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The Best Notable Quotables of 1996:
The Ninth Annual Awards for the
Year’s Worst Reporting
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Good Morning Morons Award
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First
Place
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"You write that you prayed more during your four years in office than basically at any time in your life and yet I think it's fair to say, and I hope this doesn't sound too harsh, I think it's fair to say, you are consistently viewed as one of the more ineffective Presidents of modern times....What do you think, if anything, that says about the power of prayer?"
-- Bryant Gumbel interviewing Jimmy Carter about his new book, Living
Faith, November 18 Today. [85 points] |
Runners-up: |
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"In light of the new welfare reform bill, do you think the children need more prayers than ever before?"
-- Bryant Gumbel to Children's Defense Fund leader Marian Wright Edelman, September 23
Today. [71]
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"Comments that he has made to others would seem to indicate a certain degree of, and not unjustifiably, a certain degree of anger, bitterness. Has he expressed that to you?"
"Why do you suppose it is that one year after his acquittal, most white Americans at least, cannot accept the idea that he's out walking around free, refuse to let him live his life?"
-- Bryant Gumbel to O.J. Simpson lawyer Johnnie Cochran in part one of three day interview series, September 30
Today. [62]
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Bryant Gumbel: "Do you think if those two victims had been, say, Marguerite, his first wife, and Al Cowlings, his best friend, that there would have been the same amount [of media attention]?"
Cochran: "Absolutely not. And I think any person who wants to be honest about it would say the same."
Gumbel: "Why? Because America doesn't care about black victims?"
-- Exchange on Today, Oct. 2. [58]
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The Contract's Not Done Until
Every Child is Dead Award
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First
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"In April, terrorists tried to kill them. Today politicians stopped their paychecks. In Oklahoma City's Social Security office, they're being ordered to work for nothing."
-- Beginning of CBS reporter Scott Pelley's January 2 Evening News story on some federal workers being ordered to work during the shutdown. [71] |
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Runners-up: |
"There is something very creepy about the welfare debate....The politicians have gotten together and decided it's a good idea to throw a million or so children into poverty. But they can't say that. The proponents of this so-called `reform' effort have gone out of their way to avoid being seen for what they are -- men and women of extreme privilege who are taking food out of the mouths of infants and children, the poverty-stricken elderly, the disabled."
-- Ex-NBC News reporter Bob Herbert, July 22 New York Times column. [70] |
"Monuments and national parks are shut. So are museums. A long-awaited rare exhibit of the Dutch painter Vermeer at the National Gallery, eight years in the making, is closed. And the shutdown now has a human face. Joe Skattleberry and his wife Lisa both work for the government. Both have been furloughed. They can't afford a Christmas tree."
-- ABC reporter Jack Smith, December 22, 1995 World News
Tonight, the fifth day of the federal government shutdown. [64]
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Politics of Meaninglessness Award
(for the Silliest Analysis)
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First
Place |
George Will: "What the conservatives are doing [on a flag amendment, bless their hearts, misguidedly this time is exactly what the left wing tried to do with the Equal Rights Amendment. That was a perfectly pointless abuse of the Constitution as a political gesture."
Cokie Roberts: "I would disagree with you there as a mother of a son who is protected by the Constitution and a daughter who is not."
-- Exchange on This Week with David Brinkley, December 10, 1995. [70 points]
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Runners-up:
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"Just how tightly scripted is this convention? Well, a Russian television reporter said today that this is as tightly controlled as anything the Communist Party ever put on, Tom."
-- NBC reporter David Bloom, August 14 Nightly News story on the Republican convention. [67] |
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"How are women on the road different from men? `They are more meticulous, more organized. More multidimensional,' she [CBS News campaign producer Susan Zirinsky] says. `And less cynical.' Dan Rather, she insists, is the exception. What makes Rather different? `Dan's a girl,' she says. `Dan has the enthusiasm of a girl. There's a girl's soul lurking in him.'"
-- March 23 TV Guide story on women covering the
campaign.[49]
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