Unband Rawks; But Not as Much as Knipfel; Jealous of "Sex with the Family Dog"; MUGGER Rawks; No He Doesn't; Rest of It Blows; No It Doesn't; More

As if there weren't enough reasons to love the Unband already ("Almost Infamous: The Unband/Def Leppard Tour," 5/16)?their good-time brand of rawk 'n' roll, their homemade stage pyrotechnics, the way they spit beer on their adoring crowd?Mike Ruffino's tour diaries are more reason to give the band all your love. It's hard to believe a band can consume that many pounds of ______ and still remember how to plug a guitar into an amp. By the time I hit the second paragraph, though, I didn't care if the entire tour was a figment of Ruffino's imagination, as long as he kept writing about it. He is as funny as he's fucking crazy. Now it's time for those Unband boys to stop kicking around the country with bands whose expiration date passed 20 years ago and get back into the studio to write some new stuff of their own. I mean, "Rock Hard" is a great song, but there're only so many times I can listen to Retarder before I pass out.

Jennifer Maerz, San Francisco

 

Slackjaw, Like Yahweh

Oh wow man, it's soooo cool how that dude of the "Almost Infamous" story writes _______ and _______ and ________ when he means to say cocaine, grass, speed, heroin, ecstasy, acid or whatever drugs he likes to party with! Crazy and radical. Man, I wish I was in a band. Hey, Mike Ruffino your article was a ________ piece of ________! But Jim Knipfel's piece, "Wednesday Afternoon, 3 p.m." ("Slackjaw," 5/16) more than made up for it. Now there's a truly cool guy, and he is just because he is.

Lainie Speiser, Manhattan

 

Petophilia

I read with great interest and considerable panting Amanda Cale's absurdly disgusting article on "Sex with the Family Dog" ("First Person," 5/16). Although I am not technically a dog, I was raised by badgers until my 16th birthday and consequently, just like her beloved Nero, I, too, have absolutely no idea what to do with my penis when it gets hard.

Why is it so difficult for me to find a woman who, with only a nudge of my furry snout, will find it in her heart to afford me the kind of relief that Ms. Cale so selflessly extends to her beagle or cocker spaniel or whatever the hell it is? Why am I required to go through the rigmarole of actually finding a woman on my own, buying her Chinese food, sitting through two hours of some dumbass Mel Gibson movie, smelling her farts, getting her sloppy drunk and then chasing her down the street with a soft-boiled egg just to get the 30 seconds of attention that a stupid fucking mongrel gets simply lying on its back and exposing its swollen genitals? Believe me, I've done that too, with mixed results. I'm just as cute as any schnauzer or mixed terrier and I have the Polaroids to prove it! Anyway, should Ms. Cale's dog get hit by a bus, please give her my e-mail address. I'm not quite housebroken yet, but I do happily relieve myself on New York Press.

Johnny Anarchy, Eatontown, NJ

 

We Dunno, George, What Does It Make You?

After reading this week's "First Person" story about the chick who jerks off her dog, I only have one question. If she were a guy, would that make her gay?

George Tabb, City Hall District

 

Milk the Boners

I am truly touched to read the sensitive article Amanda Cale has written about her dog's sexual frustration, and her wonderful solution. I am, however, concerned that she has missed an opportunity to augment her income by several thousand dollars by electing to only write about it for New York Press. I'm sure there are many enterprising website owners with the resources, expertise and equipment necessary to put out a quality "instructional" online video. The market for this is tremendous, and I'm sure the financial reward would be far greater. All for simply satisfying her canine companion's unfulfilled sexual needs.

Allan Peda, Brooklyn

 

But Can You?Oh, Never Mind

Regarding the "First Person" article (5/16), it's hard to believe that I'm unmarried and unloved in a city where women help dogs masturbate.

Barry Popik, Manhattan

 

New York, New York

After reading the article by Amanda Cale I must admit that I was?well?rather disgusted. How, I wondered, could any person attempt to meet THAT kind of need for an animal?

For the next few hours I mulled over this article and decided to read it again?surely I was missing some hidden justification for Amanda's actions. After reading and rereading I finally realized that the author did not seek justification or acceptance. She was, I rationalized, a woman doing what she felt she could to make her pet more at ease.

At first I felt like shouting, "This is wrong, wrong, wrong," but then I realized I felt no true authority to tell this woman what is right or wrong. While I don't necessarily agree with her decision to "help" her pet, I do applaud her informing the rest of us as to what happens behind closed doors. This is New York City, with so many diverse peoples and views of life. If there is any place Amanda belongs, it is here.

Name Withheld, Manhattan

 

Still Fighting the Good Fight

MUGGER: Tell you what, regarding the comments of Europeans on the death penalty (5/16): next time those socialist bastards can win a war on their own, without whining like whelps for our help to protect them from the big, bad bogeymen, I'll begin to give a damn what they think about our justice system.

John Shell, Wichita

 

Daily Planet of the Apes

MUGGER: When they teach monkeys to type, The New York Times will publish them. What's up with that Pulitzer committee anyway? "Bill Clinton got the candy, Al Gore got the cavities," is like a snappy line from Friends, but certainly not Pulitzer material.

Jeff Martin, Frederick, MD

 

Butt of Jokes, Too

Christopher Hitchens is a minor league Anthony Lewis: self-righteous, shrill, boring and utterly predictable ("New York City," 5/16). No humor, no irony, probably doesn't even recognize himself in the caricatures in "Mallard Fillmore." The only way to get an original idea into his head would be via a suppository delivered by a firehose. Plus all that pathetic supercilious Brit shit: it's bad enough that we have these homegrown, supposedly clever, morally superior twits; can't we keep out the low-rent imports?

Gene Salorio, Manhattan

 

He's Better than Imus, Though. Right, Phil?

Christopher Hitchens is one of my favorite journalists, but his pose as a race man gets my goat. Although he has written and spoken powerful words on affirmative action, he clams up like Henry Kissinger when the subject arrives in his backyard. Over the years, in private, I have tried to squeeze a comment out of Christopher regarding the discrimination against black writers and editors at Vanity Fair, where he draws his biggest paycheck. But no luck. So when I heard that he was speaking about his Kissinger book at the Union Square Barnes & Noble on May 9, I decided to confront him in public. Surely, I thought, he would not duck the question when other people were around.

I expected that he would lament the fact that his benefactor, Graydon Carter, shunned black talent at Vanity Fair and that he would promise to do something about this appalling situation. The last thing I imagined from a hundred-flowers-blooming polemicist like Christopher was a tongue-lashing for daring to inquire about his apartheid workplace. Although your correspondent Spencer Ackerman captured the essence of his creepiness, let me add one more exchange.

"It just astounds me," said Christopher in highest dudgeon, "that one could be faced with a cultural crisis, a real media crisis, because of the employment of a war criminal (Kissinger) as a media commentator as well as an object of admiration, and have you comment on certain trivial questions about the internal policies of Conde Nast, which as everyone knows..."

"If you were black, it wouldn't be trivial," I interrupted. "As the French say, if your aunt had wheels, she still wouldn't be a bus," he riposted, with all the solidarity of Jean-Marie Le Pen.

Philip Nobile, Brooklyn

 

You Know Peter Gozinya?

I was very much dismayed by Christopher Caldwell's "I.P. Daily" ("Hill of Beans," 5/9). Your paper should be ashamed by his making fun of the vulgarity of hooligans, whose attempt at "humor" makes serious journalists look ridiculous. In the name of decency, please try to clean things up.

Phil McCrevice, Manhattan

 

How Far's the Old Log Inn?

I'm still laughing about Heywood Jablome. My repertoire stopped with Mike Hunt. Christopher Caldwell's article ("Hill of Beans," 5/9) was a welcome respite from the nooz. Thanks and keep it up (heh heh).

John Lindley, Long Beach

 

The Surrealists Were Not a Bunch of Jackoffs

Your reviewer, one Colin Raff, seems more interested in scoring points off Andre Breton and the other surrealists than in reviewing Mark Ford's excellent work on Raymond Roussel ("Books," 5/9). Unlike Raff, I tend to give the considered literary opinion of an intellect like Breton's the benefit of the doubt. I can't imagine what obscure literary feud fuels this review, and couldn't care less.

Whether or not Roussel's procédé produces images that "overshadow" the works of "the automatic muse," or "possess a weight and tangibility that ephemeral dream-gleanings cannot match" would call for an essay in literary criticism. Here one need only repeat the historical fact that the practice of automatic writing is only a part of that true pillar of the surrealist project, "pure psychic automatism." Contrary to Raff's insinuations, Breton and company never published books filled with random scribblings, perhaps inscribed directly on the printer's plates. Breton in fact had "a horror of spontaneity," and told Le Monde that he was "the world's worst improviser." An essential component of surrealist work was the evaluation of the results : "the interpretations of the texts in depth was always one of the greatest attractions of this experimentation" (American surrealist Paul Garon).

Breton was a rationalist, intent on expanding the boundary of the rational, not sinking into some slough of mysticism. The interest taken by the surrealists in Roussel, like their interest in "automatic writing," synchronistic meetings, random visits to theaters, alchemy, wanderings through the streets of Paris (later appropriated by the situationists), etc., lay in finding ways to sidestep the ego and thus the dead weight of tradition and purely personal neurosis. That Roussel did the same by secretly creating a crazy method of mechanical punning, revealing a total absence of literary talent in the conventional sense, is biographically fascinating but, contra Raff, of no literary or philosophical interest.

Breton and company were au courant with Marx, Freud, Nietzsche and other luminaries. Did Raff even read the book he reviewed? If Roussel was anything, as a closeted homosexual who worshipped Jules Verne and Pierre Loti and spent his immense fortune having his works warehoused by an unscrupulous publisher in order to achieve the popular acclaim he thought his due, he was certainly "naif." John Ashbery, perhaps America's greatest poet and certainly our greatest Rousselmane, illustrates the literary significance of Roussel's procédé when he says that Roussel inspires "enormous empathy, though I can't say that reading him ever directly inspired me to write." So much for this method that produces "endless possibilities, like a precision-cut lens for viewing infinity...scrupulous controls preclud[ing] juvenile escapism...an absolute art."

James O'Meara, Long Island City

 

Orzo You Say

Come on, New York Press. Stop selling yourself short. Carolyn Nash's review of Basic Fare in Chelsea ("Food," 5/9) is an embarrassment. Obviously, she has read countless restaurant reviews. It amazed me that she had no idea what orzo was, but I am pleased that her education is now complete and she can identify it as "something that looks like big grains of rice." Spot on, girl! Imagine how excited she's going to be when she finds out what rosemary really tastes like.

Your paper is continually surpassing the Voice in terms of content. However, I will always dip back into that rag for Sietsema's food reviews. At least he gets down to the business of eating and spares us the overwrought descriptions of a hot summer day in the city through the eyes of a tasteless newbie. Where is Matthew DeBord? You had a good thing going with him.

Nicole DuCharme, Brooklyn

 

[Sic] of It All

MUGGER: I just finished reading your NY Times bit...(5/16) It's refreshing to see someone not only aware of this paper's bullshit but who is willing to write about it. I have always told my friends that arrogance breeds dullness...they are the poster boys for this...I spent five "long" years working for this rag...in upper management and was privy to there asshole inner workings... I use to tell them "Do you think there is a reason that your circulation numbers are decreasing ever year?"...they always had a pat answer such as "our focus groups tell us that people just are not reading newspapers anymore" and buried their heads in the sand...I took a walk away from this madness after realizing that I did not want to be associated in any form with this paper...even after they felt the fucken need to keep promoting me. The masses are not as stupid as the publisher seems to think...the circulation numbers reflect the whole picture...just match up their numbers from ten or twenty years ago to today...the best thing I could have done (after leaving the paper) was stepping out of the newspaper guild and into management...this gave me the chance to see clearly how these people who run the paper...this paper is a dinosaur. From one Long Island boy to another...MUGGER, you are so on the money in your column...keep it up...just maybe you can wake up a few more people to their arrogance.

M. Arnold, Manhattan

 

Still Worked Up over Amy

Okay, so I open the May 28 issue of The Nation, scan the table of contents and find Amy Sohn?yes, that Amy Sohn?listed as a contributor. The idea of Amy Sohn in the same company as that grim Marxist feminist Katha Pollitt is amusing. Even more amusing is Amy's article, a twofer film review of Bridget Jones's Diary and The Center of the World. Here is the penultimate sentence: "In the post-Bridget Jones era, women get to mock the misogynistic standbys, not live in them."

Amy, it's just a movie. More to the point, it's a chick flick carefully crafted to reflect the sensibilities of its target audience. The idea that the plot of a single popular film represents a revolutionary turning point in the social roles of women is naive. History did not begin last week and human nature has not been revoked. Grow up.

Robert Stacy McCain, Gaithersburg, MD

 

Centsless Junk

William Bryk's article on pennies ("Old Smoke," 5/9) was an excellent history. I collect coins in a small way. The newer pennies disgust me for this reason: even the smallest scratch will start the corrosion of the zinc filler metal and, once started, the penny destroys itself. I've found pennies a few years old half eaten away. They are debased junk. None will survive unless extraordinary measures are taken, but who would want to do so for cheap scrap metal?

Robert Chamness, East Lafayette, IN

 

Jesus Was a Moral Relativist

RE: Lionel Tiger's article "Missionary Come Home" ("Human Follies," 5/16). Although Tiger makes some valid points regarding the unnecessary impositions on foreign cultural practices by some missionaries, his summary condemnation of them is ill-conceived and hypocritical. Tiger expresses outrage when he asks, "What on Earth gives some people the right to decide that their view of God or nature or destiny is the right one?" He then proceeds to express his own moral beliefs while attacking the missionaries for expressing theirs.

It seems that it is Tiger who assumes the role of moral instructor (and with an almost missionary zeal) throughout the article. To him, evangelizing or trying to convert others to a particular belief may be offensive. Can he explain the belief he holds that makes this practice offensive, and where that belief comes from?

Tiger apparently expects the reader to accept Tiger's own personal belief system without question. Just because he does this in the name of no particular religion, it is no less intrusive or offensive. Perhaps it is difficult to attack missionaries without becoming some sort of missionary in your own right. Given a choice, I'd choose the ones who also preach the Gospel, feed the hungry, care for the sick and sometimes get killed while doing so.

Glenn Pezzillo, Langhorne, PA

 

Smelled Well, Too

Re: The caption, "Jane's ragout of warm vegetables imprinted themselves on my consciousness" ("Food," 5/16). I've never been to Jane, but after reading this review, I'll be sure to check it out. Don't let all that buttery risotto dull your grammatical senses, though: it was the ragout that did the imprinting, not the warm vegetables. Therefore the singular ragout imprinted itself, not themselves. Didn't you guys just run an ad a few weeks back looking for a new proofreader? Oops. Stick to black coffee on your editing shift.

Julia Cairo, Brooklyn

 

Sparrows Taste Best of All

Alexander Cockburn's recent remarks about the bland taste of modern trout ("Wild Justice," 5/9) evoked my own trout research, here in the mid-Catskills. Fishermen tell me the stocked fish are stupid, and no effort to catch. I guess smart creatures taste better.

Sparrow, Phoenicia, NY

 

Hey, It Takes All Kinds

Taki wrote: "it's like waking up in bed with Ava Gardner on one side and Betty Grable on the other" ("Top Drawer," 5/16). Surely he meant Bette Davis, not Betty Grable!

Gregory Krupey, North Huntingdon, PA

 

Yassir, Ma'am

What is it with New York Press lately? Every day it seems there's some new slam at Israel or New York Jews, while fawning over Arafat and excusing Palestinian/Arab atrocities.

If it's not today's sneering piece about Dov Hikind's (and others', some of them non-Jews, I might add) efforts to remove waxy Yasir from Madame Tussaud's museum ("Daily Billboard," 5/16), it's that really foul and inaccurate piece by Alan Cabal that ran a few weeks ago ("Holiday in Beirut," 4/25), not to mention the usual Taki junk that I have learned to ignore.

It's sounding like a drumbeat, and it's disturbing.

Wendy A. Goldman, Los Angeles

 

And the Beer Was Cold

I loved Cabal's piece on his Beirut trip. It was nothing more than travelogue. Certainly not a Holocaust revisionist piece, since the fucking conference never happened. The angry letter writers should be applauding that fact, not attacking Cabal. He's a writer who got a free trip to Lebanon and wrote about his adventures there. If I were the lone ugly American in a Beirut bar surrounded by Hezbollah and questioned about my loyalties, I might say things that would tend not to piss them off, too. Cabal doesn't believe in killing anyone. And he isn't the first one to equate Zionism with racism. To all those angry letter writers: Stop fixating. Get a fucking life.

Brad Johnson, Fair Oaks, CA

 

Your Life's a Living Hell

As an ex-New Yorker now living in California, I was so happy when I could read New York Press again by going online. Recently you changed your design. Now there are no short descriptions of articles making it easy to decide what interested me in each issue. Instead, all articles are simply listed index style, making it necessary to click on each one in order to figure out what it is about. Because this is so time consuming, I have found that I no longer read your newspaper online. I thought you might want to give a kick in the ass to whoever the chump was that did this.

Julien Nitzberg, Los Angeles

 

An Atrocity Against the Language

Christopher Caldwell is ordinarily my favorite New York Press columnist, but the following is truly loopy: "You'd think that the attention given the depredations of Bob Kerrey's SEAL team in 1969 would have softened our line a little bit, especially given that the incident that led us to issue an ultimatum to Serbia?the massacre of 45 people at Racak?is not easily distinguishable from our own Mekong Delta handiwork." ("Hill of Beans," 5/16) How about this for a distinguishing characteristic? Kerrey's atrocities actually happened, whereas the "massacre" at Racak is a work of fiction, created by the fertile imagination of Ambassador William Walker in order to justify the impending bombardment of Serbia. The parallel for Racak is not My Lai or any other atrocity against the Vietnamese people, but rather the Tonkin Bay incident, an atrocity against the truth.

Thad McArthur, Seattle

 

Soho in Fluxus

Thanks to Douglas Davis for his interesting and informative article on the history of Soho ("Soho: The Afterlife," 5/9). However, there must have been at least 200 street artists wondering, as I was, how he could say that "Fluxus, video and street art went the way of all vanguards, into the museums and history books." Davis is a Soho resident. He lives on Wooster St. How could he miss the thriving weekly exhibit of professional, semiprofessional and folk art on W. Broadway on weekends, and also (a bit thinned out) on Spring and Prince Sts. during the week? Wasn't it a W. Broadway street artist who brought New York Press (through the much-missed Jonathan Ames) the famous Mangina?

While I lament the mall-ization of Soho, I do wonder if the esoteric contrivances of the "art-making elite," such as Fluxus, had that much to communicate to the human soul. The last installation I went to was Yoko Ono's warehouse full of sapling trees planted in coffins. People just stood around socializing and drinking white wine and ignoring the art, as they usually do at openings. One of my favorite Soho gallery owners used to say, "Reason to buy. You have to give them a reason to buy." And he couldn't think of any. His gallery has been replaced by a cosmetics store, which we hear pays $50,000 a month in rent. The grapevine says it's a tax write-off for a large corporation, as are many Soho stores that could not possibly be selling enough to pay the outrageous rents. Back to the street artists: some people say it's they and only they who are keeping the original spirit of Soho alive.

Thelma Blitz, Manhattan

 

A Call to Arms

Like any clash of armies in a really big battle, the struggle for Soho is fought in small, bloody, platoon-sized skirmishes. In his article on Soho, Douglas Davis writes: "...my co-op, allied with others, defeated three applications in a row to install a loud, blaring disco at 76 Wooster, next door to me (though they're sure to try again)." New York Press readers might be interested in what's happening on the 76 Wooster St. front recently.

In a hearing before the Business Committee of Community Board 2, the disco claimed it has been completely misunderstood. It is a gentle, family restaurant applying for a mild-mannered beer-and-wine license only (which would avoid the requirement of a public hearing). It really only wants to serve milk and cookies until 2 a.m. on Fridays and Saturdays.

The Milk and Cookies disco is in a building that the Fire Dept. says is unsafe. It is in a structure that is impossible to fully soundproof, on a narrow, one-way residential street devoid of restaurants or bars. The community board's business subcommittee will recommend that the State Liquor Authority reject the application. But the SLA is a law unto itself. People are asking that letters be sent to Ed Kelly of the State Liquor Authority at 11 Park Pl., NY, NY 10007, opposing the application.

There are a dozen other uses to which 76 Wooster could be put, all of which would be profitable for the owners and beneficial to the neighborhood. The Milk and Cookies disco is not one of them.

Melvin Reichler, Manhattan

 

And Without Producers Tickets

Mystery solved! I e-mailed you weeks ago, wondering why I was only seeing Jonathan Kalb's reviews sporadically. Now I know why?he was being phased out. Shame on you. The only reason I picked up your paper once a week was to read Kalb's reviews. They were thoughtful and insightful and they will be missed. The opening paragraph in his review of Albee's The Play About the Baby ("Theater," 2/28) was terrific: a succinct, powerful lesson in playwriting. You say theater is "boring" ("Theater," 5/2), but obviously you are not going to plays or you'd know what a rich theater season we've had this year. Next year's will be a poorer one without Kalb.

Robert Gomes, Manhattan

 

Beats the Hell Out of Us, Too

Re: Robert McNamara ("Wild Justice," 5/9). How anybody could put their credibility in the man responsible for the Edsel and Vietnam is beyond me.

Robert Bement, Longview, TX

 

Except for Grandpa

In reference to MUGGER's writings on baseball: On our first trip to the BOB here in Phoenix, my then-four-year-old got a foul ball. My father, who has been a Pirates fan since the 30s and attended countless games, has never got one. He was jealous. It was such a great moment for a father and son. The ball sits in the living room on one of the shelves. No other game provides such valuable souvenirs.

Alan White, Phoenix

 

And It Trickles Down

MUGGER: Yikes, the missile shield (5/16)? What're you smoking? Happily, out here in Hollywood we know the difference between reality and fantasy. Though I guess any fantasy that pours money into the pockets of all those Republican campaign donors can't be all bad, right? C'mon, Russ. Climb down from Cheney's lap and think like a man.

Harley Peyton, Santa Monica

 

No Gray Matter

MUGGER: your piece on Bush and the media ("Daily Billboard," 5/10) was about as tortured a piece of writing as I have ever seen you do. It just doesn't work, lad. But raise high the banner. It's nice to know you have not altered one bit your habit of viewing the world as good vs. bad, white vs. black, etc. Fuck the in-betweens, right?

Fred Lapides, Orange, CT

 

Marblehead

MUGGER: Most conservatives have been down on GWB for yielding to the Democrats on education, but in one sense he is absolutely correct. Every poll of inner-city parents shows that they favor school vouchers by majorities of at least two-to-one. Yet in the most recent election, 90 percent of these same people voted for the candidate who opposed school vouchers rather than for Bush, who favored them. In a democracy, as George Bernard Shaw noted, you get the government you deserve.

Why should President Bush spend one penny of political capital fighting for something whose beneficiaries wouldn't vote for him under any circumstance? I agree that America is severely harmed by having so many of its children improperly educated. But education is primarily the responsibility of parents, and inner-city parents have defaulted. Call me a racist and a cynic if you want to, but these parents deserve their lousy schools.

Edward Friedman, Marblehead, MA

 

It Does If You Do It Loud Enough

MUGGER: Paul Krugman may be repetitive, but he has a substantive complaint founded on facts (5/16). I don't think he's a liberal. He's more of a pragmatist in that he wants what he thinks is best for the economy, which could be either higher taxes or lower taxes depending on the circumstances. Some may differ, but sneering at him hardly begins to refute his arguments.

Steve Dilts, York, PA

 

Radicals and Conservatives

MUGGER: Can you explain to me why lowering the top tax rate to 33 percent, which I might add is still 2 percentage points higher than when Bill Clinton took office, is considered a radical undertaking? It would appear to me that the lesson for Republicans is that if you care to try and change things, do it in a big way. If you do incrementally, you will be accused of being an "extremist," so you might as well earn the title.

Tom Donelson, Marion, IA

 

Cuba Libre

MUGGER: I've had a lot of experience with Cuba in recent years and I'd like to elaborate on your reply to P. DeSisto's question ("The Mail," 5/16) about the persistence of poverty on the island despite the deluge of foreign direct investment.

Desisto's question implies faith in the implementation of neoliberal economic policies (such as those adopted by Cuba in the last decade) without regard to underlying social pressures. According to current economic dogma, growth is seen as the key to poverty reduction. The way this works in countries that have hit bottom, which was the case with Cuba after the collapse of the Soviet Union, is that they do grow, often dramatically, and they initially direct their policies toward debt reduction.

Cuba is following this course of action and is also helping itself by reinvesting a lot of its new resources into the development of its own biotechnology industry (still closed to foreign investment, as far as I know). As the growth made possible by foreign investment continues and the economy stabilizes, people begin to see some benefits (compare Cuba now to Cuba in 1993). But neoliberal policy tends to overlook an important fact, one especially relevant in statist regimes?the economy of any nation is most sharply influenced by the degree to which its own people are allowed to participate in day-to-day transactions. Currently, Cubans are permitted only very limited opportunities to engage in their own economy. The foreign investment in Cuba is focused heavily on tourism?an industry from which most Cubans are forceably excluded?and to some extent on mining operations, which do not provide enough jobs to bring Cubans themselves back into the economy.

Most Cubans have no purchasing power. Jobs pay pitifully little because the state is the only employer and the state still relies on bureaucratic structures to minister to people's most basic needs. MUGGER, you were only half right when you replied that "Americans, given the opportunity (both corporations and tourists), would swarm Cuba with commerce." The real question is, when will the Cubans be given these opportunities? American businesses look with greedy expectation to the shores of Cuba (I imagine the Florida panhandle bouncing like a giant springboard, heavy with the weight of Coca-Cola and McDonald's executives). But as of now there is no market in Cuba.

I imagine this will change eventually, but the circumstances are complicated. Social pressures in Cuba have been rising sharply since the introduction of the dollar in 1993. People are incredibly frustrated with their lack of purchasing power and I am sure the Cuban government is aware of this. The question is, how will it choose to respond? From the viewpoint of the government I can understand how it might support a gradual easing of the embargo?creating a release valve with a slow leak. American businessmen would probably love that arrangement too?one by one, industries will selectively be granted entry into the Cuban economy. It's a delicate balancing act: lifting the embargo all at once is likely to be incredibly destabilizing (think of Russia), but a slow leak creates lots of potential for corruption while the disgruntled Cuban people wait and wait for their turn. I believe that there will be a lot of quiet, behind-the-scenes negotiating between the U.S. and Cuba in the next 10 years. I only hope that the Cuban people don't get cut out of the deal...again.

Name Witheld, Manhattan

We Demand the King

Isn't it about time Hollywood made a NEW movie about the real Elvis Presley and not Elvis Impersonators?

Tom Bare, Manhattan

Aw, Shucks

MUGGER: You're the best!

G. Darby, Colonie, NY

He's Got a Heart of Gold

MUGGER: Congratulations on your Golden Binky award from Mediawhoresonline. I can't think of anyone more deserving.

Dale Heilman, via Internet

Spanking the Moneyed

MUGGER writes that the Times can't forgive W for not running a caretaker administration (5/9). For once in his life, MUGGER got something right. Lots of us out there feel the same way, for very obvious reasons. After losing the popular vote and stealing the Florida electors, this silly little fraud of a "president" arrogantly expects us to accept that he has a mandate to overturn the fundamental treaty of nuclear deterrence, withdraw from the Kyoto Protocol, drill in the Arctic and appoint a raving right-wing religious nutcase to the office of attorney general; all the while making things very sweet indeed for his class-warfare-waging brothers-in-arms, such as Acting President Cheney, whose friends and clients will make billions from all this.

Hey MUGGER, can you say "junta"? Can you say "criminal conspiracy"? In the 2002 congressional races the American people, I have no doubt, will hand the Republican Party the spanking of the century, and after 2004 we'll never have to see the Great Pretender's beady little eyes and shit-eating grin again. But I worry that by that time it will be too late.

Jesse Larner, Manhattan

We're Getting Dizzy

The rant that the press is being too kind to Bush ("Daily Billboard," 5/10) is not convincing. Dave Zweifel and Joe Conason and that John Harris fellow forget that the reason Travelgate firings and other Clintonian moments provided weeks worth of copy is because everything the Clinton administration did involved spin.

Think about spinning for a moment. When a wash cycle spins, it forces everything in the washing machine away from the center. If the unit were not contained, the items within would be thrown far and wide. This is what happened to the Clintons. They would spin everything rather than deal with an issue up front. The denials, disingenuous excuses and mindless blather would shoot out in all directions into a press (and a whole nation) unfamiliar with the concept of containment. A free press and a free people were able to pick up all of the random far-flung bits they discovered and bring them together, discuss them, scratch their heads and wonder about it all. With nothing much else to talk about, they talked about the spin?the endless spin.

I don't actually believe the press is being easier on Bush. I've read plenty of nastiness about him. Poor Maureen Dowd is downright unreadable now because she can do nothing but huff and growl at the President through her quickly-wearing-down teeth. And the press was very quick to jump on the absolutely false accusations of Bush trying to "poison our children's drinking water."

My Italian father used to declare that "a fish stinks from the head down." If the press coverage of the Clintons seems rather stinking, just think back to where the story began. President Bush seems to neither toil nor spin. He just does what he says he will do, corrects mistakes quickly and basks in the sunshine. As a result, the press has nothing to write about.

Dana MacKenzie, Lake Grove, NY

Can We at Least Drink?

LIONEL TIGER does a disservice to his readers by dismissing as unproven the health benefits of a vastly reduced-fat and/or animal-product-free diet ("Human Follies," 5/2). There are a wealth of epidemiological data that support greater longevity and better health in vegetarians. I recently attended a national conference on aging and there was essentially no dissent amongst the scientists in the field that such a diet is greatly beneficial to one's health. However, it is much more popular to tell people what they want to hear rather than what's good for them.

If Tiger took the trouble to find out about the research of T. Colin Campbell, the Cornell University biochemist and nutritionist who has examined diet and health in a longitudinal study in rural China, he would have found an overwhelming correlation of consumption of animal products with several types of diseases. There are also studies showing that when Asians emigrate to the U.S. and adopt our noxious diet, they, too, begin to suffer the same diseases as other Americans, at the same rates. Then there are the studies by Dean Ornish, published in top medical journals, that have proven that a low fat, essentially animal-product-free diet can even reverse heart disease in patients who had abused their bodies with high-fat animal products.

With this article, Tiger has assured himself a place in the hall of shame, right up there with the apologists for tobacco use. There may be reasons why someone would want to consume animal products, but good health is definitely not one of them, and it is too bad that Tiger implies otherwise.

Emanuel Goldman, Newark

Hell No, We Wouldn't Go

I WOULD like to commend New York Press for the attention given the Kerrey story by your columnists. At the time of the Vietnam War I was eligible for the draft the year the lottery system went into effect. As luck would have it my number was high?those with high numbers stayed and the low numbers went.

I had already resolved not to go to Vietnam, having determined that the war was immoral, and demonstrated against it while still in high school. This is not the same as assuming that those who decided to go were immoral. A good number of people did so out of patriotism and this should not be belittled. I would rather see Kissinger on the dock than Kerrey, which is not to say that Kerrey should be given a pass for what he did. Since we don't know for certain exactly what went down, I am somewhat hesitant to condemn him, though I strongly suspect that Caldwell is correct in his analysis ("Hill of Beans," 5/2). On the other hand, Cockburn's comparison of Kerrey to Thomas Blanton (who was recently convicted of the Birmingham bombing), is inappropriate ("Wild Justice," 5/9). Blanton committed a premeditated act of terrorism, which is different from an act, however terrible, committed during battle conditions. McVeigh likewise is guilty of premeditated terrorism and to my way of thinking both he and Blanton are evil people.

If Kerrey and his squad encountered unarmed civilians who they then executed because they felt endangered, they committed a sinful act, a war crime even, but this in itself doesn't make them evil. The policymakers who knowingly committed soldiers to a counterinsurgency strategy that was targeted against a civilian population, in violation of treaties and conventions of international law?they are evil.

Talk of the draft brings me in a roundabout way to Taki. Of the many things Bill Clinton did, Taki seems particularly offended by Clinton's evasion of the draft. Most of the people I knew at the time were upset at the idea of being drafted or having loved ones drafted and worried about how to keep this from happening. It wasn't just the long-haired, bong-smoking, hippie scum. Straight, law-abiding, opposed-in-their hearts-to-the-evils-of-communism, future-Rotarian, churchgoing, Republican-voting, short-haired young gentlemen were in no hurry to get their asses shot off in the jungle by murderous commie gooks. In high school gym class our ramrod-straight instructor counseled us to keep our grades up or else we wouldn't get into college and would have to go to Vietnam, where no one in his right mind would want to go.

Klaus Boschen, Manhattan