The Press: Apology

Joe Alsop, the Jeremiah of the syndicated columnists, is so addicted to the gloomy view that even when things are looking up, Alsop is looking down. "It is still too early to say,'' he once wrote, "that the worst result is already inevitable." Yet in the first days of the U-2 flap, Joe Alsop astonished his readers with a memorable statement: "There is also wonderful news in the bad news of the American plane that was shot down in the Soviet Union."

By last week, though, Alsop had reverted to his ordinary gloomy self and...