Opinion | The media is hurting Biden and helping him -

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.

The press corps seems to want President Biden to step aside. Nearly all the reporters at the July 11 news conference following the NATO summit asked loaded or even gotcha questions. Yes, they might have begun with a policy question, but the candidacy question quickly followed.

Karen Tumulty’s op-ed the next day, “Biden carries on, willing to risk everything,” analyzed “the most important news conference of his political career.” The fifth paragraph conceded to “a far better performance than he put in at his debate” against Donald Trump last month, and the sixth paragraph said, “Biden was on top of the issues.” Otherwise, the op-ed was largely a catalogue of gaffes and errors, going back to the “prime” of Biden’s career.

Few seem to consider that the risk in November is probably equal or even greater if Biden does step aside.

Bob Bailey, Silver Spring

I was very disappointed in the reporters posting in the updates feed during President Biden’s address and news conference following the NATO summit. I do not see how Tyler Pager reporting that a Democrat texted him, “I’ll need another drink,” or any of the other posts about texts from anonymous Democrats, is newsworthy. This, in addition to the numerous reporters commenting on each other’s updates, was nothing more than a dogpile. Such comments are not what I read The Post for. You are not social media. Don’t turn yourself into it.

Christopher Peterson, Vienna

Why do news outlets, The Post included, use words like “abandon,” “defect” and “desert” to describe Democratic leaders calling on President Biden to step aside in his campaign? When explaining their reasoning, each of these leaders begins their statement by pointing out how much they respect Biden and often by professing love for him.

When my parents reached an age at which they were no longer able to do certain things, they didn’t always recognize it, and when my siblings and I firmly informed them that they needed to change their ways (i.e., stop driving) for everyone’s safety, nobody called us defectors or accused us of abandoning them. These Democratic leaders are making a rational and somewhat painful decision, not becoming traitorous. Please cease describing them this way.

Lenny Rudow, Edgewater

Know your role and open your mouth

The Editorial Board felt that President Biden’s July 11 news conference was unhelpful, in part, because reporters failed to ask tough questions “regarding the gap between reality and the White House’s upbeat portrayal of his fitness over the past year” [“For Mr. Biden, some answers but even more questions,” July 13]. “To repeat: What makes Mr. Biden’s cognitive decline especially damaging is that he and his aides have systematically failed to level with the public about it.”

What of The Post’s role in fostering that upbeat portrayal? And its own systematic failure to level with the public about Biden’s cognitive decline?

The May 16 front-page article “A risky surgery changed Biden’s outlook on life” sympathetically chronicled Biden’s two successful surgeries to repair brain aneurysms and emphasized that “Biden completely recovered with no ill effects.” Fine, but the article went further, by rebutting Donald Trump’s prior attacks on Biden’s health and by comparing the two men’s medical disclosures — Biden’s “six-page letter with specific details” vs. Trump’s “vague three-paragraph letter from his doctor.” The article even threw in gratuitously that Trump’s father “died of conditions related to Alzheimer’s disease.”

The May 19 front-page article “Aging brains can be fit for presidency, experts say” contained a section labeled “Gaffes, fumbles, and ‘word salad,’” which offered only one example for Biden — his reference to the French president as “Mitterrand” — and told readers he was simply “mixing up proper nouns” and “meant” to say Macron. The last section of the article, “A call for cognitive transparency,” again compared Biden’s “six-page memorandum from his physician, Kevin C. O’Connor,” with Trump’s “three-paragraph note from his personal physician.”

On June 15, the Editorial Board wrote: “As journalists, we’re certainly curious to hear the conversations that prompted Justice Department special counsel Robert K. Hur to describe 81-year-old President Biden as seeming like ‘a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory’” [“Mr. Garland’s good deed goes punished”]. But when Biden asserted executive privilege to bury the five hours of audio recordings of his interview with Hur, The Post, which had strongly criticized Presidents Barack Obama and Trump for claiming executive privilege over materials that would embarrass them, applauded Biden and accused House Republicans of seeking to release “embarrassing audio clips.”

To borrow from Ruth Marcus’s May 24 Sunday Opinion column, “Both sides are wrong on releasing the Biden tape,” The Post joined the effort “to protect the president from a damaging portrayal, accurate or not, in his area of greatest electoral vulnerability.”

The July 13 editorial accused Biden of being “in denial about his frailty, personally and politically.” The Post shows it continues to be in denial about itself.

Joseph A. Capone, Oakton

Lean on we

I want to give Petula Dvorak a big hug for her July 9 Metro column, “I’ve now had a taste of our nation’s caregiver crisis. We’re in deep trouble.,” especially now with Donald Trump saying one of his initiatives as president again would be mass deportation of undocumented immigrants. I know so many women who are here illegally and who are making a living caring for those who are old and sick and without families, jobs that do not attract many U.S. citizens.

Dale Williams, a retired Navy chaplain in Gettysburg, Pa., told me the hardest job in any branch of service is being a military spouse, and the column’s spotlight on Candace Laguna and her husband, Frank, who was injured in the military, proves Williams’s point.

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And as you, Ms. Dvorak, deal with your own husband’s possible foot amputation, and as I cope with my husband’s recent diagnosis of Parkinson’s and his current treatments, we join so many other spouses in a sisterhood that binds us together in understanding, empathy and concern for one another. That sisterhood is what’s keeping us strong enough to get through each day, keeping us smiling through the tears, and keeping us cognizant that we must prioritize our own care and treasure our comradeship if life is to go on. Thanks for your column. We other caregivers really needed it.

Kathy A. Megyeri, Washington

Art imitates secret life

Jess Row’s July 10 Style essay, “The shifting epilogue to Alice Munro’s life and works,” showed that the writing icon had feet of clay. He explained the recent revelation that Munro supported her second husband for years, even after he admitted molesting her child. Munro’s behavior mirrored that of many of her female characters, including Enid in “The Love of a Good Woman.” Enid abandons her desire to be a registered nurse to please her father, choosing instead the occupation of practical nurse, with its gofer duties. I’d argue Munro’s behavior was not meant to preserve her art, as Row alleges, but to preserve peace at any price. It might have been easier to push down anger than to confront it, a decision made by many of her characters. Perhaps Munro looked inside herself for inspiration.

Carol Morgan, Washington

‘Confusing,’ and other adjectives on the appellation trail

Rusty Foster’s July 10 Wednesday Opinion essay, “Why am I hiking the Appalachian Trail? It’s a matter of opportunity.,” left me confused. Why, I wondered, would the headline include the words “Appalachian” and “Trail” when what followed was the stream-of-consciousness meanderings of the author regarding his engagement, with one passing mention of the trail? In fact, the author said more about the Italian Alps than the eastern mountains of the United States that contain this wonderful 2,200-mile National Scenic Trail.

Tom Ryan, Annandale

So that’s why he’s always on a horse

The July 9 front-page article “An uneasy NATO is set to mark 75 years” discussed the “immediate survival” of Ukraine. What is meant by these words? Is The Post suggesting that the Russians are trying to kill every single person in Ukraine — that is, commit genocide? I doubt that’s the case. The Russians want to dominate Ukraine, but they are not threatening the “survival” of the nation any more than we ended the “survival” of Texas when we annexed it to the United States.

Gabriel Sucher, Rockville

The worst ‘new word’ since Raskolnikov took an ax to that pawnbroker

We have come a long way in eliminating unnecessary gender specificity from our language. Firemen are now firefighters, mailmen are letter carriers, policemen are police officers. Why, then, create a spurious gender-specific title?

The bio at the end of Nancy Pelosi and Svetlana Tikhanovskaya’s July 10 op-ed, “NATO is a bulwark against tyranny,” described the former House speaker as “speaker emerita.” There is no such title. Whether you consider the word to be English or Latin, it is “emeritus,” regardless of the sex of the person being described. In English, “emerita” is wrong because adjectives don’t change with the person being described: big girl, big boy; rich man, rich woman. And in Latin, nouns ending in “-er” are masculine, so the modifier would be “emeritus” regardless of the person’s gender.

Thomas W. Lippman, Washington

The writer was editor of “The Washington Post Deskbook on Style” (1989 edition).

Now that’s what I call a halfway house

The July 11 Real Estate article “One of the last ‘flounder’ houses in Old Town” stated that “it’s unclear why some Revolutionary-era builders chose the design.” Growing up in Alexandria, I learned (likely from frequent walking field trips from Lyles-Crouch, my elementary school in Old Town) that there was a city ordinance at the time requiring landowners to build on their lots within a few years of purchase. To meet the deadline, some owners with limited means built half-houses with single-slope roofs, with the intention of building the other half when finances allowed. As you can guess, the second half never got built in many cases, leaving the unique “flounder” design that still stands. Maybe the Alexandria Historical Society or the Historic Alexandria Foundation could weigh in on whether my long-ago local history lesson has any merit or is an urban legend.

Nancye Butcher Vermillion, West Fenwick Island, Del.

The giving tree

I enjoyed the July 10 Metro article “Picking a free tree for a yard in D.C.,” which followed arborist Gaby Elliott for a day as she assessed properties to see which kinds of trees might grow there. Trees are a gift that keeps giving, and I am delighted that the federal government is funding tree planting. My biggest question, though, was unanswered: How do I find — and fund — an arborist to help me select trees for my home?

Lauren Roller, Gaithersburg

Monoliths aren’t a monolith

The June 19 Style article “No, you didn’t go back in time. Yes, there’s another monolith,” on the mysterious objects found in Utah and now in Nevada, certainly piqued readers’ curiosity about what the monoliths are and what they might mean. Given the inevitable comparisons to the monolith from “2001: A Space Odyssey,” The Post might have taken the opportunity to educate readers about the film’s history.

Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke did not have any special knowledge about how advanced alien intelligence would choose to communicate with the human race. In fact, as Michael Benson explained in some detail in his book, “Space Odyssey: Stanley Kubrick, Arthur C. Clarke and the Making of a Masterpiece,” the black monolith was not the first choice for this totemic image. The first idea was to create a giant crystalline pyramid, perhaps fashioned out of a Pyrex glass. It turned out that the cost, time to fabricate and weight of this structure proved impractical, and thus the simpler black monolith design was chosen. In the movie, the monolith was discovered on the moon when humans had reached a level of intelligence sufficient to operate and carry out mining on the lunar surface.

Clearly, we are far short of the wisdom that would make it worthwhile for extraterrestrials to bother with us. I know from personal association with Clarke, as founder of the Arthur C. Clarke Foundation, that he would be amused by these artifacts and the renewed curiosity about the possibility that there are ETs in our midst.

Joseph Pelton, Arlington

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