The Best of Notable Quotables; December 25, 1989
Table of Contents:
- The Best of Notable Quotables; December 25, 1989
- Silliest Analysis
- Good News Is Bad News
- The Economy
- Blame America First
- Media Hero
- Foreign Affairs
- Joe Isuzu
- Damn Conservatives
- American Politics
- Most Honest Confession
- Real Ronald Reagan
- Real Jimmy Carter
- No Agenda Here
- Walter Mondale Award
- Most Insane Comparison
- Quote of the Year
The Real Ronald Reagan Award
"In
just seven weeks, the ‘80s will be behind us. It was a decade dominated,
in politics and in style, by the Reagans....While the wealthy got most
of the attention, those who needed it most were often ignored. More
homeless, less spending on housing. The gap between the top and the
bottom grew in the ‘80s....The AIDS crisis began in the ‘80s. Some say
the decade’s compassion gap made it worse."
-- CBS This Morning co-host
Kathleen Sullivan, November 13.
Runners-Up:
"Largely as a
result of the policies and priorities of the Reagan Administration, more
people are becoming poor and staying poor in this country than at any
time since World War II."
-- Today co-host Bryant Gumbel, July 17.
“The Reagan Legacy: A Swelling Medical Underclass in a Land of Plenty”
"An
unfortunate legacy of the Reagan revolution is a swelling medical
underclass: alcoholics and drug addicts who deluge emergency rooms and
fill prisons, AIDS babies and crack newborns in overwhelmed pediatric
wards, homeless children with anemia, schizophrenics and other mental
patients in shelters and jails and on the streets...While Ronald Reagan
did not cause the medical underclass, his laissez-faire approach to
social problems exacerbated the trend."
-- Abigail Trafford, Editor of
The Washington Post "Health" section, in a January 24 article under
headline above.
"But analysts will also recognize that Ronald
Reagan presided over a meltdown of the federal government during the
last eight years. Fundamental management was abandoned in favor of
rhetoric and imagery. A cynical disregard for the art of government led
to wide-scale abuse. Only now are we coming to realize the cost of Mr.
Reagan’s laissez-faire: the crisis in the savings and loan industry, the
scandal in the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the
deterioration of the nation’s nuclear weapons facilities, the dangerous
state of the air traffic control system -- not to mention the staggering
deficit."
-- CBS News reporter Terence Smith, in a November 5 New York
Times op-ed.
"After eight years of what many saw as the Reagan
Administration’s benign neglect of the poor and studied indifference to
civil rights, a lot of those who lived through this week in Overtown
[rioting in a section of Miami] seemed to think the best thing about
George Bush is that he is not Ronald Reagan....There is an Overtown in
every big city in America. Pockets of misery made even meaner and more
desperate the past eight years."
-- Reporter Richard Threlkeld on ABC’s World News Tonight, January 20.
