he described as "fascist," but continued to dwell in Israel’s Jewish cities. No apartment in the Arab neighborhoods of Jaffa for him. He continued to call himself "Jew" though he implied that the word itself was a "simile" for evil and manipulative. He (and Glass, in his column) called Israel "racist," even as it brought tens of thousands of Ethiopian Jews to its country, made them full citizens and has struggled to integrate them into its society; even as it invited thousands of African non-Jews to study in its country; even as it sent medical teams to treat the victims of African plagues and wars; even as it granted a hostile Arab minority full rights in its democracy.

It figures that Glass would idolize a self-hating, wretched little hypocrite like Shahak. He was an acceptable Jew.

Barry Schechter, East Brunswick, NJ

A Grateful German

This is a response to David Mann’s letter "Whiny Europeans" in "The Mail" (7/25). I thank you for the Marshall Plan and most Germans who remember do too. I grew up in postwar Germany without traffic lights and very few cars. The only car I remember seeing was the one that took me to the hospital.

Go over there now! I think we live in a different world today, which should be seriously considered.

Brigitte Epple, Brooklyn

Bosh, Stuff and Nonsense

Once I lost track of the number of times I had written "bullshit" and (so help me) "bosh" in the margins of her piece, I realized that I had to respond to Carol Iannone’s annoying tripe ("Taki’s Top Drawer," 7/25). I presume that it was not intended as some hip attempt at irony or some lame kind of knowing wink.

Let me get this straight. For a woman, "the fulfillment of [her] own nature" consists in "giving herself to" a man? "To Serve Man" is no longer an intelligent and amusing Twilight Zone episode (or subsequent Simpsons riff on it) but the be-all and end-all of female existence? This would be delicious entertainment as a retro time-capsule glance at TV Land fare (Father Knows Best anyone?) but it’s just pititul, and, worse, damned aggravating as a sample of serious thought in the present.

"A woman’s goal should not be to deny her need for a man." Uh, hello? No lesbians on the planet? Stupid and offensive assumption to write them out of her script? Or are they just denying "their own nature"? "[B]oys have been tutored not to grow into good men but to become more like women"? Who scripted these roles? So biology is destiny, after all, and little things like society have nothing to do with the fact that some folks blindly accept gender-based roles as a given without asking who gave them. Iannone writes that feminism "did not teach [women] to ‘know thyself,’ which is the primary requisite for happiness." It’s a pity that she hasn’t taken the time or expended any great effort, apparently, to know herself, either.

What makes her rant all the more infuriating is the dismissal of the demon "feminism" as "part of the problem." Who are these monolithic "feminists" of whom Iannone writes? The ones on whose shoulders she hoists the blame for these "boys will be girls" times in which we live? All a bunch of no-fun, mule-bashers, are they? All about liberty with no social responsibility or connectedness? Environmental concerns? Issues beyond sender? Wow, if I’d known they were all such a horrible bunch, I never would have bought in. Feminist con, indeed. Or maybe we’ve just traveled in different circles, a fact for which I’m eternally grateful (neither she nor the "feminists" she describes sound like much fun).

By the way, my wife’s 14 years older than I am. You want to tell her about how "women have always had a tendency to be drawn to men significantly older than themselves, of course"?

Brian Drier, Manhattan