Notable Quotables - 01/03/2005
Upset by Treatment of Saddam
"One year after his capture, Saddam Hussein's trial for war crimes,
considered the most important since Nuremburg, has yet to hear a single world
of testimony....Critics point to several failures: that Saddam has not yet
been allowed to meet with a lawyer; that the trial will permit testimony
obtained under torture; and that much of the evidence from mass grave sites
was not properly preserved or recorded....Saddam waits in his cell, without
charge or legal counsel."
-ABC's Jim Sciutto on the Dec. 12 World News Tonight.
No Medals from MSNBC
"I was aghast watching that medal of honor ceremony today. George Tenet,
Bremer, Tommy Franks - it looked like the President was pinning a medal on the
Iraq war, on himself....They're giving a medal for getting us into war under
false pretenses?...If you give the Medal of Freedom to the guy who's
completely wrong in doing his job, what do you give to a guy who is completely
right?"
-MSNBC's Chris Matthews on Hardball December 14 discussing the Medal of
Freedom going to former CIA Director George Tenet, retired General Tommy
Franks and former Iraq administrator Paul Bremer.
Keith Olbermann: "The CIA got blamed for some ill-chosen words in a State
of the Union Address, you may recall, yet the former CIA Director was one of
three men to get the nations highest civilian honor today...."
USA Today's Tom Squitieri: "Even in this cynical time, the level of cynicism
of this one is reaching new proportions. It's being dubbed by some as hush
medals. You know, these guys still have to write their memoirs, and their
take on what happened in Iraq in particular, and when you get a medal from the
President, it makes you a little bit nicer about what you may or may not want
to write."
-MSNBC's Countdown, December 14.
Success, But Matt Isn't Satisfied
"The administration is very happy about the success in Afghanistan, the
newly elected and democratically elected President Hamid Karzai being
sworn-in. But how much is that success tarnished by the fact that Osama bin
Laden is still out there and al-Qaeda is so active, just yesterday claiming
responsibility for that attack on the U.S. consulate in Saudi Arabia?"
-NBC's Matt Lauer to Washington Bureau Chief Tim Russert on the December 7
Today.
Moyers, Biased to the Bitter End
"I'm going out telling the story that I think is the biggest story of our
time: how the right-wing media has become a partisan propaganda arm of the
Republican National Committee. We have an ideological press that's interested
in the election of Republicans, and a mainstream press that's interested in
the bottom line. Therefore, we don't have a vigilant, independent press whose
interest is the American people."
-Bill Moyers, who retired from the PBS newsmagazine Now on December 17, as
quoted by Associated Press television writer Frazier Moore in a December 10
dispatch.
"God Bless Us and Screw You"
"We're the most ill-informed nation about the rest of the world, [CBS 60
Minutes correspondent Morley] Safer said....He watched the political
conventions this summer from Europe and said he cringed at the 'awful bravado'
he heard in speeches from members of both parties....By taking two minutes to
acknowledge the international audience, Safer said, the candidates could have
dispelled the air of superiority they emitted with their exhortation, 'God
bless America,' a statement that he said seemed to be code for 'God bless us
and screw you.'"
-Story about Safer's December 5 appearance at the Stonington Free Library
in Connecticut, as recounted the next day by Kate Moran in The Day newspaper
in New London, Connecticut.
Mr. Middle-of-the-Road
"I don't think I'm easily characterized. I grew up in red-state America,
but I live in blue-state America and I like to think that I reflect the
sensibilities of both those places."
-NBC's Tom Brokaw on MSNBC's Imus in the Morning on December 1, his last
day as Nightly News anchor.
Dan Had "Courage" to Twist News
"Television must deal with political pressures to conform to resurgent
conservative values that appear to be stifling editorial courage in the
newsroom. [Outgoing CBS anchor Dan] Rather had the inner strength recently to
criticize 'these partisan, political ideological challenges.' Will his
successor have similar courage? Will the timid network executives have the
old-fashioned backbone to take on a crusading administration? I doubt it."
-Former CBS and NBC reporter Marvin Kalb, now the Washington, DC-based
Senior Fellow at Harvard's Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and
Public Policy, in a December 1 op-ed in the Los Angeles Times.
Bush's Awful, Expensive Tax Cuts
Peter Jennings: "Terry, number one, the President wants to make his tax
cuts permanent. Talk about that and how he does that given that the federal
deficit is getting so much larger every moment."
Terry Moran: "Peter, that is something the President talked about at nearly
every campaign stop this fall, so he thinks he's got a mandate to do it, but
most experts say that making those tax cuts permanent would cause gigantic
deficits virtually as far as the eye can see."
-ABC's World News Tonight, December 15.
Real "Reform" = More Taxes
"Private accounts don't address the overall funding problem. Without
broader reforms or a rise in the payroll tax, the government side of Social
Security will still run out of money. Increasing taxes could easily extend the
life of Social Security, but President Bush won't even consider that."
-John Roberts on the December 15 CBS Evening News.
Keith Still Rooting for Kerry Win
Keith Olbermann: "Meantime, more than two weeks in the making, what were
interestingly described by the Associated Press as 'dissident groups,' finally
filed their much-talked about legal contesting of the Ohio vote. Attorney
Cliff Arneback of the group calling itself 'Alliance for Democracy,' was
joined by the Reverend Jesse Jackson in asking Ohio's Supreme Court to
formally review voting there. And they accused the Republican campaign of,
quote, 'high-tech vote stealing,' unquote...."
"[Michigan Congressman] John Conyers last week hinted and then backed away
from the idea of this challenge to Ohio's electors on January 6th, but now
he's conducting these hearings on the road in Ohio and relative to Secretary
[of State Ken] Blackwell, he used that phrase, 'Such an action appears to
violate Ohio law.' For several weeks, the whole thing looked like it's
teetered on the edge of being a mainstream political cat fight. Is it going to
teeter into that mainstream? "
Newsweek's Howard Fineman: "I think it's unlikely...."
-MSNBC's Countdown December 13, the day presidential Electors officially
voted Bush for a second term.
Cue the Laugh Track
"I'm not political. I don't vote....I have no more interest in the
political outcome of an election than I did in the winner or loser of any
ballgame I ever covered."
-MSNBC's Keith Olbermann, formerly with ESPN, in an Online Journalism
Review interview posted Nov. 30.
Re-Election Won't Save Bush
"More U.S. troops in Iraq, at least through the January 30th election, at a
time when the insurgency in Iraq is becoming more dangerous....It looks like
'escalation,' a scary word from the Vietnam era....Escalation was disastrous
in Vietnam. It looms as a serious political danger for President Bush and for
his party....Being re-elected, even by a handsome majority, as Lyndon Johnson
found out after 1964, doesn't prevent a serious backlash from setting in that
he faced over Vietnam."
-CNN's Bill Schneider on Inside Politics, December 2.
Baffled by Mel's Freedom Cry
Matt Lauer: "Two thousand British moviegoers were recently polled on a very
important question. What are the Top 10 Cheesiest Movie Lines of all-time?...Braveheart
takes #8 with the baffling battle cry."
Clip of Mel Gibson on horseback rallying his warriors in the movie Braveheart
about 13th century Scots battling the British: "That they may take our lives,
but they'll never take our freedom!"
-NBC's Today, December 7.
Chevy F-Bombs the President
"He deployed the four-letter word that got Vice President Cheney in hot
water, using it as a noun. Chase called the prez a 'dumb [expletive].' He also
used it as an adjective, assuring the audience, 'I'm no [expletive] clown
either.... This guy started a jihad.' Chase also said: 'This guy in office is
an uneducated, real lying schmuck...and we still couldn't beat him with a bore
like Kerry.'"
-Actor Chevy Chase onstage during at a December 14 People for the American
Way awards ceremony at the Kennedy Center, as quoted by the Washington Post's
Richard Leiby on December 16.
If Bush Won't Quit, Impeach Him!
Guest host Susan Sarandon: "How can they get out of this [situation in
Iraq]?"
Author Gore Vidal: "He [President Bush] can resign."
Actor Tim Robbins: "How about a good, old-fashioned impeachment? Seems to me
there was a guy that was impeached not long ago for oral sex, for lying about
oral sex, and it seems to me there's been a couple lies told. So it's more of
a high crime and misdemeanor to lie about oral sex than it is to lie about
intelligence that forces a country into war?"
Vidal, mockingly: "Tim, you must have values!"
-Exchange on CBS's Late Late Show, December 17.
