Every week, The Post runs a collection of letters of readers’ grievances — pointing out grammatical mistakes, missing coverage and inconsistencies. These letters tell us what we did wrong and, occasionally, offer praise. Here, we present this week’s Free for All letters.
With so much at stake, it is frustrating for Klobuchar supporters such as me to see her so ignored.
Betsy Smith, Fairfax
One reason Howard stands out
A simple fact check would have revealed the flaw in the statement in the Feb. 7 Metro article “Adventist to take over Howard’s hospital” that Howard University “produces more African American medical school graduates than Harvard University, Yale University or the Massachusetts Institute of Technology combined.”
M.I.T. has no medical school, so it has no African American medical school graduates. Howard probably graduates more African American engineers, architects and nurses than the top 50 liberal arts colleges combined because the top 50 liberal arts colleges do not have engineering, architecture or nursing schools.
Edward A. Merlis, McLean
Expose pigs' suffering
Most people have sufficient common decency to abhor the suffering of the more than 100 million pigs raised every year on our factory farms [“Lawsuit aims to stop the use of ‘downed’ pigs in food,” Politics & the Nation, Feb. 10]. To help us do something about it, The Post should include photographs in articles about factory farming. Big-agriculture companies hide the suffering of these highly sentient animals. The Post can help by exposing it.
Frederic Lane, Burke
RIP Willie Wood
To add to the excellent Feb. 6 obituary “Packers’ star defensive back key to Super Bowl I victory,” about Willie Wood, a D.C. schoolboy who made good in the National Football League as a Hall of Fame defensive safety for the Green Bay Packers: The first Super Bowl game, in 1967, featured Woods’s Packers against the Kansas City Chiefs, whose defensive star Fred “The Hammer” Williamson boasted before Super Bowl I began about the havoc he would inflict on the Packers’ offensive squad. Early in the game, Williamson got steamrolled and, as he was attended to on the field, a sideline mic picked up Wood saying: “Oh, oh. The Hammer just got nailed.”
RIP D.C.’s own Willie Wood.
Robert Shvodian, Bethesda
A superb lesson on loss
Sally Jenkins’s columns are always good, often great. Her Feb. 5 Sports column, “Lasting lesson of Super Bowl is that failure breeds success,” however, was utterly awesome. Her observations deserve to become a chapter in a book on successes achieved after successive failures. I believe that volume would serve as a guidepost to both my 7-year-old grandson and his 67-year-old grandfather. Many thanks for the edification — and reinforcement.
David Boldt, Herndon
Just another no-news day
Why the large type on the Feb. 6 front-page headline “Trump acquitted”? It was not news. It was a foregone conclusion from the start. The Senate just proved conclusively, to the world, that our democracy is no better than any other country’s bought-and-paid-for government.
Leslie McDunn, Woodstock, Va.
I have to question the judgment in using a banner headline to report that the Senate had acquitted President Trump on two impeachment counts. I can guess only that it was a gesture of impartiality because the same large typeface banner announced his impeachment in the Dec. 19 edition.
Regardless of where you fall on the political spectrum, the acquittal by the GOP-controlled Senate was never in doubt, despite sworn oaths by its members to be impartial. This became even more obvious once the Senate voted not to subpoena any key witnesses or documents.
In contrast to the House decision to impeach the president, which truly was historic, Trump’s acquittal was hardly news.
The only real news on Feb. 5 was Sen. Mitt Romney’s (Utah) lone vote among the GOP senators that the president had in fact abused the power of the presidency for his personal gain.
Brent Byers, Great Falls
When I saw President Trump show off the Feb. 6 Post headline “Trump acquitted,” three thoughts immediately ran through my head.
First, congratulations on getting publicity for The Post. Second, isn’t The Post banned from government offices? Where did Trump get his copy? Third, the headline must be “fake news” coming from The Post.
Stephen Eccles, Annandale
Not the best of times but not the worst
In her Feb. 7 op-ed, “We will persist and prevail,” former ambassador to Ukraine Marie L. Yovanovitch observed that we are living in perhaps the most challenging times she has witnessed. As a 35-year-old American, I cannot let that opinion go unchecked.
My generation didn’t grow up hiding under our desks during air-raid drills. When our country was attacked by terrorists, my heroic peers volunteered to protect us without being drafted.
Admittedly, there is a lot of work to do, and it saddens me to learn how poorly Yovanovitch has been treated with words. Though I personally abhor that treatment, in a society that values free speech more than any other society in human history, that treatment is not unreasonable. Although Yovanovitch is exercising her free speech to attack a duly elected politician, she is not in jail. Things are okay.
Losing a job is traumatic. Thankfully, unemployment is very low right now. In my opinion, these are the most exciting times I have ever seen: I recently paid off my student loans and purchased my first piece of property.
Rather than ripping up the other side’s ideas, I ask everyone to work together to fulfill President Trump’s prediction that “the best is yet to come.”
Gregory J. Feeney, Washington
A high-magnitude mistake
Why does The Post persist in the use (misuse) of the word “epicenter” in any context other than earthquakes? An example (one of many recently) is the caption on a photograph that accompanied the Feb. 9 front-page article “WHO praises China despite flaws in virus response.” The caption read: “As news of the virus spread, officials effectively sealed off Wuhan, China, the epicenter of the outbreak, from the rest of the world.” This misusage is now ubiquitous in reporting about the novel coronavirus outbreak in China, but the media have been abusing it for decades in all manner of contexts.
The prefix “epi” means “above” or “outside,” as in “epidermis” for the outermost layer of skin. “Epicenter” is a technical term originating in seismology, and it refers to the point on the surface of the Earth that is directly above the deep underground focal point of an earthquake. There is no other proper use of the term, despite the widespread misuse.
“Garner’s Modern American Usage,” in its article on “epicenter,” says William Safire, in his own “On Language” column, quoted geophysicist Joseph D. Sides as attributing this type of misuse to: “Spurious erudition on the part of writers combined with scientific illiteracy on the part of copy editors.”
My guess is that this represents pseudoscientific illiteracy by writers who mistakenly believe, because an earthquake is a major or a (literally) cataclysmic event, that the word “epicenter” somehow means the particularly important center or super center of an event. I fear the battle to stop the misuse of “epicenter” may be a lost cause, but I implore The Post to do its part to stem the tide.
Marshall Lasky, Chevy Chase
Timely Kirk Douglas classics
We enjoyed the Feb. 6 obituary for Kirk Douglas, “Actor’s intense, masculine energy drove scores of roles.” Douglas was a stalwart of our movie-watching for decades. However, we think there was a glaring omission in the obituary, especially in the Washington area and in the current political climate.
“Seven Days in May” was a riveting portrayal of our constitutional system, patriotism, sacrifice, intrigue, deception, hubris of an egotistical aspiring “leader,” personal loyalty vs. duty, honor, reluctance to stoop as low as the opponent and more. We’re sorry it wasn’t included.
Peter Linn and Susan Osborn, McLean
Kudos to Ann Hornaday for her fond eulogy for Kirk Douglas and her trenchant critique of modern Hollywood [“You’ll never see another movie star like Douglas,” Style, Feb. 7].
To her list of classic films starring the late actor, add “Lonely Are the Brave” — Douglas’s own favorite.
Gary Parker, Washington
Take the FDA's word on this allergy drug
The availability of a recently Food and Drug Administration-approved drug, Palforzia, to treat inadvertent exposure to peanuts is good news for those children and teenagers with life-threatening peanut allergies. However, the Feb. 2 Politics & the Nation article “First peanut allergy drug, long awaited by families, earns approval from FDA” referenced a report by the Institute for Clinical and Economic Review (ICER), a nonprofit, drug-pricing watchdog group, saying there is insufficient evidence that using Palforzia is better than strictly avoiding peanuts or non-commercialized peanut-flour oral immunotherapy.
It’s important to clarify the interpretation of ICER’s findings. The patient community may be confused by them, and insurance companies sometimes make determinations on coverage of drugs based on ICER reviews. ICER’s primary focus is on the cost-benefit of drugs. ICER is not a substitute for the FDA when evaluating whether a drug is effective or safe. The FDA’s approval of Palforzia confirms that the drug is safe and effective for children and teens with a peanut allergy.
ICER’s evaluation demonstrates a lack of understanding of Palforzia’s value to patients and their families. The patient community and insurance companies should not misinterpret ICER’s findings on Palforzia’s efficacy. This new therapy is not meant to be a substitute for strict avoidance nor a substitute for carrying an emergency epinephrine auto-injector. Instead, Palforzia can mitigate the allergic reaction to accidental exposure for the 1.2 million American children with life-threatening peanut allergies.
Kenneth Mendez, Washington
The writer is president and CEO of the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America.
A look at Sinn Fein's leader
Regarding the Feb. 10 news article “Left-wing Sinn Fein party surges in historic but inconclusive Irish election”:
Let me explain it. The leader of Sinn Fein is a woman, Mary Lou McDonald. Yes, there are a lot of leaders of major international political parties in the world who are women.
When The Post writes an article about a major development in a country’s political landscape featuring a specific party, it should include a picture of the leader of that party.
McDonald may become the next prime minister of Ireland. So, if The Post includes a photograph in its coverage, it should dig into its files or contact a photographer and get a photo of McDonald.
But The Post should not include a picture of some man who is not the party’s leader and is not even mentioned in the article, as happened in this case.
C.E. Wray, Charlottesville
On the field, in the book
The Feb. 9 obituary for Roger Kahn, “Brooklyn native wrote lauded baseball classic ‘The Boys of Summer,’ ” brought back memories of a 1952 spring training baseball game the Brooklyn Dodgers played in Mobile, Ala. I was 11 years old and was there in the shaded stands with my father and two brothers.
Kahn pointed out that, because of segregation, black fans were allowed only in the bleachers, where there was no shade. But so many had come to see players such as Jackie Robinson that the overflow was permitted in the outfield.
Eventually, the people standing and sitting in the hot sun were halfway to the infield. If a ball was hit into the crowd, it was considered a double by the umpires.
Even back then, I could not understand why the shaded stands that had room could not have been used for the overflow. It still angers me almost 70 years later.
I have always been thankful to Kahn for including this documentation of racism in his classic book.
Charles Sullivan, Washington
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