The Best of Notable Quotables; December 15, 1997

Che Guevara Award (for Nostalgia for Communism)

"I thought that we Americans overreacted to the Soviets and the
news coverage sometimes seemed to accentuate that misdirected
concern. Fear of the Soviet Union taking over the world just
seemed as likely to me as invaders from Mars. Well, perhaps I was
naive, but I'd seen those May Day parades and Soviet bread lines
and miserable conditions hidden behind them. That war-devastated
country didn't seem that threatening to me...The nuclear arms
race was on in earnest. All the anti-Soviet paranoia that had
been festering since the war really blew up then. A Soviet bomb
was seen as an assault on us. But I saw it as part of their
pursuit of nuclear equality. After all, what should we expect,
that our enemy's just going to sit still there and not try to
develop the bomb?"  

--Walter Cronkite on the year 1948 in Part 3 of the Discovery Channel's Cronkite Remembers, January 16. [64 points]

Runners-up:

"Open societies, it turns out, haven't been as generous as
socialism and communism to women who want to serve in public
office. From Albania to Yemen, the number of women in power
plummeted after the transition from socialist governments, which
sought to develop female as well as male proletariats. As those
governments died, so went the socialist ideals of equality and
the subsidies for social programs that aided women. In many
countries, traditional patriarchal cultures resurfaced." 

--Los Angeles Times correspondent Robin Wright, October 2 Philadelphia Inquirer op-ed. [61]  

"Under Cuba's communist form of government, a Cuban family's
basic necessities, housing, education, health care, and
transportation, are provided by the state for free or at very
little cost."  

--CBS This Morning co-host Jane Robelot, March 24. [57]

"An editor's note: When your reporter was in China recently, a
very high ranking Chinese government official was repeatedly
asked questions about religious persecution. He told me, and I
quote directly, 'These stories are untrue. We do, as you do, have
some trouble with cults and we, like you, deal with them
accordingly, but that's all.' End quote."  

--CBS News anchor Dan Rather after a story on persecution of Christians in China, July 22 Evening News. [52]

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