Best of NQ 2000 Contents
  Aiding & Abetting in an Election Theft Award
  Kiss Me, Too, Al Award
  Kosher Kiss-Up Award
  I Am Woman Award
  Carve Clinton Into Mount Rushmore Award
  Media Hero Award
  The Real Reagan Legacy Award
  Flirting with Disaster Award
  The Galloping Ghost of Gingrich Award
  W is for Woeful Award
  If He Didn't Sink, Send Him Back to the Clink Award
  Little Havana Banana Republic Award
  Semper Fidel Award
  Bring Back the Iron Curtain Award
  Damn Those Conservatives Award
  Good Morning Morons Award
  Politics of Meaninglessness Award
  Too Late for the Ballot
  Quote of the Year
  2000 Award Judges
  Press Coverage

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The Best Notable Quotables of 2000:

The Thirteenth Annual Awards for the
Year’s Worst Reporting



I Am Woman Award (for Hillary Rodham Worshiping)

First Place

Lesley Stahl "I’m endlessly fascinated by her....She’s so smart. Virtually every time I’ve seen her perform, she has knocked my socks off."
-- CBS News reporter Lesley Stahl on Hillary Clinton, as quoted by Gail Shister in the December 8, 1999 Philadelphia Inquirer. [91 points]
Runners-up:


"It was hard in the summer of 1992 for a young woman to stay objective and not become enchanted by the promise of Hillary. I had spent my formative professional years undercover in the dark age of Reagan-Bush. Those were the days when women were not allowed to wear pants in the White House. Anita Hill had just been whomped. Anti-abortion judges were packing the Supreme Court. And here was a woman who had kept her own name!....I’ll be voting for her just to make sure Trent Lott doesn’t get another foot soldier for his holy war."
-- Former Time reporter Nina Burleigh, who once said she would give Bill Clinton oral sex for keeping abortion legal, in the February 14 New York Observer. [90]


Bryant Gumbel


"When your husband ran for President eight years ago, it was often said you get two for the price of one, meaning if you elected him, they got your expertise. Does the same now apply? Do we get two for the price of one? If we vote for you, do we get his expertise?"
-- Bryant Gumbel to Hillary Clinton on CBS’s The Early Show, June 28. [39]

Steve Roberts

 

I think a lot of women will read that and see an underlying sexism to that, to that tone....And I think this serves Hillary Clinton well. That, ‘see, these guys don’t want a, don’t like powerful women. They don’t like to see someone like me who challenges their power.’"
-- Steve Roberts of U.S. News & World Report reacting to a GOP direct-mail letter which described Hillary Clinton as "a fraud, a phony, and a pretender...She’s hard-core, hardline, hard-nosed ultra-liberal who uses people and hates Republicans," July 16 CNN Late Edition. [38]

 

Carve Clinton into Mount Rushmore Award

First Place

Geraldo Rivera

"You’re going to miss that guy. Don’t tell me you’re not gonna miss that guy. This is a master. He may be a rogue, but he is an artful and pleasant rogue and done a hell of a job as President. I’m gonna miss the guy...He should’ve been the vice presidential candidate."
-- Geraldo Rivera after humming the theme from Rocky over footage of Clinton’s pre-speech hallway walk at the Democratic convention, August 21 Rivera Live on CNBC. [81 points]
Runners-up:

Eleanor Clift
"President Clinton, surviving impeachment and remains a colossus on the world stage as witnessed by his prosecution of the war in Kosovo, plus the peace accord in Northern Ireland, and peace with negotiations in the Middle East, which wouldn’t have happened without his prodding."
-- Newsweek’s Eleanor Clift on her pick for the "Biggest Winner of the Year," December 25, 1999 McLaughlin Group. [59]

"It’s not unlike watching a BMW, fully loaded, the sunroof back, the heated seats, the Blaupunkt speakers blasting. No curves, no spin, a 180-kilometer-an-hour purity of performance. It’s December and a press conference in the bowels of the cement box that is the State Department, and up there on the stage, hand jauntily in pocket and press corps in the palm of his hand, the President is wowing ‘em again. So you have again the fractured promise of William Jefferson Clinton. Oxford Bill with the political skill set of a veteran Chicago ward heeler. More intellectually supple than Al Gore without the rent-a-wreck personality. More politically attuned than George W. Bush, and he really reads the books."
-- Washington Post reporter Michael Powell in a December 9, 1999 "Style" section story the day after a Clinton press conference. [35]

 

Media Hero Award

First Place

Margaret Carlson

 

 

"However formal the father-son relationship, it was strong enough that Al [Gore] went off to war for him. When most kids wouldn’t come to the dinner table wearing a clean T-shirt, Al signed up for Vietnam to diminish the impact of his father’s opposition to the war in his unsuccessful fight to keep his Senate seat in 1970. Gore, to preserve his father’s career, did what few sons of privilege had to do....As psychiatrists and Shakespeare would have it, a son comes into his own when he surpasses his father. By that measure, Gore is fully grown. Unlike the breezy George W. Bush, who was on a career respirator much of his adult life, Gore has worked up a sweat getting to where he is."
-- Time columnist Margaret Carlson, February 28. [60 pts.]


Runners-up:


 

 

 



"The Children’s Defense Fund will release its annual report today, and the figures in it are shocking and disturbing. They say one in five American children live in poverty. 13.5 million kids in this country are poor. Marian Wright Edelman, the incredible head of that organization, will be here to tell us today what can be done about it. And she firmly believes that mothers, in particular, across the country can get involved in this fight and should get involved because everybody’s children are all of our children....It’s a call to arms really for America’s mothers to get involved in the gun debate. Silence the NRA. Get involved. You say it is all of our fights!"
-- Maria Shriver plugging Children’s Defense Fund President Marian Wright Edelman’s appearance, followed by one of Shriver’s questions, March 24 Today. [53]

 


Thomas Friedman

 


"I think the American public really got a taste of the degree to which not only Elian had been, in my view, you know kidnapped by these people [Cuban-Americans], but American policy on Cuba has been kidnapped by a very active, vociferous minority....
"I just came from a trip from Venezuela to Bogota, Colombia to Moscow. I got to tell you, what people in Bogota, Colombia would give for five minutes of Janet Reno. What people in Russia today in these lawless, no rule of law societies, would give for five minutes of Janet Reno."
-- New York Times columnist and ex-reporter Thomas Friedman, PBS’s Washington Week in Review, Apr. 28. [52]

"We all know now that you can be, rest assured that will be the bookend on Janet Reno’s tenure as Attorney General, that and Waco on the other end. It is appalling from her perspective because of the true compassion she has for children. If you’ve ever seen her around children, you know how much she truly cares for them, and this has got to be tearing at her."
-- CBS reporter Jim Stewart during live coverage of the INS raid to seize Elian, Saturday morning, April 22. [42]

 

 


 

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