WHAT GOES AROUND COMES AROUND

I was startled a few weeks ago when I read an article by Martin Wolf, usually one of the soundest voices in the FT, more than concerned about the prospects of Rupert Murdoch and Newscorp taking over the Wall Street Journal - while Mr. Wolf was always a balanced voice in the debate about business and society, it seemed that his terror about the possible demise of one of the few well-articulated and balanced (???) voices of business journalism - Im paraphrasing, because I dont remember his exact words - seemed very unfair and judgmental of the New Barbarian

I was reminded of this yesterday when I saw a column by Paul Krugman of the New York Times, which was even more hysterical about the now-more-or-less-certain takeover - of course, Mr. Krugman, with whom I have agreed on a lot, is much more left wing, so his hysteria may be somewhat more understandble

But all in all, it is rather surprising that people who broadly subscribe to the market model of life should be horrified when in works against their tastes or interests

I hold no brief for Mr. Murdoch, except to note that he is a master of business - and I dont mean MBA - and, incidentally, a remarkably virile man, and I say more power to him and if the puny Wall Street Journal establishment is unable to withstand the assault from one of its very own free marketeers well - so much for hypcrisy

Again, it is rather remarkable that these liberal commentators view Mr. Murdoch distastefully relative to the WSJ - I read one issue of the WSJ recently after a long time and i was shocked at the near-fascist tone of a couple of its edit page articles - I couldnt believe there were people who believed the kinds of things they wrote and, equally importantly, that a supposedly reputable newspaper would publish that kind of stuff

Well, what goes around comes around