The Best of Notable Quotables; December 15, 1997

Vol. Ten; No. 25

Politics of Meaningless Award (for the Silliest Analysis)



"What if Watergate had elected McGovern?....The Cold War would
have ended in the '70s rather than in the '90s. McGovern, in his
campaign, debunked the threat and invincibility of the so-called
evil Soviet empire. Republican and Democratic Presidents preached
that myth for four decades, until the USSR self-destructed
....George McGovern. A man before his time. Prescient. Decisive,
but decent. The USA and the world would have been far better off
if we'd been heedful of his early Watergate warnings and had put
McGovern in the White House in 1972."  

--USA Today founder Al Neuharth in his June 20 column. [78 points]


Runners-up:


"I said to somebody that if O.J. killed his first wife,
Marguerite [who is black], and her friend, then do I think George
Will and William F. Buckley would have written about it? No way.
Not on God's green earth. They wouldn't have even noticed."  

--Bryant Gumbel in a Los Angeles Times Magazine profile, January 12 (Brackets theirs). [62]

Crime Keeps On Falling; but Prisons Keep On Filling

--September 28 New York Times headline over Week in Review
article [59]

"Overlaying this structure was a national politics heavily
conditioned by nearly half a century of cold war. Strength and
toughness trumped everything else. At one military briefing
during the 1980s, Reagan was shown models of American missiles.
The American power phalluses were long and white; the Soviets',
shorter and black. We were still safely ahead, but only by the
margin of our machismo."  

--Newsweek's Jonathan Alter reviewing the 1996 political landscape, December 30, 1996/January 6, 1997 issue. [43]