CyberAlert -- 12/30/1998 -- Ted Turner a Friend of Larry Flynt?
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Ted Turner a Friend of Larry Flynt?; Stahl Gushes Over Hillary
-- Flynt on Clinton: "Flynt makes no secret of his political loyalties. 'I love Clinton,' he says. 'I voted for him in '92. I voted for him in '96. Sure the guy had an affair and he lied about it....But how much punishment should he receive?' Of Lewinsky, he says dismissively, 'she's a snitch,' not bothering to ponder the irony of the snitches who've responded to his reward." -- Who Cincinnati-native Flynt asked for help: "In a remarkable display of chutzpah, Flynt recently asked Cincinnati Reds owner Marge Schott if she would sell him the ball club. 'I was as serious as a heart attack,' says Flynt. The way he tells it, Flynt asked his friend, Atlanta Braves owner Ted Turner, to sound out baseball commissioner Bud Selig on that possibility. 'No way you'd be approved,' was the answer. Still Flynt continues to insist that 'I could have put the deal together.'" (See the quote below under the Politics of Meaninglessness Award for a bit of Turner's wacky political reasoning in equating Kent State with Tiananmen Square.)
Lesley Stahl of 60
Minutes handled the portion of the 10pm ET/PT show devoted to Hillary
Clinton and Monica Lewinsky. On Clinton, she delivered only acclaim in
this piece of the show transcribed by MRC analyst Jessica Anderson: Yeah, the "dignity" with which she went on Today and lied about how the allegations about Lewinsky were false and then maligned conservatives as being part of a conspiracy, a charge she has never had the "grace" to withdraw.
Appearing on the Late Show with David Letterman on Monday night, Today news reader Ann Curry hoped the Lewinsky scandal would go away. MRC analyst Jessica Anderson grabbed this exchange from the December 28 show: Letterman:
"What a year, what a year for a newsperson this has been, huh? Has it
been crazy?" Quite a credo for a journalist.
To read all the quotes and see and hear the broadcast television ones via RealPlayer as compiled by MRC research associate Kristina Sewell and Webmaster Sean Henry, go to the same address: http://www.mediaresearch.org/news/nq/best/nq1998best.html To check which quotes visitors to the MRC Web page picked and to see the entire ballot, go to: http://www.mrc.org/bestofnq1998.html and click on "Special Web-Visitor-Judged-Edition." Below is the first runner-up in the "Quote of the Year," followed by the second place quotes in the "Presidential Kneepad Award (for Best Lewinsky Impression)" through the "Carve Clinton into Mt. Rushmore Award" with the "Wired Wicked Witch Award (for Loathing Linda Tripp)" and the "Politics of Meaninglessness Award (for the Silliest Analysis)" amongst those in between.
"Mr. President, we love you. I want to
hug you, I want to hug you, please do the right thing. This is nothing,
this is nothing. Thomas Jefferson did not have this in mind, I swear to
God....I would give Ken Starr the Nobel Peace Prize were he to be man
enough not to refer a sex lie to the House for impeachment."
"Well, he's been elected twice with
people knowing he has had affairs. Now is the fact that this woman is 21.
I mean, she's still of age, I suppose. You know, I think that the
distaste that people may feel for this will also be because of the fact
that the probing into this person's private life has occurred. I think
past Presidents, Lyndon Johnson for one, certainly Jack Kennedy, these
things went on, you know, libido and leadership is often linked."
"Tripp lost membership in the family
of man when day after day she looked into Monica Lewinsky's eyes as a
friend and at night hit the 'on' button on her Radio Shack tape
recorder. No, there's enough about Tripp to criticize without getting to
the heart of her darkness. While we are trying to make up our minds about
the other characters in the drama, she can safely be cast as a villain --
the Mark Fuhrman of the Starr investigation -- because of her perfect
rendition of the friend from hell."
"Hillary Clinton attacked her
husband's attackers, saying a lot of the criticism comes down to an
anti-Arkansas bias. Well, chief among his critics, it can fairly be said,
is Kenneth Starr. And the Starr Wars, it can also fairly be said, targeted
Arkansas, home of the Whitewater affair and the investigation that now,
four years later, seems to be winding up with the Lewinsky affair. From
the beginning, Mr. Starr's tactics and motives have come under fire,
especially the way he went after low level targets..."
"Scott, as you and I both know, a
popular move these days is to make a titillating charge and then have the
media create the frenzy. Given Kenneth Starr's track record, should we
suspect that he's trying to do with innuendo that which he has been
unable to do with evidence?"
"We know from just answering the phone
around here that the amount of attention we are giving this story is, at
the very least, debatable. We in the news, as you can see [video of TV
broadcasts], are devoting major time and resources to these events, but
have we been carried away, are we doing too much and are we not being
fair?"
"When Yitzhak Rabin was murdered by
the extremist who was opposed to the peace talks, many commentators at the
time blamed Bibi Netanyahu who was Mr. Rabin's opponent at the time, for
his political rhetoric, saying that by saying that people who were making
peace with the Palestinians were in effect, countenancing terrorism, he in
effect set up Rabin. Don't you feel some of that same heat? Doesn't
anti-abortion rhetoric at some point verge on almost a back-handed pat on
the back to those people?"
"Republicans kill the bill to clean up
sleazy political fundraising. The business of dirty campaign money will
stay business as usual....Good evening. Legislation to reform shady big
money campaign fundraising is dead in Congress. Republican opponents in
the Senate killed it today. It was the latest in a long-running attempt to
toughen loose laws that shield hidden donors with loose wallets and deep
pockets. As CBS's Bob Schieffer reports, when it came to the crunch
today on campaign finance reform, it was all talk and no action."
"What Starr is doing is trying to
construct the truth according to Ken Starr, and according to Miss
Lewinsky's lawyer he's reneging on his offer of immunity, because
she's not saying what he wants and what he's doing is trying to get
people to say what he wants. He's the one who is suborning perjury here
in my view. He has gone way beyond the pale in term of his treatment of
witnesses."
Katie Couric: "Getting back to kids
and guns, if you will indulge me for a moment. You cannot think of any
other position the NRA could take in terms of trying to decrease the
number of school shootings? You feel like this is not your bailiwick, this
is not your problem?"
"How much of his vital attention is
being consumed by Ken Starr's endless probe, by the Monica Lewinsky
saga, by the fears that his trusted Secret Service agents will be forced
to rat out the maybe gory details of his private life....And finally, and
most importantly, how can our bridge to the 21st century feel
about the slanderous charge amounting almost to treason, that for Johnny
Chung's bribe of 100,000 lousy dollars he sold America's missile
secrets to the Chinese, who now aim their deadly devices at America's
children?....I watch him and I wonder how he does it. I watch him and
wonder how much is too much for any man."
"I've got to know, Pat, why is this
John Edwards/Lauch Faircloth race so important to the Republicans, other
than the obvious that Senator Faircloth is considered to be one of the
junior Grand Wizards of the vast right-wing conspiracy?"
"We are often judgmental about people
that are different from us...and we don't even understand what their
problems are...A lot of students got killed at Tiananmen Square, but I
remember several students got killed at Kent State. And, remember, they
have a lot more students than we do. We shot down our own students."
"The White House looks at this with
such great irony. As the impeachment hearings grind on could you have a
situation where next year the President cannot go to the Judiciary
Committee on a particular day because he's receiving the Nobel Peace
Prize? That's the kind of irony the White House looks at as they look at
the success of President Clinton on this day."
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Two noteworthy paragraphs from a December 29 Boston Globe profile of Larry
Flynt by media reporter Mark Jurkowitz: Flynt says "I love
Clinton" and the publisher of Hustler, who is planning to
"out" the embarrassing sexual histories of several more
Republican Congressmen, considers CNN founder and chief Ted Turner to be a
friend.
Standing by a philandering husband makes you a great woman, worthy of
admiration, according to a CBS special aired Monday night. Amongst the
Ladies Home Journal Most Fascinating Women of '98, hosted by Entertainment
Tonight's Mary Hart: Hillary Clinton. And participating in a cover-up of
the biggest scandal in his presidency as you falsely malign others and
never acknowledge his wrongdoing, earns you praise from a top CBS News
correspondent.
The annual AP poll of newspaper editors placed the Monica Lewinsky scandal
as the biggest story of 1998, but not all members of the media want to
report on the most newsworthy event.
Here are the first runner-up quotes in 14 award categories in "The
Best Notable Quotables of 1998: The Eleventh Annual Awards for the
Year's Worst Reporting." (The December 28 CyberAlert ran the
winning quotes.) To pick the winners and runners-up the MRC sent ballots
to 50 media observers who picked a first, second and third best quote in
each category. First place selections were awarded three points, second
place choices got two points and third place picks were assigned one
point. Point totals are listed after each quote. For the list of judges,
see the December 28 CyberAlert or go to the end of the issue posted at: 
