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The Best Notable Quotables of 1989:
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Award for the Silliest Analysis |
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First
Place
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"'These boat people,' says the government of Hong Kong, 'they all want to go to America.' Well, I swear I don't know why, do you? I mean take Vietnam. Why would any Vietnamese come to America after what America did for Vietnam? Don't they remember My Lai, napalm, Sylvester Stallone? Clearly they have no more sense over there, than say, Mexicans who keep trying to get into this country even though this country stole large parts of their country from them in the first place."
-- Linda Ellerbee, CNN PrimeNews, June 2. |
Runners-up: |
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"Sadly, many home remedies could damage a fetus instead of kill it."
-- Newsweek Senior Editor Melinda Beck on self-performed abortions, July 17 issue.
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"Well, am I a liberal, a conservative, or what? What...I believe in sunny summer mornings when the grass is sweet and the wind is green with possibilities. I believe in chili with no beans and iced tea all year round....I believe music is too important to be left to musicians, and that Ella Fitzgerald is the best American singer ever, and that Beethoven would have liked Chuck Berry....And so it goes."
-- Linda Ellerbee in her first commentary on CNN, March 20.
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"But certain times with George Bush there seems to be an irrelevancy, or he gets something wrong. We pointed out yesterday he referred to Benjamin Harrison dying of pneumonia after a chilly inauguration day, and of course it was William Tyler Harrison who died."
-- NBC's John Cochran on William Henry Harrison, January 20.
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"The [Afghan] army has controlled this beautifully rugged landscape with the help of women right from the revolution. It's the women of this country who have the most to lose if this Marxist revolution fails, if the government falls to the fundamentalist Muslim rebels. A woman's place in such a society would be back under the head to toe covering of the chaterra, cooking and bearing children."
-- Reporter Steve Hurst on CNN PrimeNews, February 9.
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The Good News Is Bad News Award
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First
Place |
"Some analysts said that the country's now close to full employment, the point at which the available labor pool dries up. That's not the same as saying that everyone who wants a job has a job. But business correspondent Ray Brady reports the high employment rate is causing problems."
-- CBS Evening News Anchor Charles Kuralt, March 10. |
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Runners-up: |
"The danger is that as the economy picks up, it could become too much of a good thing. Borrowing and buying by consumers could become excessive. Prices and interest rates could take off. The problem would again become how to avoid a hard landing."
-- Irving R. Levine on NBC Nightly News, same night. |
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Which Way Is It? The Economy
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First
Place |
"Good evening. A double dose of worrisome economic statistics tonight from the government: inflation, with its highest quarterly gain in two years; home building, sharply down. That left some economists alarmed."
-- Dan Rather opening the April 18 CBS Evening News.
versus...
"This country's economic expansion has now entered its seventh year and the Joint Economic Committee of Congress says still more growth can be expected. It warned, however, that this growth could be threatened by huge budget deficits and renewed inflation. But, the inflation news today is reassuring."
-- Tom Brokaw on NBC Nightly News, same night.
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Runners-up:
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"Economy expanding, slightly stronger"
-- Washington Times, June 23
"GNP Figures Indicate a Slowdown"
-- Washington Post, same day
"Poverty Level Stabilizes at 31 Million"
-- Washington Post, October 19
"Number of Nation's Poor Remains at 32 Million for a Second Year"
-- New York Times, same day
"Per capita income up, but experts say poor get poorer"
-- Chicago Tribune, same day
"Number of poor fell, Census Bureau says"
-- Washington Times, same day
"Economic expansion skips the poor"
-- Boston Globe, same day
"New method to count poor: Census report makes 'em disappear"
-- New York Daily News, same day
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