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Media watch: what others are saying
The (Portland) Oregonian
"From 0 to 132 feet in 20 seconds"
By Abby Haight
Every morning, walking to work before the first espresso of the day, I have the same thought: Man, these streets are wide.
And I realize that I am thinking the same thing Brigham Young thought more than 150 years ago — except he thought it with pride: Ah, my streets are wide.
Come to Salt Lake City for the first time and the super-wide streets will be the first thing you notice. Young designed them that way when he laid out the design of Salt Lake City.
The streets are 132 feet across, wide enough for a wagon drawn by four oxen to pull a U-turn.
(The more entertaining story is Young made them wide enough so that he and his wives could walk down the street arm-in-arm without having to step in the ditch.) . . .
City officials have done all they can to make these wide streets safe for pedestrians. Utah drivers aren't the most accommodating — a bitter truth. They push into crosswalks. They try to race pedestrians for the right-hand turn. . . .
The Miami Herald
"Don't trust any judge with two first names"
By Dave Barry
Despite efforts to resolve the figure skating scandal, it continues to rage out of control here, at least in the media center, where riot police have been called in to quell fighting among roving gangs of Canadian, Russian and French journalists. As of this morning, 17 people had been treated for wounds inflicted by Bic pens. . . .
The Russians are furious because their gold medals are tainted. The Canadians are furious because their "gold medals," which the IOC had to purchase at the last minute from a local trophy store, are in fact plastic medallions labeled "FIRST PRIZE 1987 UTAH STATE FAIR BEST ZUCCHINI." The French are furious because they are French. The only happy group is the American press corps. As long as we can keep the scandal going, we get to stay indoors and write about it, instead of freezing our butts off watching the biathlon. . . .
Sports Illustrated Daily
"Last Word: These Olympics have turned one writer into a touchy-feely security groupie"
By Austin Murphy
. . . LIfe at the Olympics is like life in wartime. There are 15,000 uniformed personnel at these Games, including thousands of state and local police. There are FBI, FEMA, and the Secret Service, though none of them strike fear into my heart so much as that other security warrior: the newly minted volunteer, armed with clipboard, two-way radio and unshakable conviction that it is his or her destiny to single-handedly save these Games from catastrophe.
Rather than chafe at the delays, I welcome them. As Mark A. Camillo of the Secret Service has said, "We're all on the same team." . . .
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February 18, 2002
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