Reporter Deborah Solomon:
“You helped re-elect Bush in ’04 when you gave $3 million to the Swift
Boat campaign to discredit John Kerry’s Vietnam service. Do you regret
your involvement?”
Businessman T. Boone Pickens:
“Why would I?”
Solomon:
“Because it’s such an ugly chapter in American political history.”
Pickens: “Oh, I
see. Well, it was true. Everything that went into those ads was the
truth.”
Solomon:
“Really? I thought it was all invented.”
— From a “Q&A” exchange published in the New York Times Magazine
on Sunday, August 3. [72 points]
Runners-up:
“[For
Obama] the real test is yet to come. The Republican Party has been
successfully scaring voters since 1968, when Richard Nixon built a
Silent Majority out of lower- and middle-class folks frightened or
disturbed by hippies and student radicals and blacks rioting in the
inner cities....It is a sure bet that the GOP will try to paint Obama as
‘the other’ — as a haughty black intellectual who has Muslim roots (Obama
is a Christian) and hangs around with America-haters....The real
question is whether he [McCain] can — or really wants to — rein in the
merchants of slime and sellers of hate who populate the Internet and
fund the ‘independent expenditure’ groups who exercise their freedom in
ways that give a bad name to free speech.”
— Richard Wolffe and Evan Thomas in an eight-page cover package touting
“The O Team,” May 19 Newsweek. [64]
“I’m
sorry it’s necessary to say this, and I wanted to separate myself from
the others on the air about this. If, at this late date, any television
network had of its own accord showed that much videotape, and that much
graphic videotape of 9/11, and I speak as somebody who lost a few
friends there, it, we, would be rightly eviscerated at all quarters,
perhaps by the Republican Party itself, for exploiting the memories of
the dead and perhaps even for trying to evoke that pain again. If you
reacted to that videotape the way I did, I apologize. It is a subject of
great pain for many of us still and was probably not appropriate to be
shown.”
— MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann on September 4 after his network aired a less
than three minute 9/11 tribute video shown at the GOP convention. A week
later, MSNBC aired more than three hours of 9/11 news coverage as it
originally aired on NBC back on September 11, 2001. [42]
|
“[F]rom John McCain and Sarah Palin....attacks that stoked the anger at
Republican rallies, where there have been reports of attendees yelling
things like ‘terrorist’ and ‘kill him.’ [to Biden] Are you at all
concerned in this home stretch for Senator Obama’s safety?”
— Co-anchor Terry Moran profiling Democratic vice presidential nominee
Joe Biden on ABC’s Nightline, October 13. [34]
Winner
