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