STEINBERG V. KASS

In today's Sun-Times column, Neil Steinberg takes a poke at the Tribune's John Kass:

[M]any readers weighed in, with varying degrees of puzzlement or malice, over the big sigh of relief I heaved Wednesday that the French Quarter wasn't destroyed by Katrina. And while I admit that my whoop of joy rang hollow in light of the devastation caused by the failing levees, I do stand by it. The city could have been blown over before it flooded, and that would make things much, much worse. At least people had roofs to crawl onto.

True, my comments would not have had such an upbeat tone had I been soaking up the disaster on TV instead of working, though I doubt I could have produced the ululating wail of feigned grief emitted by the Tribune's fraud-in-residence, John Kass, who lovingly imagined what the carnage might have been like -- just as he likes to conjure up porkpie-hatted toughs with pinkie rings slouching around City Hall -- before keening for residents of a place he passed through once years ago on a teenage boating lark and never felt the need to visit again for the rest of his life.

In a fight like that, you don't root for a winner -- you just give 'em both a knife.