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| Slam Uncle Sam Award | |
 Andrea
Mitchell: "It is an iconic picture: American hostages, hands bound and
blindfolded, being paraded outside the U.S. embassy in Tehran by their
captors. But has one of those student radicals now become Iran’s newly
elected President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad?...Tonight, U.S. intelligence
officials say that they will continue to study this, but may never have
definitive proof of what the role was of Iran’s new president, Brian."Brian Williams: "Andrea, what would it all matter if proven true? Someone brought up today the first several U.S. Presidents were certainly revolutionaries and might have been called terrorists at the time by the British Crown, after all." Mitchell: "Indeed, Brian." — NBC Nightly News, June 30. [91 points] |
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"I
just want to say: Who are we? We are people who have always been for
inspections of prisons, for some degree of human rights, and now we’re
defending neither.... We have now violated everything that we stand for. It
is the first time in my life I have been ashamed of my country." — NPR’s Nina Totenberg, commenting on a front-page Washington Post report that captured terrorists are being held at undisclosed sites, Inside Washington, Nov. 4. [80] |
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"Stealth is a pretty fair military-hardware action movie until you
start thinking about it — at which point it turns incredibly sour in your
mouth. I can therefore recommend it to any and all audiences lacking higher
brain functions. Sea cucumbers, perhaps. Ones waving American flags.... This
is exactly the sort of movie we don’t need right now: a delusional military
fantasy in which collateral damage doesn’t exist....For a movie to pretend,
in the face of the deaths of tens of thousands of Iraqi men, women, and
children directly or indirectly caused by our presence there, that we can
wage war without anyone really getting hurt isn’t naive, or wishful
thinking, or a jim-dandy way to spend a Saturday night at the movies. It’s
an obscenity."
— Boston Globe movie critic Ty Burr in a July 29 review of the
movie Stealth, about a fighter jet that is piloted by a computer with
artificial intelligence. [53]
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Brian
Williams: "You just told me the story about one photograph from the war
that always kind of catches you, the Japanese soldier returning to his city
that’s been destroyed. Do you have remorse for what happened? How do you
deal with that in your mind?" Enola Gay navigator "Dutch" Van Kirk: "No, I do not have remorse! I pity the people who were there. I always think of it, Brian, as being, the dropping of the atom bomb was an act of war to end a war." — Exchange as the two stood next to the plane at the Smithsonian’s new National Air and Space annex near Dulles airport, in a segment on the 60th anniversary of the dropping of the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, NBC Nightly News, August 5. [34] |
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| Madness of King George Award for Bush Bashing | |
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— Newsweek’s Jon Meacham on MSNBC’s Imus in the Morning May 9, discussing Bush’s criticism of Roosevelt’s Yalta deal with Stalin on post-war Europe. [62 points]
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Runners-up:
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Reporter Lee Cowan:
"The proposed [Bush budget] cuts hit the heartland like a mountain of
unwanted news, from the soy bean fields of Iowa, where farmers marched on
the capital to voice their disgust at slashing farm subsidies, to large
cities like Minneapolis, where block grant programs help the homeless and
the hungry....The White House calls the budget ‘lean,’ proponents call it
difficult but brave. But critics charge the people these cuts hit the
hardest tend to have the weakest political voice." Robert Greenstein, Center for Budget and Policy Priorities: "Cuts in programs for the working poor, low income elderly people, people with disabilities. They tend not to have much in the way of lobbyists. They don’t give campaign contributions." Cowan: "....This Dallas health clinic serves only the poorest of patients, but already there is a two-month waiting list. Dr. Maureen Thielen says the President’s proposed cuts in Medicaid will only make it worse....Agencies that are already doing the work of the poor now find themselves in the unenviable position of proving that their cause is worth it." — CBS Evening News, February 7. [43] |
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"In the words of one of his [Ayatollah Sistani’s] aides, ‘the
representation of our Sunni brethren in the coming government must be
effective, regardless of the results of the elections.’ As an Iraqi
politician said to me, ‘There are currently two Grand Ayatollahs running
Iraq: Sistani and Bush. Most of us feel that Sistani is the more rational.’"
— Newsweek’s Fareed Zakaria in a column published in the
magazine’s January 24 edition. [42]
"President Bush’s second inauguration will cost tens of millions of dollars — $40 million alone in private donations for the balls, parade and other invitation-only parties. With that kind of money, what could you buy?
- 200 armored Humvees with the best armor for troops in Iraq.
- Vaccinations and preventive health care for 22 million children in regions devastated by the tsunami.
- A down payment on the nation’s deficit, which hit a record-breaking $412 billion last year....
"The questions have come from Bush supporters and opponents: Do we need
to spend this money on what seems so extravagant?"
— Reporter Will Lester’s lead to a January 13 Associated Press dispatch.
[41]
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"The
Libby indictments have opened the door to making the wider case against the
Bush administration that they misled the country into war....The next
logical step is impeachment, and I think you’re going to hear that word come
up, and if the Democrats ever capture either house of Congress there are
going to be serious proceedings against this administration." — Newsweek’s Eleanor Clift on the McLaughlin Group, November 5. [40] |
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| The Kanye West "George Bush Doesn’t Care About Wet People" Award |
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"The dilatory performance of George Bush
during the past week has been outrageous. Almost as unbelievable as Katrina
itself is the fact that the leader of the free world has been outshone by
the elected leaders of a region renowned for governmental ineptitude....The
populism of Huey Long was financially corrupt, but when it came to the
welfare of people, it was caring. The churchgoing cultural populism of
George Bush has given the United States an administration that worries about
the House of Saud and the welfare of oil companies while the poor drown in
their attics and their sons and daughters die in foreign deserts." — Former New York Times Executive Editor Howell Raines in a Los Angeles Times op-ed, September 1. [89 points] |
Runners-up:
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"After
meeting with Louisiana officials last week, Reverend Jesse Jackson said,
quote, ‘Many black people feel that their race, their property conditions
and their voting patterns have been a factor in the response.’ He continued,
quote, ‘I’m not saying that myself.’ Then I’ll say it: If the majority of
the hardest hit victims of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans were white
people, they would not have gone for days without food and water, forcing
many to steal for mere survival. Their bodies would not have been left to
float in putrid water....We’ve repeatedly given tax cuts to the wealthiest
and left our most vulnerable American citizens to basically fend for
themselves....The President has put himself at risk by visiting the troops
in Iraq, but didn’t venture anywhere near the Superdome or the convention
center, where thousands of victims, mostly black and poor, needed to see
that he gave a damn." — Contributor Nancy Giles on CBS’s Sunday Morning, September 4. [58] |
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"For
many of this country’s citizens, the mantra has been, as we were taught in
social studies it should always be, whether or not I voted for this
President, he is still my President. I suspect anybody who had to give him
that benefit of the doubt stopped doing so last week. I suspect, also, a lot
of his supporters, looking ahead to ‘08, are wondering how they can distance
themselves from the two words which will define his government, our
government: New Orleans. For him, it is a shame, in all senses of the word.
A few changes of pronouns in there and he might not have looked so much like
a 21st century Marie Antoinette." — MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann, Sept. 5 Countdown. [54] |
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"You
know, I’ve been to some pretty lousy places in my life. And Iraq over the
past 12 months and Banda Aceh, open graves and bodies. These were Americans,
and everyone watching the coverage all week, that kind of reached its peak
last weekend, kept saying the same refrain: ‘How is this happening in the
United States?’ And the other refrain was, ‘Had this been Nantucket, had
this been Boston, Cleveland, Chicago, Miami, Los Angeles, how many choppers
would have–’" — NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams on Comedy Central’s The Daily Show, September 8. Audience applause drowned out Williams as he was finishing. [38] |
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| "God Save This Court from Extremists" Award |
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vs. "Balanced Jurist at Home in the Middle." |
Runners-up:
"When John G. Roberts Jr. prepared to ghostwrite an article for President
Ronald Reagan a little over two decades ago, his pen took a Civil War
re-enactment detour....The Indiana native scratched out the words ‘Civil
War’ and replaced them with ‘War Between the States.’...Sam McSeveney, a
history professor emeritus at Vanderbilt University who specialized in the
Civil War, said that Roberts’s choice of words was significant. ‘Many people
who are sympathetic to the Confederate position are more comfortable with
the idea of a "War Between the States,"’ McSeveney explained. ‘People
opposed to the civil rights movement of the 1960s and 1970s would
undoubtedly be more comfortable with the words he chose.’"
— Washington Post reporter Jo Becker, August 26.
[58]
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"I
want to ask you about this 1991 opinion...[Judge Sam Alito] was the lone
dissenter. He argued that a woman should have to notify her husband before
she gets an abortion. Now, let me just say Sandra Day O’Connor heard this
same case and Sandra Day O’Connor said this reflects a repugnant view of
marriage. Women do not lose their constitutional rights because they’re
married....Does this opinion give even you pause? Again, Sandra Day
O’Connor’s notation that it was a repugnant view of marriage?" — Diane Sawyer to conservative commentator Joe Watkins on ABC’s Good Morning America, November 1. [51] |
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CNN’s
Jeffrey Toobin: "[Judge Alito] thought it was okay that Pennsylvania
insisted that a woman get her husband’s permission before she got an
abortion...." CNN’s Carol Costello: "Why, legally, would you uphold something like that? That a woman would have to check with her husband first in order to get an abortion?...I guess what I’m, I’m trying to get at is, is this is a very conservative judge, and he’s going to be against legalized abortion? I mean, you could draw that conclusion from this, couldn’t you? Or could I?" Toobin: "I think it’s a very good indication that this is a judge who will want to overturn Roe v. Wade." — Exchange on CNN’s Daybreak October 31, soon after word of Alito’s impending nomination leaked out. In fact, the law only required notification if the husband was also the baby’s father, not his "permission." [48] |
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"I’ve
known John Roberts for years. I think it’s a very sensible pick in all
serious ways. But I must say that when I spent five hours reviewing all of
his documents from when he worked in the Justice Department, I was actually
quite surprised at how, how very, very conservative he was." — NPR’s Nina Totenberg on the July 30 Inside Washington. Totenberg had previously referred to Judge Roberts as "very, very conservative," "very, very, very conservative," "a really conservative guy," "a conservative Catholic," and "a hardline conservative." [40] |
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