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The Best Notable Quotables of 1999:
The Twelfth Annual Awards for the
Year’s Worst Reporting
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The Alec Baldwin Award
(for Hate Speech Against the
Presidential Impeachers)
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First
Place
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"I think there are real questions about
separation of powers and I don’t think he [Clinton] should go up there [appear before
the Senate]. And second of all, that herd of managers from the House, I mean frankly all
they were missing was white sheets. They’re like night riders going over. This is
bigger than Bill Clinton."
-- Newsweek’s Eleanor Clift, January 9 McLaughlin Group. [67]
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Runners-up: |
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"As she watches Republicans in Congress
push ahead with impeachment proceedings against President Clinton, Ellen Mendel of
Manhattan says she feels the same despair that she did as a girl in Nazi Germany when the
efforts of a stubborn group of leaders snowballed, crushing the will of the people.
‘It is apparent that the bulldozing campaign by the Republicans will not end,’
said Ms. Mendel, a psychotherapist. And in a moment of self-analysis, she added:
‘Their efforts are so abusive that I was beginning to feel a sense of discouragement.
I have been feeling very isolated.’"
-- Opening to a January 25 New York Times story by Ginger Thompson on liberal
Manhattanites enraged by the Republican push for removal. [57]
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"Her [White House lawyer Cheryl Mills] rhetoric wasn’t fancy, but it was on
target. The G.O.P. is a party, after all, that owes its post-Barry Goldwater resurgence to
opposition to civil rights. And while its leaders from time to time proclaim their belief
in racial justice, their pledges have been mostly lip service. They’re too genteel
for a sheet-wearing bigot like David Duke but all too willing to embrace bigotry if
it’s dressed in a suit and tie. Mills, 33, is just the sort of hard-nosed advocate to
drag such hypocrisy to the surface."
-- Time national correspondent Jack E. White, February 1 "Dividing
Line" column. [54]
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"Senator, when you talk to other Senators, particularly older Senators -- those
who’ve been around for a bit -- is or is there not some concern of the public,
concern in some quarters, not all of them Democratic, that this is in fact a kind of
effort at a quote ‘coup,’ that is you have a twice elected, popularly elected
President of the United States and so those that you mentioned in the Republican Party who
dislike him and what he stands for, having been unable to beat him at the polls, have
found another way to get him out of office."
-- Dan Rather to former Senator Warren Rudman (R) during CBS coverage of the swearing
in of Senators for the impeachment trial, January 7. [44]
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"I can’t think of anything that would be better for the American Republic than
to see some of the Republicans who brought this bogus, inflated case and have put the
country through all this turmoil for the last, almost a year than for them to be sent
packing and to be replaced by someone who can put this in somewhat better
perspective."
-- Time national correspondent Jack E. White on MSNBC’s McLaughlin
Special Report prime time show, February 10. [20]
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Soft on Crime Award
(for Promoting Those Opposed to
Holding Clinton Accountable)
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First
Place |
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"You know who the hero of this whole thing is, it’s that guy, what was his
name, Richard Llamas, the guy who stood up in the Senate gallery last week and said,
‘Good God vote and get over with this, will you.’ If they had stretched this out
for another two or three weeks, which if they would have had the kind of witnesses Bob
[Novak] wanted to have, I want to tell you something, I think the people may have stormed
the United States Capitol."
-- Wall Street Journal Executive Washington Editor Al Hunt on a special edition
of CNN’s Capital Gang, February 11. [66] |
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Runners-up: |
"The Republican managers pushed a case that was bogus from the
beginning. It should have been a vote of censure in the House and be done with it. And
look at the defectors, the Republican defectors in the Senate: Northeastern Republicans.
That’s the aspect of the party that’s still in touch with the people."
-- Newsweek’s Eleanor Clift, February 13 McLaughlin Group. [57]
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"Didn’t I say to you that we are marching off the cliff? Reason tells you we
should stop this and get on with the business of governance. But there is precious little.
I mean, I spent most of today and yesterday half on the phone while I was covering this
thing, with Senators Republican and Democratic, and at the moment everybody’s fondest
hope is that the two-week hiatus, between now and the new year, in that period impeachment
will sink in and sanity will prevail and we’ll avoid a trial. But there are a lot of
people that don’t want that to happen."
-- National Public Radio’s Nina Totenberg, December 19, 1998 Inside Washington,
the day of the House vote. [52]
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"Good evening. We begin tonight with the voice of the people heard from the Senate
gallery today during yet another procedural vote at the President’s impeachment
trial....’God almighty,’ the man said, ‘take the vote and get it over
with.’ He was arrested. That’s him in the beard, slightly balding, on the right.
He may think it was worth it, speaking as he does for so many Americans, whether they
believe the President should be convicted of perjury and obstruction of justice or not.
The best that we can say tonight is they are getting there."
-- Peter Jennings, February 4 World News Tonight. [49]
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China Syndrome Award
(for Dismissing Nuclear Espionage)
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First
Place |
"Where have you gone, Joe McCarthy, oh, a nation turns its lonely eyes to
you....Yes folks, Republican efforts to warn Americans of the danger of fuzzy liberals in
charge of the nation’s political system -- and its nuclear secrets -- are about to go
into overdrive."
-- May 24 Time Daily online story by Tony Karon. [53]
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Runners-up:
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"I heard someone ask rhetorically today that, ‘Look, this is only gonna
matter if, God forbid, there is one dark day that sees the use, the all-out use of
thermonuclear weapons on this planet, and so why worry?’"
-- MSNBC host Brian Williams to House Select Committee on Intelligence Chairman Porter
Goss (R.-Fla.) on The News with Brian Williams, May 25. [45]
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"The rollout to this rivaled The Phantom Menace, with Chris Cox in the role of
Luke Skywalker. But the facts don’t bear up. First of all, this notion of Richard
Shelby yelling for Janet Reno’s head -- you know, Sandy Berger was briefed. So was
Richard Shelby....There is no evidence they are building anything; they are deploying
anything. It will take them at least ten years to do anything. This is hysteria to try to
create a new Red Menace."
-- Newsweek’s Eleanor Clift on the release of the Cox Report, May 29 McLaughlin
Group. [41]
Part 1
Part 2
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"The Cox Report says China uncovered the secrets of seven U.S. nuclear warheads, but
the intelligence evidence is unclear. It may be as low as four, two of which are obsolete.
Amidst all the voices raised in alarm there is a bottom line: Unlike many of the things in
the Cox Report there’s no argument here. Number of strategic nuclear weapons? U.S.:
six thousand, China: less than two dozen."
-- "Reality Check" by Eric Engberg, May 27 CBS Evening News. [30]
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"There’s a lot of concern now in this China issue, but the fact is China has 24
long-range nuclear missiles that could hit the United States. Russia 7,000. Yet the whole
arms control process with Russia over START has collapsed. That was something started by
Republicans. I don’t hear anything coming out of Republicans complaining about that,
wanting to drive that agenda. What’s happened? When I listen to the Republicans in
Congress on foreign policy, there’s such an ‘I’m stupid and proud of
it’ attitude."
-- New York Times columnist and ex-reporter Tom Friedman to John McCain, March
14 Face the Nation. [28]
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