Why We’re Freaking Out
The Washington Post offered a one-note response to the deal’s critics: sneering super-iority. The deal–Dubai Ports World taking over Britain’s Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company, which has managed ports in New York, New Jersey, Baltimore, New Orleans, Miami, and Philadelphia–was actually “fairly stale news [that] had been reported on extensively in the financial press,” the editorial page sniffed on February 22.
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Monday’s Tribune brought more typical commentary: from Charles Krauthammer, who could see two sides (“On this, the Democrats are rank hypocrites. But even hypocrites can be right”), and Dennis Byrne, who could not (“A measure of how idiotic the attacks on this deal have become is the lashing that the Washington Post, always glad to jump on the Bush administration, applied to the deal’s critics in an editorial, ‘Port security humbug’”). Both writers showed more concern for the feelings of distant emirs than for those of the American people.
My Olympics hero is “Tribune Olympic Bureau” reporter Michael Kellams, who stepped up in the February 24 Tribune and actually made something clear. “Because Davis finished seventh in speedskating’s 5,000 meters,” he reported, “he was automatically entered in Friday’s 10,000. But he never had intended to race and formally withdrew.”
