The Best of Notable Quotables; December 16, 1996
Table of Contents:
- The Best of Notable Quotables; December 16, 1996
- Craig Livingstone Award
- Freddy Krueger Award
- Chris Dodd Talking Points
- Good Morning Morons
- Until Every Child is Dead
- Politics of Meaninglessness
- Blaming Reagan
- I Am Woman
- Fear of the Competition
- Al Gore Tax Cut Scheme
- Damn Conservatives
- Which Way Is It?
- Media Hero
- Timothy McVeigh Award
- Bryant Gumbel Award
- If the Bias Fits Award
- What's the Frequency
- Quote of the Year
- 1996 Award Judges
Craig Livingstone Award (for Clinton Scandal Denial)
"If Ken Starr is a credible prosecutor he will bring this to a
conclusion and the Clintons will be exonerated."
-- Newsweek's Eleanor Clift on independent counsel Ken Starr's investigation, February 10 McLaughlin Group. [76 points]
Runners-up
"Have you any doubt that Kenneth Starr and his deputies are
pursuing an agenda that is purely political?"
"Bobby McDaniel, you said that your client is being used as a
political pawn. Have you any legal recourse but to sit there and
watch this unfold?"
"Given that you think this is all just a Republican witch hunt,
do you expect the pressure to ease somewhat after the election?"
-- Some of Bryant Gumbel's questions to former Clinton business
partner and convicted felon Susan McDougal and her attorney,
September 17 Today.[69]
"In a year when you talk about corporations who give $25,000
chunks of money, why are people particularly outraged when people
with last names like Cabrera and people from India and Korea and
Indonesia and China all of a sudden get -- there just seems to be
a lot of foreigner bashing as a subtext in some of the
criticism."
-- NBC News reporter Gwen Ifill on PBS's Washington Week in Review,
October 25. Cabrera is now serving a 19-year sentence for smuggling
6,000 pounds of cocaine into the U.S.[61]
"It's not impossible that some peripheral venality was involved
(if anyone asked Livingstone for, say, travel factotum Billy
Dale's FBI file, I'm sure he'd prove useful). But a massive
conspiracy
to gather dirt on the opposition? Oh, please... Gradually, even the
most rabid partisans on the committee seemed to understand they were
confronted with a case of serious numbskullery rather than clever
skullduggery....But if Clinton does survive this pounding, it may mean
the revulsion against the -gate' phenomenon -- 20 years of
ever-diminishing scandals -- is now more intense than the disgust caused
by any individual charge. If so, it would be the President's most
memorable public service."
-- Newsweek Senior Editor Joe Klein on the FBI files story, July 8. [34]