Joanne Eglovitch, Potomac
Textbook implicit bias
What does it mean when a person, group or region is “hit hardest” by an event? In any construct, can being “hit hardest” be construed positively? If so, I’d like an example.
A blurb accompanying the graphic with the Aug. 13 front-page article “First drop in U.S. White population” was horrible: “White Americans decreased in over three-quarters of the counties across the nation. . . . but the Northeast and Midwest were hit the hardest.”
Awful — even if it provided a perfect example of implicit bias that can be used in classrooms and workshops forever.
Janelle Haskell, Arlington
A dangerous straw man
Misinformation can be conveyed in a political cartoon just as through other means, and the Aug. 13 Drawing Board cartoon did so by implying that the Biden administration is allowing unauthorized immigrants to freely enter the United States.
Lisa Benson’s cartoon depicted the administration’s policy as a useless scarecrow, which was belied by a news article the same day, “CBP detained record numbers of migrants in July.” The article reported that “record numbers” of migrants were detained in July and that the administration uses fast-track deportation and expulsion flights taking migrants deeper into Mexico than previously, “including small children,” to deter reentry. Thus, the cartoon was not a misguided opinion but a misstatement of fact.
Whether you agree with the Biden administration’s actions, it is wrong to suggest it is doing nothing. This misleading cartoon will further inflame public opinion on the sensitive issue of immigration without presenting the facts honestly. How many people, for example, recall that President Barack Obama deported more migrants than President Donald Trump?
Ellen Bass, Washington
They deserved name recognition
I looked in vain in the Aug. 6 Politics & the Nation article “ ‘Riot and mayhem’: Biden rejects distortions of Jan. 6” for the names of the police officers who were being awarded the Congressional Gold Medal for defending the U.S. Capitol during the Jan. 6 insurrection — or even a reference to a site where they were listed.
Why leave unnamed those officers who were recipients of this honor for displaying personal courage in protecting the Capitol? Recognition of each officer was sadly missing in the article. And if Congress didn’t name the recipients, it should have.
Isabelle Schoenfeld, Bethesda
Something to see
However, I was surprised by the omission of the Indiana Medical History Museum. It is a unique museum, housed on the former campus of Indiana’s Central State Hospital in the only remaining 19th-century state hospital pathology building. The rooms show much about medical practice and research in the late 1800s and early 1900s, and it is well worth a visit if one is in Indianapolis.
Alan D. Schmetzer, Silver Spring
The writer is a former president of the Indiana Medical History Museum.
An island apart and aflame
In his otherwise excellent Critic’s Notebook article “Climate despair, personified” [Style, Aug. 10], Philip Kennicott made a puzzling geographical statement: “Fueled by a brutal heat wave, the fires on Evia — a large island connected to the mainland and Athens by a narrow strait — have been burning for days.”
Evia is indeed an island close to the Greek mainland, but it is an island because of the narrow body of water — a strait — that separates it from the mainland. If Evia were “connected” to the mainland, it would be a peninsula, and the land bridge would be an isthmus.
Mark Weadon, Crofton
Add the future to the futures
I’ve always found it interesting to see what key financial data is provided every weekday on the Markets page. I am not surprised to see the major stock market indexes, key interest rates and key stocks on this page. But it continues to puzzle me that commodities future prices are updated daily, but the price of bitcoin, ethereum or other leading cryptocurrencies are absent.
I do not know the number of Americans actively investing in soybean futures, but new studies estimate that 46 million Americans own bitcoin — 17 percent of the adult population. Why not add bitcoin to the Markets page?
Mark Nevitt, Syracuse, N.Y.
‘Offbeat’ is one way to put it
The lengthy Aug. 2 obituary for former Colorado governor Richard Lamm, “3-term Colo. governor had led effort to keep Olympics out of Denver,” gave scant attention to his many offbeat quotes easily found on the Internet. For a start, Lamm, a Democrat, famously said in 1984 that elderly people who are terminally ill have a “duty to die and get out of the way,” instead of trying to prolong their lives by artificial means, as he argued for physician-assisted deaths. That was one of his milder remarks.
Fred Donner, Falls Church
Avoid racialism
Gene Weingarten’s Aug. 8 Washington Post Magazine column, “A simple process of elimination,” was lovely and amusing, but his use of “Semitic” as an identifiable racial trait chilled me: “His Semitic features suggested intelligence.”
The idea of Semites as a racial tribe or group, much less one with identifiable racial features, is invalid and outdated. I invite the editors and Weingarten to substitute any racial or religious category for Semitic to see how bizarre and inappropriate this language is.
I would ask Weingarten and The Post in general to refrain from such racialism.
Zachary Katz, Cambridge, Mass.
A delightful coda to an almost heavenly tale
The Aug. 9 Style article about Sen. Joe Manchin III’s (D-W.Va.) houseboat, “The senator trying to get everyone in the same boat,” noted that the boat’s name derives from “John Denver’s elegy to West Virginia, ‘Take Me Home Country Roads.’ ”
It is true that Denver played a small role in composing the song and is listed as a co-creator, along with Bill Danoff and Taffy Nivert, his then-wife. Danoff and Nivert were driving on Clopper Road in Montgomery County in 1970 when Danoff wrote the essence of the song. He knew he couldn’t sell “Almost Heaven, Poolesville,” so he considered other locations. He rejected Massachusetts, where he grew up. He chose West Virginia because it also had four syllables.
Denver was performing at the Cellar Door in Georgetown in late December 1970. Danoff asked him to look at the incomplete song, which he was planning to sell to Johnny Cash. Denver immediately claimed it, revised a few lyrics and recorded the song, which reached No. 1 in 1971. Danoff was also a classmate of Bill Clinton (Georgetown 1968) and was chosen to supervise the music program at Georgetown’s Class of 1968 reunion, held at the White House in 1993.
Danoff and Nivert may be better known for their 1976 classic “Afternoon Delight.” That one was composed at Clyde’s in Georgetown. It was written about a drink (the “Afternoon Delight”), not about a tryst. But, hey, that’s music.
Ed Connor, Bethesda
Gold-medal writing
A gold medal to The Post for the collective, brilliant sports writing of its entire staff at the 2020 Olympics. The passionate, evocative prose that captured the essence of the drama and circumstances of the events was a daily smorgasbord for the fans of world sport.
Dan Levy, Columbia
Think global, don’t forget local
Presented with four pages in the Aug. 8 Arts & Style section about New York City’s new park called Little Island, I read every word in anticipation of finding context and relevance for a metropolitan D.C. readership [“Little Island. Big ambitions.”]. How does Little Island compare with D.C.’s Yards Park or Georgetown Waterfront Park or the Wharf? Or Alexandria’s Waterfront Park? Or even Maryland’s National Harbor? What might D.C.-area residents and government officials learn from the attributes of Little Island? The twin Critic’s Notebooks offered no such perspective, and I would have learned something if they had. After all, no park is an island.
J. Ford Huffman, Washington
The Aug. 8 Critic’s Notebooks by Philip Kennicott and Peter Marks, “Little Island. Big ambitions.,” included wonderful photographs of Little Island, on the west side of Manhattan in New York City. I could not believe there was no accompanying map of Manhattan, so the reader could visualize where Little Island is, vis-à-vis all of Manhattan.
I grew up right outside of Manhattan in northern New Jersey, so I know Manhattan fairly well. A visual glimpse still would have been nice to see.
Carmela Vetri, Washington
Focus on what really matters
As I read the Aug. 3 front page, I felt happiness and annoyance. I believe that vaccination is the way out of the pandemic and was thrilled to see that 70 percent of U.S. adults had received at least one dose. Yet the main headline didn’t capture the significance of this milestone. Instead, “U.S. hits Biden’s vaccine goal late” focused on its timing, as did the article, noting that it was “a benchmark President Biden had hoped to reach nearly a month earlier, on July 4.”
What’s the news here? To me, it’s that more Americans are getting the vaccine. Whether it was 70 percent by July 4 or Aug. 2 might be worthy of a footnote but surely not an “above the fold” headline. I hope the number of vaccinated people continues to increase and that future headlines can highlight declining numbers of cases. We should keep our eyes on what matters: getting more vaccines in arms and beating the virus.
Lynn Starr, McLean
‘Nationalists’ in context
Those who wrote and approved the Aug. 8 news headline “Chinese nationalists aim online abuse at Olympians” should realize the term “Chinese Nationalists” has a specific meaning for anyone familiar with 20th-century history. “Chinese Nationalists” were the political faction led by Chiang Kai-shek. After losing the civil war with the “Chinese Communists” in 1949, the remnant of Chiang’s Nationalists took refuge on the island of Taiwan (Formosa) and continued to rule there as the “Republic of China.”
Terence Byrne, Gaithersburg
A jarring word choice
What a shame that the Aug. 7 editorial “A car plan’s missing key” was marred by the use of “absent” instead of the conventional “without.” The prevalence of this ugly fad usage besmirches the language with a jarring oddity, without purpose in clarity or elegance.
Julian Blackwood, McLean
Read more:
"Opinion" - Google News
August 20, 2021 at 10:05PM
https://ift.tt/3z7OAPZ
Opinion | Readers critique The Post: A haunting photograph from Afghanistan that spoke volumes - The Washington Post
"Opinion" - Google News
https://ift.tt/2FkSo6m
Shoes Man Tutorial
Pos News Update
Meme Update
Korean Entertainment News
Japan News Update
No comments:
Post a Comment