|
|
|
|
The Best Notable Quotables of 1995:
The Eighth Annual Awards for the
Year’s Worst Reporting
|
|
The Embodiment of All Evil Award
(for Newt-Bashing)
|
|
First
Place
|
"The election returns start with a stark fact so disturbing that no one in the media wants to state it plainly: The U.S. House of Representatives is now to be led by a world-class demagogue, a talented reactionary in the vengeful tradition Gov. George Wallace and Sen. Joseph McCarthy. Like Wallace before him, Newt Gingrich evokes the nation's boiling anxieties as a rancid populism of `us vs. them,' though he is too shrewd to make the racial resentments explicit. Like Joe McCarthy, Gingrich depicts his adversaries not simply as mistaken in their political views but as sick, traitorous people who are invidiously subverting the national character....We shall soon find out if there is a kinder, gentler Newt lurking beneath the rock. Somehow I doubt it. His hatred seems to be from the heart."
-- William Greider, past producer of PBS Frontline shows and former
Washington Post Assistant Managing Editor, in the December 29, 1994-January, 12, 1995
Rolling Stone. |
Runners-up: |
|
"Newtie has gone too far. When you take food out of the mouths of babes and claim it is in their best interests, as Gingrich did in defending his Draconian budget cuts, you cross the line from mere heartlessness to dangerous demagoguery. It is one thing to play the mean-spirited reactionary, gutting one social program after another while pandering to the greed of the more affluent voter. That is a morally wrong but logically consistent position. Taking $500 from a child on welfare and giving it to one whose parents earn more than $200,000 a year is a loathsome but defensible position to advocates of a social Darwinism that holds that only the strong deserve to live."
-- Former Los Angeles Times reporter Robert Scheer, May 16
Times column.
|
"Let's face it: to most African Americans Newt Gingrich is one scary white man....One can only hope Gingrich was sincere in his speech to Congress last week....That could mean Gingrich is serious about shedding his party's whites-only image. If so, blacks ought to meet him halfway -- if only to temper the wilder impulses of one very scary white man."
-- Time National Correspondent Jack E. White, January 16.
|
"You called Gingrich and his ilk, your words, `trickle-down terrorists who base their agenda on division, exclusion, and fear.' Do you think middle class Americans are in need of protection from that group?"
-- Bryant Gumbel to House Minority Leader Richard Gephardt, January 4
Today.
|
|
Good Morning Morons Award
|
|
First
Place |
"Janet Reno has asked for an independent counsel to investigate charges against HUD Secretary Henry Cisneros. Commerce Secretary Ron Brown is being investigated. Questions have been raised about Transportation Secretary Federico Pena. Agriculture Secretary Mike Espy resigned under pressure, as did Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders. The Clinton White House seems to be having a hard time retaining high-profile minorities particularly. Do you think, Senator, they are being held to a higher standard in Washington than their white predecessors?"
-- Bryant Gumbel to Sen. Ted Kennedy, March 15 Today. |
|
Runners-up: |
"He has hope of staying out [of a gang] as long as he has a basketball in his hands....Without the basketball this kid is running drugs, carrying a gun and soon to kill somebody. And that's true in place after place. Now we get to decide: Do you want a basketball in his hands, to continue trying to convince him to stay out of a gang, or do you want to face him in a dark street some night with a nine-millimeter Glock in his hands?"
-- Dan Rather on the January 26 CBS This Morning promoting their prime time special on youth violence
In the Killing Fields of America. |
"President Clinton will be attending more ceremonies in Hawaii marking V-J Day, Victory over Japan. Saturday, Mr. Clinton went to a ceremony on a hill high above Honolulu. He praised those who served in the military 50 years ago, saying they saved the world. After today's ceremonies marking the end of World War II, President Clinton will head back to the United States."
-- NBC anchor Giselle Fernandez, September 3 Today. Hawaii became a state in 1959. |
"Two weeks after his acquittal, we'll see how O.J. Simpson is still being treated as if he were guilty."
-- Bryant Gumbel, October 16 Today. |
|
I Still Hate Reagan Award
|
|
First
Place |
Thomas Friedman, New York Times reporter and columnist: "Governor, I'm kind of a foreign policy wonk, and it scares the bejesus out of me to have someone as President of the United States, Commander-in-Chief, and finger on the nuclear button who is such an outsider to Washington and American foreign policy."
Lamar Alexander: "Well, did Ronald Reagan scare you, Tom?"
Friedman: "He sure did."
Alexander: "Did he? He didn't scare me. I thought he was the best national defense and Commander-in-Chief and foreign policy President we've had since Eisenhower."
Friedman: "Ask 245 Marines in Beirut about that."
-- Exchange on CBS's Face the Nation, March 5.
|
|
Runners-up:
|
"How much did Reagan fool the American people and how much did he simply play into their wishes? Were they misled by the nature of his campaigning or were they led into ways they wanted to go? Was Reagan sort of a modern Pied Piper? It's my instinct about it that he very successfully delayed the apprehension of reality by this country for about a decade. He made people feel that things were better than they were, that the external dangers were greater than they were."
-- PBS anchor Robert MacNeil in the 1995 Liz Cunningham book Talking Politics: Choosing the President in the Television
Age. |
Home | News Division
| Bozell Columns | CyberAlerts
Media Reality Check | Notable Quotables | Contact
the MRC | Subscribe
|
|
