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The Best Notable Quotables of 2000:
The Thirteenth Annual Awards for the
Year’s Worst Reporting
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The Real Reagan Legacy Award
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First
Place
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Co-host Bryant Gumbel: "Well,
later on this morning we’re going to be talking on this President’s Day
about this presidential survey. Who would you think finished first?...Of all
the Presidents when they did first to worst. Oh c’mon, you would
know."
Clayson:
"Ronald Reagan."
Gumbel, dropping his pen:
"First?!?!"
Clayson:
"Who was it?"
Gumbel:
"No! Reagan wasn’t even in the top ten. Abraham Lincoln. Maybe you’ve
heard of him."
-- Exchange on CBS’s The Early
Show about C-SPAN poll of historians which ranked Reagan 11th, February
21. [95 points]
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Runners-up: |
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"His presidency ended more than a decade
ago, but politicians, Democrat and Republican, still talk about Ronald
Reagan. Al Gore has an ad noting that in Congress he opposed the Reagan
budget cuts. He says that because Bill Bradley was one of 36 Democratic
Senators who voted for the cuts. Gore doesn’t point out that Bradley also
voted against the popular Reagan tax cuts and that it was the tax cuts that
piled up those enormous deficits, a snowballing national debt."
-- Bruce Morton on CNN’s Late
Edition, February 6. [75]
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"We went through that whole period, get
government off our backs. Remember the Competitive Council? Let the
corporations voluntarily regulate themselves and come up with safety
standards, so that the Carter administration could come up with new
standards for tires, the Reagan administration came in and cut them out,
abolished them and cut the budget of that very agency, that the Republicans
are now criticizing, by 50 percent. And it’s never come back. It’s never
come back."
-- Time’s Margaret Carlson
holding Reagan accountable for bad Firestone tires, Sept. 9 CNN Capital
Gang. [47]
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Flirting with Disaster Award (for Proximity to Conservatives)
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First
Place |
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"The platform is, again, very strongly
pro-life and rejects abortion rights, and the platform specifically comes
out against gay unions, and against legal protections based on sexual
preferences. So is this really an open, compassionate, tolerant party?"
-- Charles Gibson to Lynne Cheney,
August 2 Good Morning America. [54 points]
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Runners-up: |
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Dan Rather: "One issue that is
sure to come up in the fall campaign that has already surfaced is Bush
cozying up to the self-described religious right, including the Reverends
Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell."
Richard Schlesinger:
"....Pollsters and pundits and politicians like to describe the primary
season as a search for the soul of a party. Now the question is: Did George
Bush sell his soul to the wrong group?"
-- March 13 CBS Evening News.
[53]
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"You said you ended up with a more
conservative platform than you originally drafted. How disappointed are
you?"
-- NBC’s Maria Shriver to platform
committee chairman Tommy Thompson, during MSNBC Republican convention
coverage, July 31. [32]
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"How does that broaden the appeal of the
party? You’re talking here tonight about being more inclusive, yet 59
percent of the people here describe themselves as conservative."
-- Andrea Mitchell asking New York
Governor George Pataki about Dick Cheney, July 31 MSNBC prime time coverage
of the Republican convention. [29]
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"Well, you put Tom Ridge out there for
example, the Governor of Pennsylvania, big and important state, a guy with a
great record, pro-choice, immediately the Catholic Church and Jesse Helms
said no way."
-- Tom Brokaw to George W. Bush on
potential VP picks, July 24 NBC Nightly News. [26]
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The Galloping Ghost of Gingrich Award (for Chiding Cheney)
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First
Place |
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"And when you talk about votes like
that, that he made while in Congress, anti-affirmative action,
anti-abortion, anti-gun control, anti-equal rights, how does George Bush
portray him as a compassionate conservative?"
-- Today co-host Matt Lauer to
Tim Russert, July 26. [41]
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Runners-up:
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"This week we learned that citizen Dick
Cheney didn’t vote in 14 of the last 16 state elections in Texas. His
excuse? He was, quote, ‘focused on global concerns.’ Was part of his
concern Halliburton’s policy abroad of segregating bathrooms for Americans
only? Halliburton’s excuse was they were providing for, quote, ‘cultural
needs.’ Didn’t they say something like that in Mississippi in defense of
whites-only toilets?"
-- Time columnist Margaret
Carlson’s "Outrage of the Week" on CNN’s Capital Gang,
September 9. [40]
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"I have to ask you, as an
African-American, if you have any difficulty supporting a man who voted
against releasing Nelson Mandela from prison....
Is that kind of vote
acceptable under any circumstance?"
-- Jane Clayson to Republican
Congressman J.C. Watts on CBS’s The Early Show, July 31. [34]
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"Cheney’s politics are of the
hard-right variety. He’s opposed to abortion and gun control and favors
both capital punishment and school prayer."
-- Bryant Gumbel on CBS’s The
Early Show, July 25. [31]
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"But Bush is portraying himself as a
compassionate conservative. If he’s running with somebody who voted for
all the Reagan budget cuts, for example, wouldn’t that prove a bit of a
problem?"
-- Gloria Borger to Karl Rove, July 23
Face the Nation. [30]
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"[T]he official announcement and first
photo-op today of Republican George Bush and his running mate Richard
Cheney. Democrats were quick to portray the ticket as quote ‘two Texas
oilmen’ because Cheney was chief of a big Dallas-based oil supply
conglomerate. They also blast Cheney’s voting record in Congress as again
quote, ‘outside the American mainstream’ because of Cheney’s votes
against the Equal Rights for Women Amendment, against a woman’s right to
choose abortion -- against abortion as Cheney prefers to put it -- and
Cheney’s votes against gun control. Republicans see it all differently,
most of them hailing Bush’s choice and Cheney’s experience."
-- Dan Rather on the July 25 CBS
Evening News introducing that night’s story on the Bush-Cheney debut.
[30]
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