The Best of Notable Quotables; December 19, 1994

Vol. Seven; No. 26


Dumbest Quote of the Year



“Around the global village, women cheered and grown men wept. At his press conference, [Gold medal-winning speed skater Dan] Jansen paused to take a call from the President, the man who’s made America safe again for tears.”

Newsweek Senior Writer David A. Kaplan, February 28 news story.


Runners-up:


“To watch this President connect with people emotionally is an awesome thing. It’s a raw, needy, palpable, electrifying thing that happens. There was no smile. It’s as if he’s soaking up the people like he’s soaking up the sun, with the warmth pouring deep and direct into his political soul and recharging him, refilling him somehow once again with his own humanity and some sense of his role in the destiny of his country. Then, the hunger slaked, the great beast of Need fed once again, it seemed you could almost see the gratitude pouring off his brow like sweat as he made his way.”

Washington Post reporter Phil McCombs, March 30 Style section story on Clinton vacationing in California.

“Hillary Rodham Clinton is as pious as she is political. Methodism, for her, is not just a church but an extended family of faith that defines her horizons....If the Kennedy era was Camelot and the Reagan White House a ranchero on the Potomac, the Clinton presidency – in the figure of its formidable First Lady – is Washington’s Methodist Moment.”

Newsweek reporter Kenneth L. Woodward, October 31 story.

“I think liberalism lives – the notion that we don’t have to stay where we are as a society, we have promises to keep, and it is liberalism, whether people like it or not, which has animated all the years of my life. What on Earth did conservatism ever accomplish for our country? It was people who wanted to change things for the better.”

– Charles Kuralt talking with Morley Safer on the CBS special, One for the Road with Charles Kuralt, May 4.

“I suspect that as long as the peccadilloes remain within reason, the American people will have great tolerance for a President who has not only seen the sunshine of Oxford, but also the dusky Dunkin’ Donuts of the soul.”  

Newsweek Senior Writer Joe Klein, January 3 issue.

 

 

– Andrew Gabron, Mark Honig, Steve Kaminski, Gesele Rey, Clay Waters; Media Analysts