Opinion | Readers critique The Post: Remember the Jackson State killings (2024)

Steve Young, Arlington

The May 9 Post contained a map elucidating the front-page article “Border closure cuts off aid flow,” on Israel’s seizure of the Rafah border crossing with Egypt.

The key accompanying the map used terms that were Orwellian. Referring to the entire northern and central regions of Gaza as areas “where Israel has conducted clearing operations” was so insensitive. Palestinians aren’t trees or rocks to be cleared from farmland. They’re human beings, and the Israel Defense Forces terrorized them out of their homes and then carpet-bombed entire neighborhoods to rubble.

The key also referred to Deir al-Balah refugee camp, the Mawasi area and parts of Khan Younis as “IDF … humanitarian zones.” That terminology is unacceptable. What’s “humanitarian” about designating areas to which Palestinian civilians must flee to escape being bombed or slaughtered?

James Zogby, Washington

The writer is president of the Arab American Institute.

The Post’s use of the term “pro-Palestinian” can make people think protesters are anti-Israeli or anti-Jewish. That is not true.

Please describe these students as anti-genocide, because that is the truth.

Mary Kirby, Chicago

It is remarkable that the May 6 letters package, “Four Columbia students reflect on campus life in the midst of protest,” which was focused on the suffering of Gazans, contained not a mention of Hamas, the Oct. 7 slaughter of parents and children in front of each other, rape, hostages, human and hospital shields, underground tunnels, or Hamas’s bombardment by rocket fire of a humanitarian aid checkpoint the day before the letters were published.

Adam Cohen, Potomac

Michael Ramirez’s May 7 editorial cartoon, “A never-ending cycle,” copied M.C. Escher’s artwork “Drawing Hands” (with “apologies” to Escher as a credit). Escher emphatically rejected a letter from the Rolling Stones’ Mick Jagger, requesting a drawing for an album cover. My opinion is he would not appreciate Ramirez’s use of his work, either. But what was Ramirez’s point?

I am unaware of President Biden making a dramatic increase in civil service employees. I guess Ramirez was satirizing aid for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan. As most of that money buys weapons and ammunition made in the United States to send to foreign destinations, this circle provides profit for U.S. arms manufacturers and jobs for Americans, which I thought were conservative ideals. What’s not to like, Mr. Ramirez?

Bruce Krebs, Arlington

By calling efforts to change voting rules “Democratic,” The Post gave credence to the false claim by former president Donald Trump and others that Democrats stole the 2020 election. In truth, these efforts were focused on reducing the need for in-person voting amid the covid-19 pandemic.

Because of the timing of the primaries and the demographics of the pandemic’s hot spots, proposed changes to voting rules tended to focus on large polling places in urban centers, and as such were more likely to be enacted in “blue” states by Democratic politicians. This led Republicans to oppose the changes for partisan reasons.

However, by the time the general election took place, the pandemic’s hot spots had shifted to more rural areas, whose voters were less likely to have or take advantage of alternate voting options, and experts believe Republicans might have lost some rural votes because they followed Spies’s partisan response rather than the science.

David Kinyon, Minneapolis

I was alarmed and disappointed by the number of letters advocating large families. All but one of these letters were based on emotional arguments. Only one pointed out that it takes time, energy and money to raise a child. It also takes a healthy adult, preferably more than one, and health includes mental and emotional health.

But more importantly, we live on a planet with finite resources, which are already stretched to the limit.

Rosemary Killen, Silver Spring

I’m glad The Post published David I. Sommers’s May 11 Free for All letter, “What’s the story?,” which called out the silliness in publishing the May 2 Style article “Trumpworld’s Loomering presence,” a long profile of Laura Loomer. The Post has amplified a long string of noxious Donald Trump hangers-on; shall we expect Charlie Kirk or Tim Pool next? I don’t get why The Post focuses on right-wingers. Readers aren’t into them, and the left has influencers who are more interesting and more intelligent, and doing good things instead of trying to tear the country apart. As for people on the right, Tim Miller, Rick Wilson and others are trying to bring the world back to sanity, but The Post ignores them also.

Susan Wallace, Washington

The May 12 Sports article “Olympic movement” negatively described Paris’s efforts to remove homeless encampments in areas where the Olympics will be held this summer. It also criticized Vancouver, which “cracked down on jaywalking, street vending and public urination” before the 2010 Winter Olympics. What is wrong with a city enforcing laws against those actions, even if there is no Olympics pending? The article went on to reprimand France for moving many of the refugees in Paris’s encampments to apartment houses in other cities while their asylum claims are processed. It would be more appropriate to praise France for trying to help the refugees achieve legal immigration status.

The Olympics are for promoting friendly relations among the citizens of many countries, including countries that are otherwise hostile to one another. This goal should not be diminished by having the Olympic venue include homeless encampments.

Edward Tabor, Bethesda

As a reporter for 40 years myself (now retired from the Milwaukee Journal and its successor, the Journal Sentinel), I am an admirer of The Post for its customary accuracy. That’s why it’s so jarring to repeatedly read that editors there don’t get it when it comes to powered two-wheelers.

They are almost always described as “moped” or “mopeds,” as if the term were a generic for any motorized two-wheeler. But a moped is a very specific type of two-wheeler — a bicycle with its pedals and a small motor to provide an assist to the rider, hence the term “moped” for motorized with pedals. Other types are motorcycles, from small 50cc models all the way up to huge Harley-Davidson two- and three-wheelers; motorbikes, similar to mopeds but without the pedals, and motor scooters, which have smaller wheels and allow the operator to sit chair-like with feet on the floor and not astride as on motorcycles and horses.

These are very different vehicles. And when stories such as the May 1 Metro article “D.C. bill would require registration for mopeds” doesn’t make the distinction clear until the sixth paragraph, they do readers a disservice.

Frank A. Aukofer, Falls Church

I read with great interest Adam Higginbotham’s May 5 Opinions essay, “The space shuttle that never came home,” which detailed that fateful day in January 1986 when Challenger exploded shortly after takeoff, taking the lives of seven crew. But nowhere in that excellent historical account did I find an opinion, unless one considers the use of the noun “mandarins” in reference to NASA’s senior managers to be opinionated. I had to research its etymology to appreciate that the word, coined by the Portuguese to describe public officials in Imperial China, has many meanings. Was the author insinuating that NASA managers were powerful bureaucrats who tend to make things complicated? Or perhaps respected cultural or academic figures? No definition of that word describes the NASA engineering management I’ve encountered in my four decades of service within NASA.

The risk assessment that cold day in 1986, culminating in the decision to launch, focused on the danger posed by the impact of ice, shaken from the launch vehicle and tower, on the fragile thermal tiles, as well as the compromised integrity of the O-ring seals in the segmented solid rocket boosters. The latter brought down Challenger. Seventeen years later, in February 2003, the space shuttle Columbia disintegrated upon reentry, again taking the lives of seven crew, because of damage to the thermal tiles sustained at launch by a falling chunk of insulation shaken from the spacecraft. In both cases, the failure modes were well known to the engineers as well as management. And in both cases, NASA’s formal accident investigation reports described the intense pressure brought to bear on management to maintain schedule. Challenger was lost because it was operated under environmental conditions well beyond those it was designed and tested to. Perhaps there was no saving Columbia after the damage it was suspected to have sustained at launch, but the management decision not to inspect the spacecraft for damage in flight was also driven by a desire to maintain schedule. That was the true root cause of both bad decisions.

Jack Connerney, Annapolis, Md.

I strongly object to the May 3 Style article “The children who remember.” It is one thing to publish an article on belief in past lives and the people who promote it. That is news.

However, this article not only wandered into but totally immersed itself in a credulous endorsem*nt of something that, frankly, is the stuff of tabloids. The headline alone was objectionable. It suggested that children really do remember their past lives, which presupposes that they really had past lives. In reality, there is absolutely no solid evidence for anything of the sort. To have it presented as if it were fact was jarring.

I am old enough to remember the repressed memory cases of the 1980s and ’90s, in which preschool teachers were hauled into court based on children’s descriptions of satanic rituals involving sex and witches flying on broomsticks. There is a very similar whiff of something ugly with the people encouraging very young children to recount horrific stories involving Holocaust victims, dead World War II pilots, etc.

A degree of skepticism is always appropriate in journalism, especially in extraordinary cases such as this.

Stacy Spencer, Alexandria

It took a humble woman from Louisiana, armed with the truth of her story, to be the one to finally pierce the veneer of Bible huckster Teflon Don. I believe Jesus would have respected Daniels for her honesty, tenacity and courage. Kudos to Daniels and Givhan.

Bernadette Koontz, Whiting, N.J.

During World War II, U.S. submarines returning to port would sometimes display an inverted broom from the conning tower, advertising a successful mission. All engaged targets had been sunk.

In her May 12 op-ed, “If you have nothing nice to say, let’s be friends,” Kathleen Parker posted her own clean sweep. She fired from the hip, over the shoulder and between the legs into her “target-rich environment,” and my score sheet says they were all hits: campus protesters, a p*rn queen, everyone’s favorite piñata and his most pathetic wannabe-VP sycophants.

If you can’t be Parker’s friend, you don’t want to be her enemy.

William A. McCollam, Fairfax

As a longtime devotee of Post commentary, I’ve grieved when favorite columnists, such as Michael Gerson, have died. And I pray that Dana Milbank, Eugene Robinson and other men have enduring, happy careers. But, my God, long live the cranky women! Let’s petition the “frat bros” Kathleen Parker mentioned for some of their $500,000 kegger money. I’d use it on a massive, raucous soirée at a literary spot — say, the Library of Congress’s Main Reading Room — to honor Parker, Robin Givhan, Anne Lamott, Sally Jenkins, Monica Hesse and Alexandra Petri. For flowers, maybe Queen Anne’s lace, a pretty weed “blossomed into a field,” as Givhan described Stormy Daniels’s testimony. Laughter would blossom, too, “the Dippity-Do of the spiritual life, jiggly at first and then holding us firmly” [Lamott, “Lifelong lessons in coping with fear and humiliation,” Tuesday Opinion, May 7]. We’ll have no “clumsy third-rate comics, whose hammy punchlines” fall “like refrigerators hitting sidewalks” [Jenkins, “Brady roast was misogynistic, cruel and unbearably unfunny,” Sports, May 8]. No “throwing chairs at each other, like guests on Jerry Springer” [Hesse, “In Congress, brawls not reserved for the men,” Style, May 18]. And no brain worms invited, “currently under indictment” or not [Petri, “I’m RFK Jr.’s brain worm, and I’m asking for your vote,” op-ed, May 12].

Phyllis Windle, College Park

I enjoyed reading the April 28 Business article “Buying a house?” about the struggles home shoppers face in the current economy.

It was interesting to see how differently each person did their research and evaluated what would be a good match for them at this time in their lives. These are success stories that many people can learn from and relate to.

The challenges the subjects of this article faced reminded me of how I worked to buy a first home and later, after a divorce, fought to keep my home as we divided our property. Try refinancing as a woman in the early 1970s when banks did not like giving loans to women!

Nanci Link, Washington