WEDNESDAY'S LETTERS: Steroids and Sportswriters, Bob Woodward

By: E&P Staff In today's letters, readers weigh in on Joe Strupp's exclusive feature about sportswriters and the steroids scandal, and others think Bob Woodward's new book is insufficient repentence for his past coverage of the Bush White House.

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Sportswriters and Steroids

Okay. Maybe it's because I'm a BoSox fan and therefore accustomed to sporting abuses -- and not that it isn't an important issue for role-models -- but I just don't get this preoccupation with the steroids thing.

Compared with the war in Iraq, the evaporation of pension and health care benefits, and protecting schools from shooters, I am at a loss to explain why Congress is involved with overpaid bat jockeys who are determined to game the system no matter what. Wait -- maybe I answered my own question. But what are our priorities, exactly?

Let the baseball leagues marshal the steroids, the bad brew, the lack of adequate restroom facilities for women, then maybe Congress will have time for important things. Like ethics investigations.

Go Boston!

Marty Golden
Maine



Of course [sportswriters] blew it [on the steroids scandal]! And in the past they blew issues with alcohol, marijuana, cocaine, infidelity, and promiscuity. But then again, boys will be boys. As an Army public affairs officer who embedded nearly 100 members of the press and broadcast media in my unit during OIF, I was amused at the accusations that the media would become "in-bedded" with the soldiers and not report candidly. In my opinion, there was more honest reporting in three weeks of the initial ground war than there has been in decades of sports reporting or other beat reporting such as law enforcement or government officials at any level. Reporters have long given up their objectivity for access in these "beats".

Michael Birmingham
Lt. Col., U.S. Army

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Bob Woodward's Book

Not that I would want to defend Bob Woodward -- whose fall from journalistic grace needs no reminders -- but I do hope his new book and your continued editorial focus will inspire our sleeping media to chase all these so-called leaders out into the light. We see them scrambling already, like the cockroaches they are. They deserve to be squashed.

Between the congressional page scandal (which in addition to Foley will hopefully bring down Hastert, Boehner, Reynolds, Shimkus and Alexander) and the latest revelations regarding the July 10, 2001 counterterrorism meeting as reported by McClatchy (Rice, Ashcroft and Rumsfeld were warned about an attack not within but "on the United States", an attack that was a "10 on a scale of 1 to 10"), American voters, parents and the strangely silent Christian Right should finally accept that the Republican party and BushCorp can no longer protect us from anything.

The lies about 9/11 are unraveling, and the facade of family values is crumbling, and I hope this mess continues to ensnare the saddest bunch of phonies this country has seen since Watergate. All the way up to Nov. 7.

Mary Truchelut
Wilton Manors, Fla.



... Woodward, and his "bosses," clearly have no compunctions about being morally complicit in the continuing frauds upon the US polity, and in the continuing coverup of them. And the serious damage done to their country.

Are they aware that U.S. soldiers have been killed as result of the lies, and the protection of those lies by the "mainstream" media? Why should they be? Their kids aren't at risk. ...

How much revulsion is this country's people to suffer before the self-serving "mainstream" media ceases carrying water for the gangsters in control of our government, and thus ceases being a central reason for that revulsion?

Joseph J. Nagarya
Boston, Mass.