We have another candidate for a Knowsitall award. Knute Berger is the self appointed guru of Seattle journalism, a relic actually of the glory days when David Brewster fostered good writing as publisher of the Seattle Weekly. Sadly, Knute has not only failed to grow beyond the lace curtain liberalism of those days at the Weekly, he has become a pontifical source of self importance .
His biography at the Wikipedia may sum this up: “Berger writes frequently about World’s Fairs, seven of which he has attended, including the Century 21 Exposition in his hometown of Seattle.[4] In 2011, Berger was named “Writer in Residence” at the Space Needle, in anticipation of the Needle’s Fiftieth Anniversary. Commissioned by the owners of the Space Needle, he penned its official history for the anniversary in Space Needle: The Spirit of Seattle, published in 2012.[“
Now editor of Crosscut, another publication founded by Brewster, Berger blames WSDOT for not knowing that Seattle’s tunnel drilling machine, “Big Bertha” would run into an old piece of pipe. After not saying anything about the potential implications of a problem digging the tunnel, Berger goes on to a bizarre sexist rant:
However shaky its project management skills, WSDOT has certainly perfected a kind of PR art form. They release information sparingly — agency officials refused last week to speculate on the magnitude of the costs to date of Bertha’s blockage — and enthusiastically anthropomorphize their engineering work. It’s not a machine, it’s Bertha, supposedly named for Bertha Knight Landes, Seattle’s only female mayor. Cute idea, though as one former WSDOT higher up said to me, it’s rather ridiculous to name something as phallic as a tunnel boring machine after a woman.
For that matter, while Knute is at it … I noted that Crosscut is no longer using their logo on the front page … seems to me Big Bertha NEEDS a logo and the old Crosscut logo looks a lot like what they need!