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The Best Notable Quotables of 2001:
The Fourteenth Annual Awards for the
Year’s Worst Reporting
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Nobody
Here But Us Apolitical Observers Award for Denying Liberal Bias
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First
Place
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Newsweek’s
Evan Thomas: "There is a perception, even among
journalists, that the [New York] Times is going a little
bit left, is getting more liberal, and that’s
disquieting."
Time magazine’s Jack White: "That’s a lot
of hokum, with all due respect to Evan. There is no liberal bias
in the press in the whole. In fact, if there is a bias, it’s
on the other side. It’s hard to find a person really, truly,
of the liberal persuasion who are making any important decisions
in any important media institutions in this country now. I’ve
looked for them, I consider myself one, I have very few birds of
a like feather around."
– Exchange on the September 1 Inside Washington. [56
points]
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Runners-up: |
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Diane Sawyer:
"Watching you and watching you cover the news over the past
year, you are so much about passion for politics, and it doesn’t
matter to you, I mean – I really mean this."
George Stephanopoulos: "Thank you."
Sawyer: "You’ve been completely non-partisan in
covering the news."
– Exchange on ABC’s Good Morning America, July 24. [54]
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"The New York
Times is middle of the road. There is no active, aggressive,
important publication of the left in America. And so as a
consequence, The New York Times when compared to The
Wall Street Journal’s editorial page may be considered to
the left of it. But to call The New York Times left-wing
is absurd."
– Norman Pearlstine, Editor-in-Chief of Time-Warner
magazines, on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal on May 24,
responding to former CBS reporter Bernard Goldberg’s point
that Dan Rather’s belief that the Times’ editorial
page was merely "middle of the road" showed Rather’s
cluelessness on the issue of liberal media bias. [50]
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"I think there
is a mainstream media. CNN is mainstream media, and the main,
ABC, CBS, NBC are mainstream media. And I think it’s just
essentially to make the point that we are largely in the center
without particular axes to grind, without ideologies which are
represented in our daily coverage, at least certainly not on
purpose."
– Peter Jennings, CNN’s Larry King Live, May 15.
[40]
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Blame America First Award
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First
Place |
"Am I angry? You
bet I am. I am an American citizen, and my leaders have taken my
money to fund mass murder. And now my friends have paid the
price with their lives.
"Keep crying, Mr. Bush. Keep running to Omaha or wherever
it is you go while others die, just as you ran during Vietnam
while claiming to be ‘on duty’ in the Air National Guard.
Nine boys from my high school died in that miserable war. And
now you are asking for ‘unity’ so you can start another one?
Do not insult me or my country like this!
"Yes, I, too, will be in church at noon today, on this
national day of mourning. I will pray for you, and us, and the
children of New York, and the children of this sad and ugly
world."
– Message posted by left-wing filmmaker Michael Moore on
his Web site, September 14. [54 points] |
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Runners-up: |
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"We have been
the cowards. Lobbing cruise missiles from 2,000 miles away, that’s
cowardly. Staying in the airplane when it hits the building, say
what you want about it, not cowardly."
– ABC’s Bill Maher on Politically Incorrect, Sept.
17. [52]
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"My
daughter, who goes to Stuyvesant High School only blocks from
the World Trade Center, thinks we should fly an American flag
out our window. Definitely not, I say: The flag stands for
jingoism and vengeance and war. She tells me I’m wrong – the
flag means standing together and honoring the dead and saying no
to terrorism. In a way we’re both right....[The flag] has to
bear a wide range of meanings, from simple, dignified sorrow to
the violent anti-Arab and anti-Muslim bigotry that has already
resulted in murder, vandalism and arson around the country and
harassment on New York City streets and campuses."
– The Nation’s Katha Pollitt in an Oct. 8 column.
[43]
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"I do not believe
the memory of the 7,000 plus people who were killed in these
most horrendous acts of terrorism are honored by going out and
killing other civilians. We went alone, we went alone when we
bombed Tripoli at night, a crowded city where old people and
children were sleeping. 1986, Reagan. We killed Qaddafi’s kid,
and lots of other children. One person said, well, several
people, ‘well, he’s adopted’ they said of the kid. And we
got Pan Am 103, Lockerbie. Tell those loved ones, it was
December 21, my birthday."
– Phil Donahue on FNC’s The O’Reilly Factor,
Sept. 25. [37] |
"The disconnect
between last Tuesday’s monstrous dose of reality and the
self-righteous drivel and outright deceptions being peddled by
public figures and TV commentators is startling, depressing. The
voices licensed to follow the event seem to have joined together
in a campaign to infantilize the public. Where is the
acknowledgment that this was not a ‘cowardly’ attack on ‘civilization’
or ‘liberty’ or ‘humanity’ or ‘the free world’ but
an attack on the world’s self-proclaimed superpower,
undertaken as a consequence of specific American alliances and
actions? How many citizens are aware of the ongoing American
bombing of Iraq? And if the word ‘cowardly’ is to be used,
it might be more aptly applied to those who kill from beyond the
range of retaliation, high in the sky, than to those willing to
die themselves in order to kill others. In the matter of courage
(a morally neutral virtue): whatever may be said of the
perpetrators of Tuesday’s slaughter, they were not
cowards."
– Novelist and playwright Susan Sontag writing for the
"Talk of the Town" section of the Sept. 24 New
Yorker. [28] |
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Glimpses
of Patriotism Award
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First
Place |
"For once, let’s
have no ‘grief counselors’ standing by with banal
consolations, as if the purpose, in the midst of all this, were
merely to make everyone feel better as quickly as possible. We
shouldn’t feel better. For once, let’s have no fatuous
rhetoric about ‘healing.’ Healing is inappropriate now, and
dangerous. There will be time later for the tears of sorrow. A
day cannot live in infamy without the nourishment of rage. Let’s
have rage....
"As the bodies are counted, into the thousands and
thousands, hatred will not, I think, be a difficult emotion to
summon. Is the medicine too strong? Call it, rather, a wholesome
and intelligent enmity....Anyone who does not loathe the people
who did these things, and the people who cheer them on, is too
philosophical for decent company....The worst times, as we see,
separate the civilized of the world from the uncivilized. This
is the moment of clarity. Let the civilized toughen up, and let
the uncivilized take their chances in the game they
started."
– Lance Morrow in a special edition of Time
published after the September 11 terrorist attacks. [67 points]
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Runners-up:
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"The United
States had a spirit before it had a name – one of faith and
freedom, of ambition tempered by piety. We once were a nation of
neighbors and friends, we are again today. We once were a nation
of hardship-tested dreamers – we are again today. We once were
a nation under God – we are again today. Our enemies attacked
one nation, they will encounter another, for they underestimated
us. Today in our grief and in our rage, our determination and
hope, we’ve summoned what’s best and noblest in us. We are
again Americans."
– Tony Snow at the conclusion of the September 16 Fox
News Sunday. [54]
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"I have spent
this week wiping my eyes and grinding my teeth and wondering
why. I’ve drawn strength from a story about a man I knew,
Father Mychal Judge. The chaplain of the New York City Fire
Department, a Franciscan, he raced to the World Trade Center
after the explosion to comfort the injured. While administering
the last rites to a dying rescue worker, he, himself, was killed
by flying debris. New York’s bravest physically carried Father
Mike away....
Together, firemen, priests, and brothers wept and sang the
prayer of St. Francis, `May the Lord bless and keep you and show
his face to you and have mercy on you.’ That is the way of New
York. That is the spirit of America."
– Tim Russert, moderator of NBC’s Meet the Press,
concluding the September 16 show. [30]
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