The Best of Notable Quotables; December 28, 1998
Table of Contents:
- The Best of Notable Quotables; December 28, 1998
- Presidential Kneepad Award
- Wired Wicked Witch
- Hallucinating Hillary
- Corporal Cueball Carville
- Steve Brill Media Masochism
- Media McCarthyism
- Everybody But Us Shut Up Award
- Starr Behind Bars
- Good Morning Morons
- Move over Buddy Award
- Damn Conservatives
- Politics of Meaninglessness
- Carve Clinton into Mt. Rushmore
- Too Late For Our Judging
- Quote of the Year
- 1998 Award Judges
Media McCarthyism Award (for Tying Conservatives to Murder)
“The
Christian Right per se and some particular members on Capitol Hill have
helped inflame the air so that the air that these bad people breathed
that night was filled, filled with the idea that somehow gays are
different, and not only are they different in that difference, they’re
bad and not only are they bad, they are evil and therefore evil can be
destroyed. The next step to that to me, it’s a three-step process, and
that ends in destruction. I don’t say that they were told to do that,
they certainly weren’t part of any plan to do that, but again, what air
are they breathing now? It’s the air filled with that hate....I
mentioned Trent Lott, Jesse Helms and Dick Armey particularly. The
Christian Coalition, the Family Research Council and the Concerned Women
for America.”
– Deborah Mathis of Gannett News Service on who inspired the murder of Matthew Shepard, October 17 Inside Washington. [88 points]
Runners-up:
“When
Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated by an extremist who was opposed to the
peace talks, many commentators at the time blamed Bibi Netanyahu who was
Mr. Rabin’s opponent at the time, for his political rhetoric, saying
that by saying that people who were making peace with the Palestinians
were in effect, countenancing terrorism, he in effect set up Rabin.
Don’t you feel some of that same heat? Doesn’t anti-abortion rhetoric at
some point verge on almost a back-handed pat on the back to those
people?”
– Geraldo Rivera to Jerry Falwell after the shooting of an
abortion doctor, October 26 Upfront Tonight on CNBC. [51]
“My
concern with this guy, Weston, is he’s a guy talking up this business
about the evils of big government and he’s a nut case, but this is his
rant and I wonder if, you know, in some way the Republicans in this town
haven’t gone too far with this kind of logic.”
– FNC analyst and
Washington Post reporter Juan Williams on the Capitol Hill shooting,
July 26 Fox News Sunday. [45]
“Then the fallout from the death
of Matthew Shepard. The tragic beating of the college student in Wyoming
has some activists in this country saying there is a climate of
anti-gay hate that's been fostered by the political right in this
country. We’re going to get into that debate after news and weather.”
–
Today co-host Katie Couric opening the October 13 show. [38]
