The Best of Notable Quotables; December 21, 1992

The Real Reagan Legacy Award

“You place responsibility for the death of your daughter squarely at the feet of the Reagan Administration. Do you believe they’re responsible for that?”

– NBC reporter Maria Shriver interviewing AIDS sufferer Elizabeth Glaser, July 14 Democratic convention coverage.

Runners-up:

“The boom years following World War II saw the U.S. economy take off, giving rise to the growth of the great American middle class. The rising standard of living meant homes, cars, TVs, college for the kids – all in all, a piece of the American dream. But in the Reagan years, economic erosion set in, so much so that the middle class now finds itself in ever-deepening trouble.”

– Bryant Gumbel on Today, January 22.

“[Reagan’s] good-natured pre- and post-surgical quips so endeared him to the nation that practically nothing, including the deaths of 241 U.S. Marines in a Beirut barracks, stuck to the Reagan presidency. As a result, the nation smiled benignly when....He burdened the working poor and middle class by raising Social Security taxes while calling for cuts in the capital gains tax. Such policies widened the gap between rich and poor and contributed to the psychological chasm between haves and have-nots. In this atmosphere, Wall Street stock manipulator Michael Milken earned $550 million in 1987, and ghetto teens unable to find jobs joined gangs instead.”

– Houston Chronicle reporter Steven Reed, August 16 news story.

“The amazing thing is most people seem content to believe that almost everybody had a good time in the ‘80s, a real shot at the dream. But the fact is, they didn’t. Did we wear blinders? Did we think the ‘80s just left behind the homeless? The fact is that almost nine in ten Americans actually saw their lifestyle decline.”

– NBC reporter Keith Morrison, February 7 Nightly News.

“We are seeing a public recoil from formal politics, from the active, reasoned exercise of citizenship. It comes because we don’t trust anyone. It is part of the cafard the ‘80s induced: Wall Street robbery, the savings and loan scandal, the wholesale plunder of the economy, an orgy released by Reaganomics that went on for years with hardly a peep from Congress – events whose numbers were so huge as to be beyond the comprehension of most people.”

– Time art critic Robert Hughes in his cover essay “The Fraying of America,” February 3.

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