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The Best Notable Quotables of 2000:
The Thirteenth Annual Awards for the
Year’s Worst Reporting
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W is for Woeful Award (for Bashing Bush)
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First
Place
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"He went along with having an openly gay
Congressman address the convention last night, yet Bush opposes hate crimes
legislation, gay marriage and gay adoption. He is the candidate who talks of
making health insurance available to all who want it, but has fought to
limit federal insurance for children. Bush is the candidate who has proposed
a huge tax cut as a way to help the working class. But more than sixty
percent of the relief would go to the richest ten percent of Americans. And
while he speaks of the need to protect the environment, Bush supports mostly
voluntary efforts to do it."
-- ABC’s
Dean Reynolds, Aug. 2 World News Tonight. [44]
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Runners-up: |
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"When he picked a running mate, he
picked a running mate who was straight out of the red meat, right-wing part
of the party. When he was asked about who he wants, everybody’s talking
about how he’s not making a litmus test about abortion for Supreme Court
nominees, but he says his two favorite Supreme Court nominees are Scalia and
Clarence Thomas, hardly people that most blacks or Hispanics think are ideal
candidates for the court. There’s still some kind of a disconnect between
this wonderful public face, comfortable with Hispanics or whatever, and the
decisions this guy has actually made."
-- Time’s Jack White on Inside Washington, Aug. 5. [40]
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"A new poll shows that nearly 60 percent
of Texans believe the state has, at some point, executed the innocent. No
matter. These voters apparently view state-sanctioned murder as a fair price
to pay for maintaining the status quo. A real leader would try to take his
people to a better place. Will Bush? I have reasonable doubt."
-- Jonathan Alter in Newsweek,
July 3. [39]
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"On one bit of campaign meanness and
nastiness in particular, George Bush now says he’s sorry his gutter
language and personal attack was picked up by a microphone at a campaign
stop yesterday, but he refuses to apologize for the substance of his
comment. Bush’s remark was about Adam Clymer, a New York Times
reporter whose coverage he doesn’t like."
-- Dan Rather on the CBS Evening
News, Sept. 5. [31]
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If He Didn’t Sink, Send Him Back to the Clink Award (for Portraying a Cuban Paradise Awaiting Elian)
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First
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"While Fidel Castro, and certainly
justified on his record, is widely criticized for a lot of things, there is
no question that Castro feels a very deep and abiding connection to those
Cubans who are still in Cuba. And, I recognize this might be controversial,
but there’s little doubt in my mind that Fidel Castro was sincere when he
said, ‘listen, we really want this child back here.’"
-- Dan Rather, live on CBS the morning
of the Elian raid, April 22. [65 points]
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Runners-up: |
"Elian might expect a nurturing life in
Cuba, sheltered from the crime and social breakdown that would be part of
his upbringing in Miami. Because Elian’s father, Juan Miguel Gonzalez,
works as a cashier in a tourist resort, the family already belonged to the
nation’s well-off stratum, who has access to American dollars. The boy’s
relatives in Miami can offer further support: Cuba now even has ATMs that
dispense dollars from foreign banks. The education and health-care systems,
both built since the revolution, are among the best in the Americas, despite
chronic shortages of supplies...
"The boy will nestle again in a more peaceable society that treasures
its children. But his life will oscillate to the contrary rhythms of this
central Cuban paradox. As a shining symbol of the communist state, he will
have access to the corrupting fruits of the new economy. He’ll enjoy the
best Cuba has to offer, the things only dollars can buy."
-- Brook Larmer and John Leland, Apr. 17 Newsweek. [46]
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"Good evening. In Miami today,
immigration officials met with the Miami relatives of Elian Gonzalez again
and once again the government has failed to get the kind of cooperation from
the relatives that might allow the case of this young boy to end in a
civilized manner that is best for him."
-- Peter Jennings opening ABC’s World
News Tonight, March 28. [45]
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"Part of what the children talked about
was their fear of the United States and how they felt they didn’t want to
come to the United States because it was a place where they kidnap children,
a direct reference, of course, to Elian Gonzalez. The children also said
that the United States was just a place where there was money and money wasn’t
what was most important. I should mention, Peter, that, you know, as you
talk about the global community, Cuba is a place, because of the small
number of computers here -- in the classrooms we visited yesterday there was
certainly no computers and almost no paper that we could see -- this is a
place where the children’s role models and their idols are not the
baseball players or Madonna or pop stars. Their role models are engineers
and teachers and librarians."
-- ABC’s Cynthia McFadden referring
to her visit to elementary-school-age kids, live from Havana during ABC
2000 coverage, December 31, 1999. [43]
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Little Havana Banana Republic Award
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First
Place |
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"Some suggested over the weekend that it’s
wrong to expect Elian Gonzalez to live in a place that tolerates no dissent
or freedom of political expression. They were talking about Miami. All eyes
on south Florida and its image this morning. Another writer this weekend
called it ‘an out of control banana republic within America.’ What
effect is the Elian Gonzalez story having on perception of Miami? We will
talk with a well-known columnist for the Miami Herald about
that."
--
NBC’s Katie Couric opening the April 3 Today. [60 pts.]
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Runners-up:
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"The ‘banana republic’ label
sticking to Miami in the final throes of the Elian Gonzalez crisis is a
source of snide humor for most Americans. But many younger Cuban Americans
are getting tired of the hard-line anti-Castro operatives who have helped
manufacture that stereotype – especially the privileged, imperious elite
who set themselves up as a pueblo sufrido, a suffering people, as
martyred as black slaves and Holocaust Jews, but ever ready to jump on
expensive speedboats to reclaim huge family estates the moment the old
communist dictator stops breathing."
-- Time
Miami reporter Tim Padgett, April 17 issue. [59]
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"Cuban-Americans, Ms. Falk, have been
quick to point fingers at Castro for exploiting the little boy. Are their
actions any less reprehensible?"
--
Bryant Gumbel to CBS News consultant Pam Falk, April 14 The Early Show.
[51]
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"Elian and his family will spend the
next three weeks in a seaside Havana house....ostensibly to let Elian get
caught up in school so he can enter the second grade in September. But
critics in the U.S. warn that the quarantine is meant to deprogram Elian.
(If so, he’ll be used to it: the private school he attended in Miami,
owned by a right-wing Cuban-exile leader, was just as dogmatic)."
-- Time
Miami correspondent Tim Padgett, July 10. [48]
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