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The Best Notable Quotables of 2000:
The Thirteenth Annual Awards for the
Year’s Worst Reporting
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I Am Woman Award (for Hillary Rodham Worshiping)
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First
Place
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"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]
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Runners-up: |
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"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]
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"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]
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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]
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Carve
Clinton into Mount Rushmore Award
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First
Place |
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"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] |
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Runners-up: |
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"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]
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"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]
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Media
Hero Award
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First
Place |
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"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.]
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Runners-up:
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"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]
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"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]
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"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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