That darn Ann Telnaes and Rhymes with Orange.

Last rites for the last rights  [Ann Telnaes letter]

Arina van Breda, Alexandria

Washington Post (April 13 2024): A15.

online at https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/04/12/kevin-morris-hunter-shanahan-autism-stoicism/

The March 29 editorial cartoon. (Ann Telnaes/The Washington Post)

I am a big fan of Ann Telnaes, a gifted editorial cartoonist with a keen ability to capture the political zeitgeist. But I must take issue with her March 29 cartoon, "The right wing's to-do list."

She was all too correct about the right wing's goal of eroding many rights that Americans have enjoyed for decades. But putting "voting rights" at the bottom of that list was incorrect. It is precisely by eroding voting rights at each and every opportunity that conservative Supreme Court justices, members of Congress and state and local officials will further eradicate our other rights. Once we lose unfettered access to the ballot, our most fundamental right, the rest of our rights will be at risk. Let's hope Americans realize what is at stake in this year's elections and vote.

Apples and oranges and shrooms [ "Rhymes With Orange" letter]

Steven P. Levine, Bethesda

Washington Post (April 13 2024): A15.

online at https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/04/12/kevin-morris-hunter-shanahan-autism-stoicism/

The Post's cartoonists need a refresher on the Book of Genesis, it seems. A "Rhymes With Orange" cartoon featured prominently in the March 30 Free for All cited Eve, of biblical renown, saying, "The trouble didn't start after I ate the apple. It was after I ate the mushroom — that's when the snake started talking."

On first glance, I didn't even get the cartoon. It was only after seeing it for the second time that I realized it was alluding to psychedelic mushrooms, not the regular kind, with which I am more familiar. But that closer glance also revealed the comic's basic ignorance of the sacred text. As almost every beginning Sunday school pupil knows, the snake started talking to Eve before she ate the apple, not after.