Dear David Cameron: leave Salt Lake City alone!!

The New York Times’ Ashley Parker reports that Mitt Romney got into a spot of trouble on the first leg of his fundraising foreign affairs tour: 

Mitt Romney’s carefully choreographed trip to London caused a diplomatic stir when he called the British Olympic preparations “disconcerting” and questioned whether Londoners would turn out to support the Games.

“The stories about the private security firm not having enough people, the supposed strike of the immigration and customs officials, that obviously is not something which is encouraging,” Mr. Romney said in an interview with NBC on Tuesday.

That prompted a tart rejoinder from the British prime minister, David Cameron. “We are holding an Olympic Games in one of the busiest, most active, bustling cities anywhere in the world. Of course it’s easier if you hold an Olympic Games in the middle of nowhere,” an allusion to Salt Lake City, which hosted Games that Mr. Romney oversaw (emphasis added).

American commentators want to focus on what Romney said, but it strikes me as pretty anodyne.  As Feargus O’Sullivan notes in The Atlantic, "it’s not like Romney’s worries haven’t been expressed many times already in the British media."  Or, for that matter, The Daily Show:  

Furthermore, it’s not like these are the only screw-ups that have occurred before the openng ceremonies.   

Cameron’s comments, on the other hand, strike me as pretty offensive.  Salt Lake City is a lovely mid-sized city that pulled off a lovely Olympics.  Why act petty about that?  Why describe it as in the "middle of nowhere" when, last I checked, a fair number of airlines fly to Utah’s capital? 

Fnally, this comment from Cameron is also kinda disappointing:

Mr Cameron also refused to back calls for a minute’s silence to remember eleven Israeli athletes murdered by terrorists at the Munich Olympic Games forty years ago.

The Prime Minister said it was important to remember what happened in 1972, but that planned memorial events were the proper way to do that.

His comments came after the widows of two Israeli athletes who were killed in the attack pleaded with the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to allow a minute’s silence during Friday’s opening ceremony.

Ankie Spitzer and Ilana Romano, whose husbands Andrei Spitzer and Yosef Romano were among 11 athletes killed in the attack at the Olympic Village in Germany, handed a petition to IOC chiefs yesterday containing more than 105,000 signatures from people around the world backing the call for a silence.

The standard response to this kind of plea is that the Olympics is a celebration of sport and politics should be kept offstage.  This is akin to saying that the Miss Universe competition has nothing to do with beauty — it’s not true and insults the intelligence of anyone within earshot. 

Romney has walked back his comments already.  I hope Cameron does the same on both counts.