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The Best Notable Quotables of 1998:
The Eleventh Annual Awards for the
Year’s Worst Reporting
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The Everybody But Us Shut Up Award
(for Promoting Campaign Finance Reform)
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First
Place
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"For those of us who worship the constitutional guarantee of free press and speech, the spectacle of political hustlers like Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) using the First Amendment to justify legalized bribery is offensive."
— Wall Street Journal Executive Washington Editor Al Hunt, March 12 column. [82 points] |
Runners-up: |
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"Republicans kill the bill to clean up sleazy political fundraising. The business of dirty campaign money will stay business as usual....Good evening. Legislation to reform shady big money campaign fundraising is dead in Congress. Republican opponents in the Senate killed it today. It was the latest in a long-running attempt to toughen loose laws that shield hidden donors with loose wallets and deep pockets. As CBS’s Bob Schieffer reports, when it came to the crunch today on campaign finance reform, it was all talk and no action."
— Dan Rather, February 26 CBS Evening News. [71]
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"It was a bill that was doomed to die. The last time you heard people so eager to claim responsibility for something like this, they were terrorists."
— NBC reporter Gwen Ifill, February 27 Washington Week in Review on PBS. [49]
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"The Senate has effectively killed political campaign finance reform for the foreseeable future, which means that even though a majority of Senators declared themselves in favor of trying to change the way politicians raise and spend money, there were not enough votes to end a Republican filibuster. Together the Senate and the House of Representatives spent more than $9 million dollars to hold more than 30 days of hearings on how to change the rules, and even though so many Americans believe that money is more important to the process than their vote — which is not a pretty picture — and though many, many politicians believe the system is flawed, they will not be fixing it, just yet."
— ABC News anchor Peter Jennings, February 26 World News
Tonight. [27]
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Starr Behind Bars Award
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First
Place |
"Coming out on to the White House driveway on the day after he had violated all norms of privacy, he jauntily gave his trademark wave and his patented grin, one that doesn’t involve eye movement, carrying himself as if he were President and as if there were a crowd of well-wishers rather than a ravenous camera crew awaiting him, as if he were on some high horse instead of on some low road. ‘You cannot defile the temple of justice,’ he has said in explaining his relentless pursuit of Clinton. But Starr did. As much as Clinton stained the dress, Starr stained the country to nail him for it. And his party goes on and on."
— Time magazine’s Margaret Carlson in an October 12 "Public Eye" column. [60 points] |
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Runners-up: |
"What Starr is doing is trying to construct the truth according to Ken Starr, and according to Miss Lewinsky’s lawyer he’s reneging on his offer of immunity, because she’s not saying what he wants and what he’s doing is trying to get people to say what he wants. He’s the one who is suborning perjury here in my view. He has gone way beyond the pale in term of his treatment of witnesses."
— Newsweek’s Eleanor Clift, Feb. 7 McLaughlin Group. [52]
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"CNN has learned the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee plans to ask Attorney General Janet Reno to investigate whether Ken Starr should be removed from office. Sources say Congressman John Conyers is writing a long letter to Reno, accusing Starr of repeated abuses of power, including pressuring witnesses to commit perjury. The allegations are specific and serious, aimed at a man who already has given many people the impression he’s on a mission. That may have a lot to do with Starr’s religious and Republican roots..."
— Greta Van Susteren hosting the February 5 CNN special
"Investigating the Investigator." [48]
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"Starr has stood Watergate on its head. It is not the President who is doing the taping; it is the prosecutor. It is not the President who is assembling the dossiers and leaking dirt on the intimate practices of an ideological opponent; it is the prosecutor. It is not the President who is involved in the politically motivated abuse of power; it is the politically motivated counsel. It is not the President who is insufficiently accountable; it is the prosecutor."
— U.S. News Editor-in-Chief Mortimer Zuckerman, April 6. [47]
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"Starr’s is a shameful story - as shameful as the conduct of almost all television news programs and some of the press....Starr’s leaks, whose purpose is to condition the public to believe in the President’s guilt, are of a piece with other practices that reek of abuse....The real spinning is taking place in the graves of our Founding Fathers. When they wrote the First Amendment, they imagined a press corps as a curb on power. They did not anticipate an independent counsel free from checks and balances. They had no role for a chief inquisitor. Nor should we."
— U.S. News & World Report’s Zuckerman in his editorial titled, "Starr Has Hit a New Low," June 29 issue. [36]
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Good Morning Morons Award
(for Foolishness in the Morning)
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First
Place |
"Women who’ve been polled seem to put it behind them as well, and are willing to move on and forget about it. Is that because Bill Clinton’s been such a great President whom they elected in great part, or is there something I want to say almost sexy about a man who can get away with things over and over again?"
— Good Morning America co-host Lisa McRee to Deborah Tannen, August 18. [73 points]
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Runners-up:
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Katie Couric: "Getting back to kids and guns, if you will indulge me for a moment. You cannot think of any other position the NRA could take in terms of trying to decrease the number of school shootings? You feel like this is not your bailiwick, this is not your problem?"
Charlton Heston: "Not at all. As I told you the NRA spends more money, more time..."
Couric, cutting him off: "Other than education."
Heston: "Well what would you suppose? What would you suggest?"
Couric: "I don’t know, perhaps greater restrictions."
— Exchange on the June 8 Today. [47] |
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"You and I spoke right at the beginning of this second term. Now, with two years left, is it something you look forward to? Do you get out there and say ‘I want to keep going out, I want to meet people, I have more stuff I want to do,’ or do you look and go ‘Oh, my God, two more years!’?"
"There’s so much speculation now about what you’re going to do. What Hillary Clinton’s life is going to be after the presidency. Do you find that takes away from what you’re going to do, or do you just like slough it off and pay no attention?"
"I’ve talked to several people and they came up and said ‘She’s so different than I thought she would be. She’s so much more of a people person. She’s funny, she’s nice.’ Do you think that, like, people don’t get you? I mean you get out there and people see a different side of you.
— Maria Shriver’s questions to Hillary Clinton during her bus tour, July 16 Today. [44] |
"Thirty seconds, but I want to get this in: Janet Reno, ninety-day investigation to look into whether a special prosecutor should be appointed for this campaign finance thing. Is that a big problem for the President? Has he done anything that anybody else wouldn’t have done?"
— ABC’s Lisa McRee to Cokie Roberts, September 9 Good Morning
America. [43]
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"Couldn’t this be just a witch hunt, couldn’t the Democrats and President Clinton’s people who’ve been defending him all these months be right, that even though he screwed up there’s some political motivation there. Couldn’t that be right?"
— Lisa McRee to humorist P.J. O’Rourke, September 10 Good Morning
America. [40]
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