Opinion | Lance Armstrong doesn't deserve praise |

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.

Rick Reilly’s May 10 op-ed on the pickleball craze, “Pickleball is the worst,” included several clever derisions, notably this: “Riding an electric bike doesn’t make you Lance Armstrong.”

The American cycling world, however, recoils at the suggestion that Armstrong is an exemplar of the sport. All of Armstrong’s seven Tour de France wins were retracted following revelations that he had been doping for years, which hardly qualifies him to serve as a “champion” of the sport. A better choice of cycling athlete would have been Greg LeMond, an anti-doping advocate and three-time — and only American male — winner of the Tour de France.

Jack Brady, Washington

Ignoring a super-duper coach

It’s sad that The Post neglected to publish an obituary for Coach Denny Crum of the University of Louisville. His death was mentioned only in the May 10 Sports Digest item “Louisville coaching icon Crum dies at 86.”

He was not only a Hall of Fame coach; he was also a Hall of Fame person who contributed to the Louisville community in many ways.

Reed H. Davis, Taylorsville, Ky.

Ignore the super duper

Thank you to The Post for not making former president Donald Trump’s town hall on CNN one of the top news stories. He is obviously a man crying “fire” in a crowded theater.

Cathleen Stewart, Rock Hill, S.C.

Riedel should withdraw his objections

I recognize that the April 23 front-page article “Afghanistan once again a hotbed for terrorism plotters” included a critical comment by Bruce Riedel about the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. In the opinion of some military historians, the withdrawal could be considered, by comparison, relatively orderly.

One can judge the quality of any event, such as a withdrawal, only by comparing it with similar events in the past. By that standard, the withdrawal from Afghanistan was actually historically comparatively orderly.

Rome abruptly pulled its legions out of Britain because they were needed to defend Gaul and Italy. The Romanized Britons were left on their own as Picts and Anglo-Saxons overran them. They pleaded in vain with Rome to send legions back.
At the end of the Revolutionary War, the British pulled their troops out and left the American Loyalists and Indian allies, who had fought alongside them, at the mercy of the Revolutionaries. Persecuted, many Loyalists fled to Canada.
When the tide turned on the Eastern Front in World War II, the Germans rapidly pulled back, abandoning those Russians and Ukrainians who had sided with them.
After the British partitioned India into (mostly Hindu) India and (mostly Muslim) Pakistan, they boarded their ships and sailed away. A Hindu Indian I knew recalled lying on the floor of a bus, fleeing to the new India while Muslims, going in the other direction to the new Pakistan, were shooting at them.
When the British pulled out of Palestine, they sailed away and left the Israelis to fight it out with Palestinians, Egyptians, Syrians and Jordanians.
Remember our withdrawal from Vietnam.

From January 2020 until our last troops left in August 2021, about 4 million Afghans (10 percent of the population) emigrated. It is evident from this that those who wanted to get out could and did. The State Department had advised Americans to get out in April 2021. The 120,000 or so we flew out at the end, in one of the greatest airlifts in history, amounted to about 3 percent of the departees.

Compared with major withdrawals throughout history, the withdrawal from Afghanistan could be considered a success. The Post should have presented alternate viewpoints.

W.R. Miller, Erie, Pa.

Making history — but not the news

Patricia Spencer Favreau’s May 11 op-ed tribute to her mother, “My mother’s passport is empty, but her journeys are remarkable,” brought tears to my eyes.

What a wonderful essay on the unknown women who fought for civil, human and women’s rights since the 1950s in our country. The Rosa Parkses, Coretta Scott Kings, Angela Davises, Fannie Lou Hamers, Dolores Huertas and Gloria Steinems were brave, courageous and true fighters for change, but there were so many of our mothers, aunts and grandmothers who never made the papers or the 6 p.m. news.

Bravo to Doris Cammack Spencer for doing it all!

Peggy M. Spates, Hyattsville

Denigrating a hero

Come on! The moving two-page article about a teenage sex victim convicted of trafficking and sentenced to 20 years and the 10-year effort by trafficking activist Andrea Powell that freed the teenager, “At 17, she was sold for sex — and jailed as a trafficker” [front page, May 9], twice quoted a detective calling Powell “Rescue Barbie” — once in the text and once in a photo caption.

The detective might have meant it as a compliment or as a joke, but, unadorned in print, it was dismissive. I think The Post owes Powell an apology.

John T. Rich, Bethesda

Majorly misrepresenting the majority

The May 8 front-page article “Most in U.S. back GOP’s anti-trans policies” grossly misrepresented The Post’s polling about transgender people and the GOP’s attacks on them.

As first reported by journalist Parker Molloy in a Substack essay, Question 30 of The Post’s own poll showed that clear majorities of Americans support laws that protect transgender people from discrimination. Yet the headline and article said the opposite. Thats’s a grave error.

Besides, we’ve seen this story too many times before. People seeking power whip up fear against members of a minority group and use laws to hunt and hurt them. We know it’s never the right thing to do. We know how that story ends. Why be complicit in telling that story all over again, when you could instead tell the truth behind it? I expected better of The Post.

Nathan Alderman, Crozet, Va.

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I’m writing with disappointment about the May 8 front-page article “Most in U.S. back GOP’s anti-trans policies.” Unlike other news outlets, The Post typically covers trans issues in a comprehensive and respectful way, avoiding throwing fuel on the fire of a contentious national debate. This headline and accompanying article were an exception.

In a climate in which transgender people’s right to exist is being challenged by lawmakers in many states, this kind of headline is harmful — and incomplete, given the source on which it’s based. (And here, I’m going to use “transgender” to refer to all people in the gender-nonconforming umbrella, as the article does.) I suggest that a more accurate headline would be something like “Most Americans confused about trans health care.” If most Americans, as the poll showed, support counseling but oppose medication, clearly they do not understand the typical medical needs of transgender people. That is not a conclusion the article drew. The same conclusion could be drawn from the question that asked about gender assigned at birth, which most Americans misunderstand.

Further, the article shockingly did not address one of the most interesting poll answers in the bunch: Question 34, which asked whether respondents are concerned about the mental health of transgender girls if they are not allowed to compete with other girls. A majority of respondents said some version of yes. Let’s unpack that! Most Americans are concerned but don’t know what to do about it. Most Americans do care but don’t have accurate information.

Any of those conclusions would have been less damaging to the current moment and a more precise and hopeful representation of the poll results. Please do better next time. Thousands of children, including my own, depend on more responsible reporting.

Emily H. Green, Falls Church

A one-way Street to equality

I enjoyed the May 5 obituary for the celebrated author and editor Michael Denneny, “Trailblazing editor championed the work of gay writers.” As was mentioned in the listing of his accomplishments, he created the magazine Christopher Street. It was a combination of social etiquette guide, fashion image-maker, literary eye-opener and pathfinder to the more sophisticated sexual environments those of us in the LGBT community of the time were discovering, among other instructions for our entree to our newly found sexual universe. In the 1970s and 1980s, there was a tidal wave of individuals freshly liberated into a sexual world who could figure out basic sexual skills useful for a one-night stand but who wanted more than that. We needed a map. We needed help to develop a functioning social network, and that led to Supreme Court legitimatization decades later.

Along with Christopher Street as an entertaining instruction manual, the books Mr. Denneny edited and published created a rich tapestry of characters who fleshed out how to function in a community in a multidimensional format. In earlier times, most, though not all, printed material (note the high-end books of English lesbian 1920-1940s creation) dealing with LGBT themes was of the soft-core concept. All of a sudden, books of high-quality storylines with serious character development appeared almost monthly in cities that now had LGBT bookstores on major streets, not in hidden neighborhood alleys. Oscar Wilde’s love that dare not speak its name now owned a house in the suburbs and had a couple of adopted children, among other makings of civilization.

Denneny helped bring a whole population into the planet’s light, and for that he made better the world’s culture and cultures.

Thomas Bower, Washington

A one-way street to confusion

What a lucky youngster!

The caption for a photograph that accompanied Leon Aron’s May 7 Opinion essay, “See occupied Mariupol, where dread and suspicion reign,” said “Vika, 15, unfurls a Ukrainian flag on the street that a friend had given her for her birthday.”

Perhaps if she's a good youngster, she'll be given an expressway on her next birthday?

Dick Foster, Springfield

The mask slips on our lack of local focus

The May 4 front-page article “At hospitals and doctors’ offices, masks come off” discussed mask mandates ending in doctors’ offices and hospitals, and it featured a woman with long covid in Montana. There was further mention of hospitals in California, Iowa, Massachusetts and Oregon.

Great, um, sure, but why mention all this and not provide any news or update about what is happening in hospitals and doctors’ offices around D.C., Maryland and Virginia? Would The Post mind please sharing some news I can use?

Patrick Garvey, Annapolis

Entitled to more accurate titling

Regarding the May 11 front-page article “A test at border as rule expires” (and others):

The COVID-19 Public Health Emergency ended May 11 and, with it, emergency-related exclusion of aliens from the United States. This means lawyers throughout the country can stop cringing at the news media’s calling this the “termination of Title 42.” Nothing could be further from the truth. We should all be happy that Title 42 of the U.S. Code remains fully in force, covering the breadth of its name: “The Public Health and Welfare.”

Title 42 contains the statutory authority for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s orders directing removal on coronavirus-related grounds of people crossing our borders. Clearly, the U.S. media and public needed a more user-friendly expression for these orders than the CDC’s hideously complex names such as “Public Health Reassessment and Order Suspending the Right to Introduce Certain Persons from Countries Where a Quarantinable Communicable Disease Exists.”

The media went the wrong way. Instead of calling the restrictions “the CDC’s covid exclusion orders” or “the CDC covid immigration orders” or just “the CDC’s orders,” the media — and then the public — used “Title 42.” Title 42 makes no mention of the coronavirus or covid-19 whatsoever. The mischief in this naming approach is that it suggests that the president (not Congress) can terminate a statute. We don’t call an order changing the filing deadline for tax returns in a national emergency “the termination of the Internal Revenue Code [Title 26].” Please take this lesson for future reporting: Lay any blame upon the agency acting, not its statutory authority to act.

William B. Hoffman, Washington

Low Marx for a misleading toon

I was disappointed The Post published the May 6 Drawing Board cartoon by Al Goodwyn about President Biden raising mortgage rates on people with better credit scores. A little research would show that it was the Federal Housing Finance Agency, an independent agency, that came up with the idea. The president had nothing to do with it even though that is how it is being presented by some publications with questionable ethics.

That cartoon did nothing more than spread lies about who is responsible for this change in mortgage rates. I expect more from The Post than that. Oh, and even those with higher scores supposedly will pay less than they do now once this plan goes into effect.

Joanne Marcus, Woodbridge

Al Goodwyn’s May 6 Drawing Board cartoon was a disgrace. There was nothing satirical about it; it was pure political propaganda.

There is zero evidence of any sort that President Biden was involved in the Federal Housing Finance Agency’s decision to tweak fees on mortgages. He has made no statements on the issue and has not issued any executive orders, nor has there been any congressional involvement. The FHFA is an independent regulatory agency. If there is evidence linking Biden to the decision, The Post should please document and publish it.

Borrowers with low credit scores will still pay higher fees on their mortgages than borrowers with higher scores. Borrowers with down payments of less than 20 percent will still pay private mortgage insurance to mitigate the risk.

Whether you agree or disagree with the very complex changes to fees (which actually began over a year ago) intended to recalibrate risk factors in mortgage lending, at least stay out of the propaganda business.

Dana Scanlon, Kensington

The writer is a Realtor.

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Opinion | Lance Armstrong doesn't deserve praise