TODAY'S LETTERS: Iraq Mutiny, Steroids In Baseball, News Movies, Hillary Clinton

By: E&P Staff Readers wrote in today about Hillary Clinton, steroids in baseball, great newspaper movies, and mutiny in Iraq.


'Des Moines Register' Backs Clinton and McCain
So Hillary, how do you feel about your stand by your man approach now? Sounds like he is feeling a little jetlag over your apparent popularity, and his lack thereof. Seems Bill will do anything to stay in the public eye, even if it means shortchanging his own wife and the mother of his child.

Bill Clinton's ship has sailed. He left behind a legacy of debauchery. I have no respect for a man who cheats on his family, and especially one who does it in the public eye, then taunts us all for questioning his integrity.


In short, I don't give a rats patootie what he thinks on any subject.

Laura Connock
Cincinnati


The Best Movie About a Reporter Ever: A Real 'Ace'
I spent a number of years trying to get a copy of this film. As I recall, a member of a Chicago film coop dubbed one off a 16mm print to VHS for me. I'll bet the DVD looks much better, but what a treat when I finally got to see it. I have always enjoyed Billy Wilder's work, but it's been very hard to get most of it. I think the most comparable film is Sweet Smell of Success, but that's essentially about Walter Winchell, much more of a skunk than the one played by Kirk Douglas.

Bruce Lloyd
Public Affairs Officer
Guantanamo Bay Naval Station, Cuba


Funny I should come upon your column today. I just stumbled upon "Ace in the Hole" last weekend -- on Turner Classic Movies. Film production and criticism was my second, unofficial major in college; I've watched hundreds of "old" films in my time; and I'm a big Billy Wilder fan. But I had never seen this movie before. I loved it, as you did, and as you point out, what it has to say about the less-noble aspects of human nature and the media's role in our society still resonates today.

Ned Popkins
Orlando Sentinel Business Editor


How My Home Boy Skirted the Baseball Drug Scandal
One interesting thing about Nitkowski, aside from his not using steroids due to fear of being nabbed by the feds, is that a teammate of his with the Softbank Hawks last season, Rick Guttormson, became the first NPB player ever who tested positive for a banned substance. NPB imposed real testing for the first time in 2007 after a confidential trial run in 2006.

Guttormson, whose last major league organizatuio was Seattle, which has obviously had its own problems with performance enhancing drugs, blamed the positive test on an anti-baldness medication that he was taking. One of the ingredients in it is a known steroid masking agent and that is what caused the positive result. Guttormson was suspended and fined, but the team believed him on the culprit being the anti-baldness formula.

Now this steroid issue has exploded in Japan because two current players, Adam Riggs (Yakult) and Jeff Williams (Hanshin) and Alex Cabrera (formerly with Seibu but who will likely be signed by Orix) were named by the Mitchell report. In addition, Larry Bigbie recently reached agreement with Yokohama, but he hadn't signed his contract yet and the Bay Stars will probably tell him to get lost. The irony there is that they recently signed former Mets and Toronto farmhand Yusaku Iriki, who tested positive for a bannded substance while with the Mets. Again, Yokohama believed him when he claimed that a supplement he was taking must have been contaminated with a prohibited chemical.

I have an editorial on all this on my website concerning both what is happening in Japan with all this as well as my opinion of the Mitchell report and how writers have been covering it.


Gary Garland
Japan Baseball Daily


'Army Times' Article Describes U.S. Troop 'Mutiny' in Iraq
The Army Times article on a mutiny in Iraq (no quotes needed around mutiny) is surprising only in the fact that mutinies there have not been reported in wholesale lots. The U.S. has treated its men and women there shamefully, both on what passes as a front these days and the often disgraceful lack of full attention our wounded receive on their return home. As the principal author of the Army Times' book, American Heroes of Asian Wars, it seems to me that we are increasingly coming to the breaking point in the Middle East, as we did in Vietnam. And for the same reasons.

Wes Pedersen
Chevy Chase, Md.