One place I don’t look for acuity (see below) is the opinion page of the Wall Street Journal. Kevin Drum has a delicious analysis of its wild-eyed smearing of John Kerry. His conclusion: “I apologize for using the phrases ‘Wall Street Journal editorial page’ and ‘journalistic ethics’ in the same sentence above. That’s clearly an abuse of the English language.”
Some of the most interesting political commentary I have read so far today was on the sports pages of The Daily Telegraph.
Here’s Paul Hayward: “In a sense, Abramovich’s takeover of Chelsea began the day Vladimir Putin took over as Russian president four years ago. The promotion of a former KGB chief to the highest office of the old Soviet Union presented the oligarchs with a choice. The first challenge, starkly articulated by Putin, was to stay out of national politics.”
Good reading for anyone interested in the intersection between sports and politics.
Incidentally, I meant to comment on a ludicrously over-stated sporting/political comment in yesterday’s Financial Times. Writing about the Olympic events of 1980, when president Carter initiated the US boycott of the Moscow Olympics, Mike Steinberger notes, “Just six months earlier, the US men’s ice hockey team had upended the mighty Soviets en route to winning the gold medal at the Lake Placid Winter Games, a victory that was surely a psychological turning point in the cold war.”
It was a wonderful sporting moment, but a “turning point in the cold war”? Utter nonsense.