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The Best Notable Quotables of 1997:
The Tenth Annual Awards for the
Year’s Worst Reporting
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Evil Elephant Empire Award
(for Bashing Congressional Republicans) |
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First
Place
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"In fact, the Speaker will forever remain his own caricature -- a Dennis the Menace
meets Darth Vader kind of guy. A fellow who, for instance, wants to give all children in America
laptops but take away their free school lunches."
-- U.S. News & World Report Assistant Managing Editor Gloria Borger, April 7. [71 points] |
Runners-up: |
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ABC reporter John Cochran: "Flood victims in Grand Forks do not understand why
Republican leaders refuse to pass an aid bill without strings attached."
A flood victim: "The river took our home, our possessions, our neighbors, our neighborhood
and we still have our spirit. But the government is taking our spirit and our strength. And
that's what's going to kill us."
Cochran: "Doug Sprehe is a life-long conservative Republican."
Doug Sprehe: "I believed in these guys and I voted for some of them and I'm beginning to
lose my faith in the conservative party."
Cochran: "...People whose homes and businesses were destroyed say GOP leaders should
realize that what they really need is money to rebuild."
-- ABC's World News Tonight, June 6. [68]
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"But there's another reason why all but nine of the 225 House Republicans backed
Gingrich: deep reservations about the man next in line, the hard-right majority leader, Dick Armey. Just
as Dan Quayle's lack of gravitas led many Republicans to pray for the health of George
Bush, Armey's ideological stubbornness and hot-headed rhetoric inspire in his colleagues
protective optimism about Gingrich....In a House brimming with mean-spirited rhetoric, Armey stands
out."
-- U.S. News & World Report Senior Writers Kent Jenkins Jr. and Paul Glastris, January 20 issue.[62]
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"It'll be interesting when he sits down with Jiang Zemin, the President of China, and
starts lecturing him about the rule of law though, I think. I'd like to be a fly on the wall in that
session."
-- New York Times columnist and former reporter Thomas Friedman disdaining Gingrich, March21 PBS
Washington Week in Review. [44]
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Che Guevara Award
(for Nostalgia for Communism)
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First
Place |
"I thought that we Americans overreacted to the Soviets and the news coverage
sometimes seemed to accentuate that misdirected concern. Fear of the Soviet Union taking over the
world just seemed as likely to me as invaders from Mars. Well, perhaps I was naive, but I'd seen
those May Day parades and Soviet bread lines and miserable conditions hidden behind them.
That war-devastated country didn't seem that threatening to me...The nuclear arms race was on
in earnest. All the anti-Soviet paranoia that had been festering since the war really blew up then.
A Soviet bomb was seen as an assault on us. But I saw it as part of their pursuit of nuclear
equality. After all, what should we expect, that our enemy's just going to sit still there and not try
to develop the bomb?"
-- Walter Cronkite on the year 1948 in Part 3 of the Discovery
Channel's Cronkite Remembers, January 16. [64 points] |
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Runners-up: |
"Open societies, it turns out, haven't been as generous as socialism and communism to
women who want to serve in public office. From Albania to Yemen, the number of women in
power plummeted after the transition from socialist governments, which sought to develop female
as well as male proletariats. As those governments died, so went the socialist ideals of equality
and the subsidies for social programs that aided women. In many countries, traditional
patriarchal cultures resurfaced."
-- Los Angeles Times correspondent Robin Wright, October 2 Philadelphia
Inquirer op-ed. [61] |
"Under Cuba's communist form of government, a Cuban family's basic necessities,
housing, education, health care, and transportation, are provided by the state for free or at very little
cost."
-- CBS This Morning co-host Jane Robelot, March 24. [57]
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"An editor's note: When your reporter was in China recently, a very high ranking
Chinese government official was repeatedly asked questions about religious persecution. He told me, and
I quote directly, 'These stories are untrue. We do, as you do, have some trouble with cults and
we, like you, deal with them accordingly, but that's all.' End quote."
-- CBS News anchor Dan Rather after a story on persecution of Christians in China, July 22
Evening News. [52]
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John Glenn Award
(for Ensuring the Hearings Got Lost in Space)
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First
Place |
"John Huang isn't the poster boy for what ails money and politics -- Steve Forbes
is...Forbes represents the purest, most offensive challenge to the idea that money should equal
speech...Must we really accept a doctrine that lets a vain twit pour Daddy's millions into so much flat
tax propaganda that it lands him on the cover of Time and Newsweek and influences the
national agenda? Forbes has been encouraged by what money can buy and won't go away. If
anything's sinister about campaign finance nowadays, it's this..."
"Thus the key question: Is Steve Forbes constitutional? The court might tell us that
Forbes' fetishes are among those ugly things we have to tolerate in a free society. In any event, this is
the kind of conversation that might begin to fix our campaigns, not witch hunts for red perils
that don't exist."
-- U.S. News & World Report Senior Writer Matthew Miller in a July 17 op-ed
in the Philadelphia Inquirer. [107 points]
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Runners-up:
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"The UFO comparison is apt in his case. He is considered flaky and a bit of a crackpot,
even though a nice guy. Some crackpots are nice."
-- Time columnist Margaret Carlson on House Government Operations Committee Chairman Dan Burton, referring to Hillary Clinton's
comment that attention to Whitewater "reminds me of some people's obsession with UFO's and
the Hale-Bopp comet." Apr. 12 CNN Capital Gang. [48] |
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"President Clinton's best defense for any campaign fundraising excesses or irregularities
by Democrats appears to be that the Republicans do it too. And even more."
-- NBC's JimMiklaszewski, Feb. 19 Today. [47]
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