Notable Quotables - 01/21/1991
A Reasonable Solution
"It's a morbid
observation, but if everyone on earth just stopped breathing for an hour, the
greenhouse effect would no longer be a problem."
- Newsweek Senior Writer Jerry Adler, December 31 issue.
Man of the Year
"It's got to be
Saddam Hussein, a two-bit dictator who's got a superpower on the run."
- Newsweek Washington reporter Eleanor Clift selecting her Person of
the Year, December 30 McLaughlin Group.
United Soviet States
"Gorbachev sees a
strong central government with control over defense, money, exports, and
resources with the fifteen republics like American states under federal
rule."
- NBC reporter Jim Maceda, December 28 Nightly News.
The Benevolent Ruler
"They've been
together for two decades, political blood brothers out to overhaul their
country. Gorbachev was the dreamer, Shevardnadze the doer. Together, they
reversed Soviet foreign policy, abandoning the dark days of communist rhetoric
and aggression."
- Reporter Barry Petersen on the CBS Evening News, December 20.
"Gorbachev: 'I
Could Have Been a Dictator"
- Washington Post, December 19
Capitalism Still Ruining Communist Countries
"Under communism,
neither unemployment nor the homeless existed officially, so help from the
West was unnecessary. The charities were forced to go. But the communists
never really made the problems go away. So far, capitalism is just making them
worse. Unemployment is expected to rise ten-fold in the next year. One out of
every four people already live at the poverty line, and the government has no
money to spare for social services."
- ABC reporter Jim Bitterman on Hungary, December 26 World News Tonight.
Freedom's Victims
"The Pain of
Purification: East Germany's last leader, labeled a secret-police informant,
is the latest victim of a process haunting the reunited land"
- Time magazine, December 31
This Isn't An Election Year, and They Did Raise Taxes
"I think that the
bill from the 1980s is now coming due, Rita, that all of the things we let
slide during the 1980s in our search for higher profits and ability to make
money off of junk bonds is now coming back to haunt us....The problem is that
there isn't any money without raising taxes and nobody wants to talk about
raising taxes, and especially not in an election year."
- CBS News reporter Eric Engberg to colleague Rita Braver on America
Tonight, January 1.
Love Letter to Michael Dukakis
"Ten years ago,
Massachusetts made two fateful political decisions in understandable
frustration over the status quo - it helped elect Ronald Reagan President,
and it passed a proposal requiring property tax relief. Eight years ago,
Massachusetts made an equally fateful decision to return a man to the
Governor's office who kept the first two decisions from wreaking havoc on the
lives of working families and the poor, and thus on the state's economy."
- Boston Globe Washington reporter Tom Oliphant, December 21 column.
Profiles in Courage and Cowardice
"There is after
all, such a thing as leading with one's chin, as New Jersey Gov. James Florio
discovered in 1990. His huge unpopularity after introducing tax increases was
wrongly viewed as evidence that voters won't make sacrifices. Florio simply
tried to do too much, too fast."
- Newsweek Senior Writer Jonathan Alter, December 31.
"New York was so
flush in 1987 that it decided to cut state income taxes over four years. But
when the economy began to shrink, Democratic Governor Mario Cuomo did not
react fast enough."
- Time Associate Editor Richard Lacayo, December 31.
Those Crazy Reagan Years
"Beneath the
retrenchment and return to basics one can see the mark of American Calvinism,
as consumers pull back and repent what many now consider the evil excesses of
the Reagan years."
- Time Associate Editor Nancy Gibbs, December 31 issue.
"Reagan's approval
ratings never put him in the top rank of most popular Presidents; that was
always a myth. And his confectionary, heavily scripted presidency tended to
lead the country backward."
- Newsweek Senior Writer Jonathan Alter, December 31 news story.
News Flash
"Mr. Quayle will
also be addressing the troops, an attempt to boost morale by a man dogged by
accusations that he joined the National Guard in order to avoid fighting in
Vietnam."
- NBC reporter Gary Matsumoto, December 29 Nightly News.
Send Your Money In, NEA Fans
"If Americans could
choose where their tax money went, the endowment would probably be a lot
richer than it is."
- Newsweek General Editor Peter Plagens, December 31.
Jesse Helms Takes Over
"Imagine the USA in
1990 minus the First Amendment...Conservative Sen. Jesse Helms, R-N.C., would
be at the helm, and 'politically correct' campuses, where language is
monitored to avoid offensive terms, would be old hat, not a new
wave...Intolerance for popular expression, reminiscent of the 1950s, seems to
be taking hold."
- USA Today legal reporter Tony Mauro, December 28.
Attention National Endowment for the Arts
"In Oakland, the
Dance Brigade's Revolutionary Nutcracker Sweetie is a gaudy political
pastiche, with dancing dolls that represent Native Americans and black South
Africans, an interlude for dancers in wheelchairs and a mouse king accompanied
by a horde of CIA rodents. Here is a Nutcracker that perfectly reflects its
community, and the audiences leaps up to cheer with a vigor rarely seen in an
opera house."
- Newsweek General Editor Laura Shapiro, December 31.
- L. Brent Bozell III;
Publisher
- Brent H. Baker, Tim Graham; Editors
- Nicholas Damask, Sally Hood, Marian Kelley, Tim Lamer; Media Analysts
- Jennifer Hardebeck; Circulation Manager
