“Because the female bedbug has no genital opening, the male inseminates her by using his hardened, sharpened genitalia to punch a hole through her abdomen. With no elaborate courtship ritual, males in a frenzied pursuit of sexual congress often blunder into and puncture the bodies of other males, occasionally inflicting fatal wounds.”
–Good news about bedbugs: They only want to anesthetize us while we’re sleeping, bite holes in our skin, administer an anticoagulant and suck up to three times their own bodyweight of our blood in each ten-minute feeding session-not have sex with us! The bad news is, they’re spreading basically unimpeded throughout our cities now because the they’ve become resistant to the chemical pesticides that eradicated them 50 years ago. Entomologist May Berenbaum’s op-ed in yesterday’s Times was as fascinating as it was disgusting.

Resident Post nag Andrea Peyser is upset with the mayor for his stand on the GROUND ZERO TERROR MOSQUE.

Mayor Bloomberg, who championed a mosque near Ground Zero as a prime example of religious freedom, said the structure’s many opponents “ought to be ashamed of themselves” for complaining.

He also trashed those who worry that the mosque and Islamic cultural center’s $100 million construction costs will be raised overseas, where American hatred runs rampant. “Do you really want every time they pass the basket in your church and you throw a buck in, they run over and say, ‘OK, now, you know, where do you come from? Who are your parents? Where’d you get this money?’ “ said the mayor.

And I thought the right to protest was guaranteed by the Constitution. Silly me.

Well, I’m pretty sure Andrea’s not being silly here. This is, in fact, the News Corp editorial line on the matter (see also Peyser’s colleague Michael Goodwin and various Post editorials, if you can bear it): Pointing out that objections to a Muslim cultural center a couple of blocks away from Ground Zero are based in bigotry is itself bigotry. And also they are denials of the Constitutional right to protest (which, as we recall from the Dixie Chicks incident, is incredibly sacred to those on the right).

It’s not just the Post that does this; this is now the standard Republican response to any suggestion that, say, someone holding up a picture of Barack Obama with a bone through his head while screaming about “taking our country back,” might have something of a racist aspect to it. “You’re the real racist for bringing that up,” goes the argument. Except it’s not an argument: It is a strategy. There is no reasonable way to deny that objections to the GROUND ZERO TERROR MOSQUE are based on fear and ignorance and bigotry. You can’t look at the racially-charged responses to Obama’s policies (or personage, or even FACT OF BIRTH) without noting the racial aspect to them. And you know what? They don’t care. This is not about anything but fomenting fear, and whatever angle these people can take to distract from the fact that they’re shamelessly demagoguing to advance their own position, they’ll take. Should the reverse-bigotry argument fail (which it should, but good lord, who knows these days), they will happily switch to some other equally meaningless argument, so long as it helps to obfuscate their real goals. But it’s nice to see the reverence for the Constitution, I guess. Or, at least, certain parts of it.

“One thing that’s clear is that Bush thinks he was dealt a pretty lousy hand on January 20, 2001. Bush, we learn, ‘inherited a recession and an economy struggling under a high tax burden.’ Fat budget surpluses were ‘disappearing.’ Also: ‘drug use among high-school-age teens was at near all-time highs.’ And this is to say nothing of the ‘considerable signs of strain’ in Latin American democracy; wars ‘raging’ across Africa; the Mideast peace process ‘descending rapidly into a second intifada’; and children ‘trapped in schools without challenging academic standards.’”
-Bryan Curtis looks at the Bush administration’s first draft of its history.

The reason I always make fun of low-level Times semi-conservo-wonk Ross Douthat being unwilling to publicly explain his opposition to gay marriage is that he said it was too personal, essentially. (I know: quite unlike being singled out by society your entire life for being gay-though I guess some people take that personally too? Anyway, that’s why they call it privilege, Ross! Privilege literally means you don’t have to deal with such things.) So good news! He has laid it out, and I really encourage everyone to sit down and read it slowly. I found it an amazing experience. I won’t spoil the actually stunning conclusion-I was actually stunned! I had to sit down for a few minutes to gather myself!-but, in short, he apparently believes that gay marriage is some seven-week-old fetus that needs to be thrown out along with the bathwater of the society that straight people have so thoroughly fouled. After that, you can read the incredibly well-reasoned comments that were allowed on the Times site before they were shut down (hmm!) and then Glenn Greenwald picking apart a few points nicely-but in an incredible way, Douthat is literally unaddressable. Douthat really does want people to be happy, I think. But this all reads like he’s never met a person before, so how would he know?

Tony Judt, probably one of the last figures in our age deserving of the title “public intellectual,” passed away on Friday after a two-year struggle with A.L.S. Geoffrey Wheatcroft’s obituary in the Guardian provides a particularly good portrait of the man. If you have not read Postwar, Judt’s history of Europe after World War II, you really should; it’s excellent. And then there is this, his most recent-but hopefully not final-essay in the New York Review of Books:

In my generation we thought of ourselves as both radical and members of an elite. If this sounds incoherent, it is the incoherence of a certain liberal descent that we intuitively imbibed over the course of our college years. It is the incoherence of the patrician Keynes establishing the Royal Ballet and the Arts Council for the greater good of everyone, but ensuring that they were run by the cognoscenti. It is the incoherence of meritocracy: giving everyone a chance and then privileging the talented. It was the incoherence of my King’s and I was fortunate to have experienced it.

Tony Judt was 62.

by Jordan Carr

When it comes to the Cordoba House / Park 51 project, better known as GROUND ZERO TERROR MOSQUE, it really is not worth discussing with people down in Lower Manhattan. That is because they do not really want to talk about it.

Maybe it is a good idea to build an Evil Terrorist Mosque and Nailcare Salon right by the World Trade Center-not that it’s like, right there, but still. Whether you believe this community center (at Ground Zero. Where Americans were killed. By Muslims) is a slap in the face of the victims of 9/11 or that it is, in their words, “promoting integration, tolerance of difference and community cohesion through arts and culture,” fortunately most people agree there are no other opinions to be had on the topic. Evil terrorist Tower of Doom, or multicultural beacon of hope that will end prejudice forever as if this were Remember the Titans. These are literally the only thought choices.

Trying to see if there were any answers to my questions about this project, I went looking for some. Spoiler alert, I found none, which is to say that I did not find definitive proof that this whole thing was not a terrorist plot. What a scoop that would have been! What I did find was a strip club that is much closer to the World Trade Center site than the planned MUSLIM community center, and an Off Track Betting location where a man in a FDNY hat didn’t want to talk to me about the mosque. (Nobody there did. They are there to watch horses.)

I found a Christian Science Reading Room, and St. Peter’s Church, where the pastor told me he was for the project-although, just after he turned away, the receptionist put her hand to her chest and whispered, “I’m against it.”

I also found an Amish Market that suspiciously used all kinds of electronics.

At 45–47 Park Place, the future site of Park 51 (I guess named for the address somehow?) I found a wretch of a building that used to be a Burlington Coat Factory. The building is unassuming enough that I walked past it a few times before realizing that it was the site of the big evil thing, or even something anyone cared about.

There was literally nothing there.

I assumed that if people really thought there was something terrible moving into their neighborhood, somebody would be on alert or something.

There was just a hot afternoon and a glass door with a sticker that I’m told means something to the effect of “There is no God but Allah and Mohammed is his prophet,” the common phrase. And inside were two security guys who also did not want to talk about it.

by Joseph Bernstein

Dear Elders of Zion,

Hello, my name is Joe Bernstein, and I am a young Jew of some promise living in New York City. Through your shadowy networks of information, I am sure you are already aware of me, but I’m just writing to assure you that I would very much like to assume my position of power and influence starting as soon as possible. I found out about this opening through centuries of inherited blood.

Let me first say, congratulations on the superior job you’ve done remaining in the shadows over the past century. You’ve consistently tricked every national government (except Iran, wily Iran) and major media organization into believing that you do not manipulate all major world systems for your profit and other nefarious goals. You are unquestionably the global leader in conspiracy and it goes without saying that the opportunity to learn from my swarthy, bearded masters would be a dream come true.

That said, I’m a little afraid a filing or other clerical error may have resulted in my exclusion from your ingenious scheme. Not to worry. After all, sometimes the things that are right under our hooked noses are the easiest to forget! Just to reiterate, I’m ready and excited to be informed of your clever plan to insert me into your mysterious hegemony over my Christian, Muslim, Buddhist and Hindu neighbors.

Though I’m currently biding my time as a fact-checker, I’ve prepared much of my life to be a schemer, plotter, double-dealer and wire-puller. As a preteen in Hebrew school, I consistently feigned sleep to keep secret from any goy spies just how seriously I was absorbing my indoctrination. Since my bar mitzvah, my proud initiation into your ranks, I’ve made every attempt to avoid temple, so no one might guess the weird depths of my ritualistic devotion. I quickly squandered the gift money on computer games to disguise my telltale miserliness.

To publicly distance myself from your sphere of East Coast chicanery, I chose a university in the American Middle West. While learning to mime the simple ways and non-regional diction of the heartland, I studied English literature, a field so far removed from the promise of fortune or status that no possible suspicion might arise as to the cruel ambition that powers my dark heart. I even found time, in the interest of ingratiating myself into secular society, to trick a gentile into dating me. We’ve been “together” for the past six years. The poor girl still has no idea of the role she plays in my little game!

To dissimulate my tentacular greed, I worked full-time without compensation at a leading liberal magazine that is well-known for their criticisms of unfettered global capitalism, your major recent accomplishment. I hold a masters degree in journalism from one of your favorite institutions, so I have been amply prepared to control the media to your-our-advantage. Now, as a fact-checker, I’ve positioned myself at an ideally pathetic level in the hierarchy that you dominate: who, but who, would suspect the lowly factchecker? Please don’t take my lack of apparent power or authority as anything but the cleverest ruse. To reassure you, I can pass along the contact information of several Jewish intellectuals who would be more than willing to attest to my devious potential.

Thank you for your time and consideration. I look forward to hearing back from you and claiming my birthright, at your convenience of course.

Yours Cunningly,

Joseph Asher Bernstein

Until recently, Joseph Bernstein lived under a competitive breakdancer.

Photo from Flickr by nicasaurusrex.

by Nate Freeman

When Caroline Giuliani allegedly slipped those five beauty products into her purse and allegedly attempted to walk out of the Sephora this week, she (allegedly!) joined the fine ranks of the shoplifters of New York. And it’s a rich history-the compulsive thief Joseph Rosen once called New York “a shoplifter’s paradise,” in a 1997 Times profile . Not every shoplifter can be the progeny of America’s Mayor, but any storeowner with missing inventory knows the city has no shortage of hands with sticky fingers. Here’s a selection of New York-related instances of shoplifting, some from the past and a few incidences from local fiction.

Who’s stealing: Patti Smith
Items stolen: Art supplies for Robert Mapplethorpe
In her new memoir “Just Kids,” Smith explains that it was the propensity toward theft that allowed her and Mapplethorpe to paint at night. She would shoplift their art supplies while living at the Chelsea Hotel, and the couple would pay their rent in paintings.

Who’s stealing: Two teenage kids at the First Rich Gift Shop on St. Mark’s and Third Ave.
Items stolen: A wool baseball cap, James Lee’s life
Lee was manning his store in March 1998 when two teenagers came in and attempted to take the headgear without paying. The gift show owner tried to stop the kids, but was nailed by a punch and later died from the injuries. Employees told the Times Lee “had little tolerance for shoplifters.”

Who’s stealing: Customers at Harlem Deli
Items stolen: A box of cereal, Mohammad Mused’s life
In another instance of a heist gone awry, Mohammad lunged at a man with the heisted breakfast cereal and suffered a heart attack in the effort and collapsed on the floor.

Who’s stealing: Ari, Uzi and Royal in “The Royal Tenenbaums”
Items stolen: cartons of milk
The Wes Anderson film may be set in alternate version of the city-part Salinger whimsy, part 1970s Scorsese grit-but the corner shop where the twin boys follow their grandpa’s lead and slip out with milk is unmistakably a New York bodega. The scene is perhaps the best part of the “Me and Julio Down By The Schoolyard” montage.

Who’s stealing: Dash Snow, late artist
Item stolen: lots of things!
Ace Boon Kunle, member of Snow’s Irak tagging crew, had this to say in Ariel Levy’s 2007 New York cover story: “But Dash wasn’t like a lot of the derels I was hanging out with who would run out of stores with clothes in their hands. Dash would steal, but it’s the way you steal: I go in and I’m really friendly with the help and I’m smooth. I’ll make it sweet, so the next three or four times I come in the store, it’s all good with the help. Dash got really good at it. One of the things I always say is that a really good graffiti writer will make a good shoplifter-someone who’s used to breaking the law fifteen or twenty times a day.”

Who’s stealing: Blair Waldorf
Item stolen: sunglasses
In the “Gossip Girl” episode “The Grandfather” from season two, Blair and Serena are talking in a store and trying on glasses, when Blair has an epiphany of rebellion: “If I’m somewhere and I can say Blair Waldorf would never do that, guess what”-she slips the sunglasses over her eyes-”I’ll do it.” Then she walks out of the store as Serena gives an impassioned, extended sigh.

And that brings us to Caroline’s romp through Sephora Wednesday afternoon. There are countless other memorable tales of shoplifting in New York, of course, and there will only be more and more. But remember Ace’s advice: it’s about the way you steal.

The new Gucci Mane video is a fine reminder of why people love him so much. At home, he’s shirtless with a big potbelly hanging out and a bent loosie tucked behind his ear, peeking through the slats of his window shades just like you or me. But when he has a business appointment, he puts on his enormous jewelry and an amazing table-cloth-print, Barbra Streisand-style headwrap that matches both the rims on his sunglasses and his girlfriend’s purple lycra bodysuit. The he shows up at the hotel wearing ski goggles. Plus his flow, which weebles and wobbles but doesn’t fall down.

Collaborating human-traitors in our War Against the Birds will be protesting the planned mass slaughter of geese outside of Bloomberg’s “house” on Monday. Sorry, English is complicated: that’s where the protest will be. The slaughter will be… EVERYWHERE.