Media Research Center -- DisHonors Awards

How Do I Hate the Gipper? Let Me Count the Ways Award

Runners-up:

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"The amazing thing is most people seem content to believe that almost everybody had a good time in the ‘80s, a real shot at the dream. But the fact is, they didn’t. Did we wear blinders? Did we think the ‘80s left behind just the homeless? The fact is that almost nine in ten Americans actually saw their lifestyle decline."
-- NBC reporter Keith Morrison, February 7, 1992 Nightly News.

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"The boom years following World War II saw the U.S. economy take off, giving rise to the growth of the great American middle class. The rising standard of living meant homes, cars, TVs, college for the kids — all in all, a piece of the American dream. But in the Reagan years, economic erosion set in, so much so that the middle class now finds itself in ever-deepening trouble."
-- Bryant Gumbel on Today, January 22, 1992.

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"You place the responsibility for the death of your daughter squarely at the feet of the Reagan Administration. Do you believe they’re responsible for that?"
-- NBC reporter Maria Shriver interviewing AIDS sufferer Elizabeth Glaser, July 14, 1992 Democratic convention coverage.

And the winner is:

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"In the plague years of the 1980s -- that low decade of denial, indifference, hostility, opportunism, and idiocy -- government fiddled, and medicine diddled, and the media were silent or hysterical. A gerontocratic Ronald Reagan took this [AIDS] plague less seriously than Gerald Ford had taken swine flu. After all, he didn’t need the ghettos and he didn’t want the gays."
-- CBS Sunday Morning TV critic John Leonard, Sept. 5, 1993.

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