TROPICANA THUNDER

Showgirls and rebels; Private Eye in Paris; relocating J.Lo; China's cyber-war; dissecting Deutschland; hindsight is 9/11; and Murdoch's mess

I just love Jean Stein’s piece [“All Havana Broke Loose,” September]! It’s completely wonderful and flows like a cascade of champagne. How marvelously she interleaves the voices and the memories and simultaneously, with delicate footfall, leads us toward the denouement. The article brought off the hugely tricky shot of evoking the playboy 50s without vulgarity but at the same time disguising nothing, starting with the fun, and then giving a sense of just how liberating the revolutionary victory was.

Somehow, at this dismal historical moment here in the U.S.A., the author pitchforked us into real history, as opposed to the dreary, gray monotony of today. (And how kind they were to children, loosening the spring of the one-armed bandit.) A thousand congratulations on an absolute tour de force.

ALEXANDER COCKBURN Petrolia, California

I HAVE READ AND REREAD Jean Stein’s glorious article and have seen Tropicana come alive before my eyes. The photos are stunning, but the text and stories and voices are the things that give it life and breath, and what stories! Leprosy, lust, crime, innocence, celebrity, ambition, revolution, history, politics—everything is there, and I desperately want to read the book and see the movie. With its fascinating smorgasbord of people, the piece left me yearning for more: that feeling of perennial youth and untouchability, so fragile and so undervalued; an unexpected revelation about Marlon Brando and his encounter with Superman—and fascinating detail on the Bay of Pigs.

EMMA WILLIAMS Belgrade, Serbia

IN MARCH OF 1957, when I got off a Cubana airliner in Havana, I was greeted by a gaggle of prostitutes, a free glass of rum from a local brewery, and a fistful of tourist brochures. An endless row of cabbies waited outside, willing to show me any side, or underside, of Havana.

A few nights at Tropicana were the highlight of the trip. A heavyset man came up to the bar and welcomed all of us single men to the club. He introduced himself as Martin Fox, and I later found out that he was the owner and creator of Tropicana. After a couple of weeks of Havana’s allnight nightlife, walks along the Malecon, and afternoons eating fried bananas with friendly Cubans on the Prado, I knew I wanted to return to the island someday.

Exactly three years later, in March 1960, I again landed at the airport in Havana. No hookers at the gate, no free rum, no brochures, only khaki-uniformed soldiers, A few of the rebel soldiers were holding a bottle of rum in one hand and a rifle in the other. One of them saw my camera and told me not to photograph anything. Instead of cabbies at the curb, there were a dozen or more army jeeps filled with more rebel soldiers with machine guns. Once inside the city, I found that my small hotel from two years earlier was closed, and there was some sort of message pasted on the bolted door. The Prado was filled with crowds of revelers chanting Castro’s name; rebellion slogans and Cuban flags were everywhere. I stayed another night just to get back to Tropicana one last time. I sensed the atmosphere in the club was not quite the same—the smaller audience was quiet, and the energy seemed to be missing from the players. The next day I went back to the airport, looking for a plane to Miami. A number of Americans and some Cubans lugging more than the usual number of bags appeared to be escaping the island forever. (I wondered how much money was in those suitcases.) Nobody was smiling.

It’s encouraging to hear that Tropicana is still alive, and I envy all those tourists who can freely visit that beautiful island without their government holding them hostage over some long-failed policy. Perhaps someday Americans will be able to freely return to Havana. Undoubtedly, the short period during the 50s when Havana was the world’s playground won’t return, and maybe it shouldn’t—but, oh, what a swell party it was!

PATRICK HORNBERGER Trappe, Maryland

AFTER 52 YEARS of the Fidel Castro regime and countless crimes against humanity, the U.S. liberal ideologues not only still insist on giving him a free pass but, as in Jean Stein’s article, boast about the benefits of his nefarious revolution. I was drawn into reading this article by the hope that I would learn about the storied Tropicana, a place that, because of my young age while I was living in Cuba, I was never able to visit. Instead, this supposed oral history of Tropicana soon degenerated into another propaganda piece for Fidel Castro’s government.

Because this so-called “oral history” comes solely out of the mouths and experiences of a select group of vintage Castro supporters and sympathizers, the piece becomes so one-sided and full of half-truths that it serves only to further confound the Cuban issue.

If there was a point made by this article, it is that the association of these two countries brought out the worst of human qualities in each: one as the ever insistent rich and powerful master and the other as the war-tired, poor, and inexperienced young republic. A U.S. citizen as its first president and a first constitution forced to delineate its legal relationship to the powerful neighbor to the north set the tone for Cuba’s short 57 years as a republic. Until January 1, 1959, when pressures from elements in the American press, business interests, and the U.S. government, together with a confused, civically immature middle class and a sycophantic Cuban upper class—not the poor!—resulted in a triumph for Fidel. So the country was lost.

GRACIELA C. CATASUS Miami Beach, Florida

I’VE ENJOYED SHOWS in Paris at the Moulin Rouge and Crazy Horse, but neither holds a candle to magical Tropicana! From the moment you entered the outdoor theater (trees climbing through the massive stage, orchestra on several levels) and were seated at a ringside table with bottles of rum, you were transported to pre-Castro Cuban glamour. The darkened stage gave no hint of what was to come—a ring of beautiful showgirls lit the theater with enormous chandelier headdresses, then made their way through the audience. Each successive act was ablaze in a different rainbow hue accompanied by incredible musicians, singers, and dancers. It was truly a night to remember!

BRIAN MILLSAP Jensen Beach, Florida

THAT’S JUST DUCKY!

I ENJOYED THE PROFILE of the irascible Private Eye magazine by Christopher Hitchens [“The Accidental Institution,” September], After finishing it, however, two reactions kept coming back to me.

First, as with Monty Python films, everyone cherishes a favorite one-liner, but Hitchens did not mention mine: Private Eye’s relentless use of the sobriquet “The Graudian” to refer to the London daily The Guardian, a tongue-in-cheek dig at the paper’s notoriously horrible proofreading.

More important, I regretted that a V.F. reader might conclude that Private Eye sprang solely from the wit and literary hothouse of English public schools. Far from it.

MORE FROM THEV.F.MAILBAG

'Your font has shrunk." Easy does it there, Karen J. Lincoln, of At lanta. Some of our best friends still don't know.

Part of the fun of running V.F.’s annual Best-Dressed List is hearing right away from our refreshingly opinionated readers about what we got right and, mostly, wrong. This year they seem to be saying that including the Duchess of Cambridge was a good idea (“Kate is a class act”), whereas including Michelle Obama (“Where, one wonders, is your sense of style?”), Lady Gaga (“She doesn’t dress—she landscapes”), Barack Obama (“You’ve gotta be kidding!”), and the Duchess of Alba (“Goya’s cosmic revenge on the entire House of ⅜ | Alba”) were less good ideas. And, as always, some votes came in for the unjustly overlooked—Zoe Saldana, for instance. Finally, one new subscriber writes, “I hope this is not an indication of issues to come but rather a once-a-year ‘Style Issue’ or I won’t be renewing.” Well, actually, we did hope that labeling it OUR 6TH ANNUAL STYLE issul on the cover might have somehow tipped our hand and suggested that September was, in fact, a special Style Issue, which appears, oh, annually. But never mind: our readers are always right, and we should have been more explicit. So, for next year (note: not next month), would YES, IT’S THE ONCE-A-YEAR ANNUAL STYLE ISSUE (SO RENEW FREELY!) work?

If there were readers who specifically enjoyed seeing J.Lo in a fox fur [“Jenny Back on the Block,” by Lisa Robinson, photos by Mario Testino], they’ve mainly kept it to themselves. Here are some phrases harvested almost randomly from letters on that topic: shallow, callous, senseless, pathetic, vile, hiddeous, despicable, viscous, evil, appauled, ashamed, shocked, disgusted, saddened, disappointed, horrified, sickening, bludgening, arrogance, cruelty, torture, degradation, barbaricism, ignorance, MURDER, horrors, BOYCOTTS, and YUCK! About the nicest letter read, in part, “She is so beautiful and could have looked gorgeous wearing any number of alternatives.”

“Graydon Carter ended his September editorial [“Fleet Street’s Arab Spring”] by writing, ‘If the gods know anything, they know history repeats itself.’ Au contraireE dit— sorry, writes— Father Andrew L. J. James, Ph.D., of Comins, Michigan. “If there were any gods, they would surely agree with Mark Twain, who said, ‘History doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme.’ ” Bien sur!

The Paris satirical paper Le Canard Enchaine (The Chained Duck, or Chained Paper), founded in 1915, was a clear inspiration. Indeed, in the photo V.F. ran from 1963, staffer William Rushton is carefully reading a copy of Le Canard in Private Eye’s office.

The obsessive punning and turns of phrase, the stiletto-like jabs at the heart of political insiders, and a carefully cloaked moralism all unite the two papers.

In fact, they occasionally recognize their affinity. A fake letter addressed to the Eye once asked, “Is it true that your Pseudo Names feature was inspired by a similar one in Private Eye’s French counterpart, Le Canard EnchameV

The letter is signed, with a wink, “Kelly Day.” Quelle idee, indeed.

DAVID WINCH Ferney-Voltaire, France

I CANNOT BELIEVE that Christopher Hitchens wrote an entire article about Private Eye without mentioning Peter Cook, onetime owner of the magazine and funniest man in Britain. Without him, “the Eye” would probably never have survived the £600,000 in damages it was ordered to pay following the libel suit brought by the Yorkshire Ripper’s wife, Sonia Sutcliffe [whom the publication had accused of doing a dirty deal with London’s Daily Mail newspaper. The damages were later reduced to £60,000 on appeal],

JUDITH MORE Savannah, Georgia

HOT NEW SINGLE

I COULDN’T SLEEP at three A.M., so I decided to read your article on Jennifer Lopez [“Jenny Back on the Block,” September], Lisa Robinson did a wonderful job of capturing Jennifer’s “essence.” Celebrities of Lopez’s standing need privacy, which is hard to hnd these days. I would suggest an unbelievable hve-acre private island in our beautiful Oswego Lake. Let her babies run with the deer.

SALLY KNAUSS Lake Oswego, Oregon

BEIJING CONFIDENTIAL

MANY FORMS OF PRAISE for this article come to mind, but one sums it up: hrst-rate journalism [“Enter the Cyber-dragon,” by Michael Joseph Gross, September], Relevant sources were quoted and quantifiable facts were offered up for review. Mr. Gross did an awesome job of moving the article along—a zipping expose. What prompted me to write to you is not the article in and of itself (as V.F. publishes many pieces on par with this particular one) but that it was so full of information of which I was unaware. Most of us, having heard about cyber-war via the Web and television, knew there was a problem. But not until reading this piece did I realize the pervasiveness of this “soft” war.

MICHAEL T. WINTER Olney, Illinois

FUHRERIOUS!

I AM NOT SOMEBODY who likes to take himself seriously all the time. Nevertheless I was relaxing over the September issue of Vanity Fair a few nights ago and came across an article that took my breath away. So I decided to sit down and pen a letter describing my reaction. Please allow me to get this off my chest—I will be able to sleep better!

The article was “It’s the Economy, Dummkopf!” [by Michael Lewis, September], Some of its eye-popping conclusions about the Germans seem to have no basis in reality whatsoever—most strikingly the morbid fascination with feces which, in the author’s strange worldview, seems to infest all German life and culture. Mr. Lewis justifies this hypothesis almost exclusively by citing a range of German idioms that refer to excrement, although similar expressions arc commonplace—and indeed far more prevalentin most languages. English phrases such as “full of s-t” and “cut the c-p” immediately come to mind in this particular context.

With respect, Mr. Lewis’s theory is not only one-sided but backward. Unlike English, German does not typically use sexual terms to express profanity. Genitalia hardly feature in German expletives at all; nor can the language even claim an equivalent to the ubiquitous “f-word.” Positing that English speakers are obsessed with the various male and female reproductive organs would have been more persuasive.

Not that this criticism can be leveled at the author, who seems to have eyes for one body part only. He pursues his mantra relentlessly in this article, sustaining it with spuriously concocted arguments and truly prodigious feats of logic as he attempts, in insistence and dogged determination, that only one conclusion remains for his readers: if anybody has a fetish or a complex, it is not the Germans.

Anal compulsions can doubtless be found the world over. However, should the author feel the need to delve deeper into this subject, I would politely recommend that he begin by looking closer to home. In a mirror— and not, I hasten to add, a rearview mirror.

JOHANN PHILIPP WOLFF Hamburg, Germany

MICHAEL LEWIS’S STORY on Germany was truly excellent and up to his usual standard. What happened recently in Italy proves his point: if you need the European Union to help you, you must do what Germany says.

CHRISTOPHER MAHONEY New York, New York

YOU KNOW YOU’VE HIT A NERVE when a native of eastern France feels compelled to come to the defense of Germany. Mr. Michael Lewis dedicates an unusual portion of his September essay to the Germans’ so-called fascination with all things anal. Having lived in Germany for 6 years and in North America for more than 30,1 can’t say that I have personally noted a marked difference in the use of scatological references within the two geographical areas. This said, with the sad and recent economic meltdown, I suspect that in the near future North Americans will probably outpace the Germans in their use of the following expressions: “The shit has hit the fan”; “I’m scared shitless”; “We’re up shit creek without a paddle”; “What a total shit show”; and “Our economy is going down the toilet.”

SANDRA PINARD Ottawa, Ontario

I AM CURRENTLY in the seventh-floor lounge of the Bellevue Men’s Shelter, in New York City, reading the latest issue of Vanity Fair and laughing uproariously at a description of the German deputy finance minister, Jorg Asmussen. When a fellow resident inquires why I’m laughing (he remains puzzled, after I explain), I think of the contrasts between my current position and Mr. Asmussen’s. I have always been aspirational and higher-class than my actual conditions would suggest. Indeed, I feel destined for “the good life”—it just hasn’t come yet, and when it does, I’ll be a frugal billionaire, discreetly enjoying the fruits of celebrity (freebies) while spending in a manner that ensures I never have to live a base existence ever again. Sidebar: I’m only 24!

TERRENCE JORDAN JAMES New York, New York

AS A LONGTIME READER of this magazine, it is with great regret that I write to you about Michael Lewis’s latest opus, on Germany and the Eurozone.

Interpreting current events as outgrowths of Germany’s Nazi past, Mr. Lewis suggests that Germans still, as a group, think like Nazis, obsessed with their own “purity” and rabidly fearful of “impurity.” He argues that the Eurozone, in putting pressure on poor countries to work harder and save more, as Germans do, is akin to a re-Nazihcation of Europe. For good measure, he even attributes recent German financial decisions to anti-Semitism inside German firms.

This is deeply offensive argumentation. First, it asks us to hold Germans today— who, as Lewis acknowledges, were not alive or, if alive, certainly not of age in 1933—forever accountable for the sins of their ancestors. This is exactly the kind of ethnic determinism that made Nazism itself such a poisonous doctrine. Second, it belittles the quite real horrors of Nazism by using the label in such a casual context.

The Eurozone is, as Mr. Lewis notes, a broken economic system maintained because of the political peace in Europe that it promised. If it must be disassembled, which Mr. Lewis suggests and with which I agree, now is the time to defend that political peace, not shatter it with 70-year-old thinking.

It is common when speaking of the Nazi era, and the Holocaust it brought, to use the phrase “Never again.” It is an excellent motto but, more often than not, it is misunderstood to mean that a future holocaust can be prevented only by a constant refraction of present-day events through the lens of the past. The reality is quite the opposite: “Never again” is a goal achieved by moving forward, not forgetting what has happened but leaving behind, definitively, the kind of thinking that made it possible, and refusing to de-value the memories of those who suffered and died by the casual deployment of loaded words.

MAHA RAFIATAL New York, New York

PREVENTING 9/11

DAVID ROSE’S ARTICLE “9/11: The Tapping Point” (September) contains false accusations regarding me and the firms I founded, Telephone Systems International, Inc. (TSI), and Afghan Wireless Communication Company (AWCC), and regarding the events described in the article that occurred more than 13 years ago in Afghanistan. Neither I nor TSI or AWCC has ever been an agent, informant, or spy. To the contrary, my application for an exemption from U.S. sanctions was denied by the U.S. government. I have never violated U.S. sanctions against al-Qaeda or the Taliban. I did not, as the article wrongly states, engage in any act “technically breaking American law.” Nor did I, as the article suggests, “perhaps” provide satellite telephones to or for the use of Osama bin Laden or Mullah Omar, or, indeed, to any other members of al-Qaeda. AWCC’s network does not contain any “electronic back doors,” as falsely stated in the article.

The article fails to disclose that several of the author’s sources and their companies or business associates have litigated unsuccessfully against me for more than nine years until I recently defeated them. It was TSI and AWCC that initiated the legal dispute when they sued Stuart Bentham and Michael Cecil or their companies in 2002, seeking to recover money we claimed had been fraudulently misappropriated from AWCC or TSI. Lollowing years of legal proceedings in New York and London, TSI and I recently secured a victory in the English courts against Bentham and Cecil as well as Alexander Grinling (who, along with Bentham’s wife, are principal sources quoted frequently in the article) and a Swiss national, Joakim Lehmkuhl (a principal in the Swiss company Octogone), leaving them with nothing on their claims. Three of these people have had no involvement with AWCC and TSI for a decade. Their recent lost case against me in London provides context for the fictions about me contained in the article. These misstatements risk the lives of thousands of individuals working hard to build a peaceful and prosperous Afghanistan.

EHSAN BAYAT Chairman of the Board, AWCC Kabul, Afghanistan

HACK ATTACK

GRAYDON CARTER’S COLUMN in your September issue was an excellent summary of the Murdoch debacle [“Lleet Street’s Arab Spring”]. Even after scanning most of the reports in The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, I did not totally get the severity of the conduct, the ongoing conduct, of the organization.

FRED MERCALDO Scottsdale, Arizona

YOUR EDITOR’S LETTER on the Murdoch mess, with Sarah Ellison’s superb reports, is hopefully just the beginning of your coverage of a seminal moment in journalism and indeed in our society. Well done in mentioning the essential Robert Hughes and his timely reminder of what befalls those who ignore history.

LORETTA BRENNAN GLUCKSMAN New York, New York

CORRECTIONS: On page 137 of our August issue (’‘The War for Catch-22," by Tracy Daugherty), we neglected to attribute quotes made to Karen Hudes by Robert Gottlieb for an article Hudes wrote for Tin House in 2005, On page 344 of our September issue (“All Havana Broke Loose,” by Jean Stein), photograph No. 4 was miscredited. It is from Peter Moruzzi,

Letters to the editor should be sent electronically with the writer’s name, address, and daytime phone number to letters@vf.com. All requests for back issues should be sent to subscriptions @vf.com. All other queries should be sent to vfmail@vf.com. The magazine reserves the right to edit submissions, which may be published or otherwise used in any medium. All submissions become the property of Vanity Fair.