Politics of Meaninglessness Award for the
Silliest Analysis
Winner
“Not
doing it [fighting global warming] will be catastrophic. We’ll be eight
degrees hotter in ten, not ten but 30 or 40 years, and basically none of
the crops will grow. Most of the people will have died and the rest of
us will be cannibals. Civilization will have broken down.”
— CNN founder Ted Turner on PBS’s Charlie Rose, April 1. [56
points]
|
Runners-up:
“East
Germany Had Its Charms, Crushed by Capitalism”
— Headline over an October 29 New York Times review of a book bemoaning
the introduction of Western capitalism to the former Warsaw Pact
country. [41]
“The
black people in France are very proud and very hopeful for their future.
They also live, many of them, in poor situations. And you know, you’ve
had your own riots here and protests and disturbances in the Banlieue —
in the city. At one point, when we were covering those riots, when you
were Interior Minister, you called the rioters ‘scum.’ And I’m wondering
whether you feel, today, when you stand next to someone you clearly
admire so much, and who has broken so many barriers, that you regret
that term or that you wish you hadn’t said it?”
— CNN correspondent Christiane Amanpour to French President Nicolas
Sarkozy during a July 25 press conference with Barack Obama shown live
on CNN. [37]
|
“This
has been one of the most active, deadly tornado seasons in a long
time....I talked to three people, casual conversation today, all of them
smart, saying, ‘I don’t know, we must be doing something to our Earth.’
So once and for all, what’s going on?”
— NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams to NBC WeatherPlus
meteorologist Bill Karins, May 12. Karins discounted global warming as a
cause. [21]
Winner
