Notable Quotables - 02/06/1989
Overtown
"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 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."
- Richard Threlkeld on ABC's World News Tonight, January 20.
Economy
"I mean the wolf at
the door is the deficit, the termites in the foundation is this whole
competitiveness thing which has become something of a cliche, eyes glaze over
when you bring it up, but it is very real. This country's standard of living
is not increasing the way it used to, it is not increasing the way the
standard of living in other industrial democracies are."
- Larry Barrett of Time on CBS Nightwatch, January 12.
Geraldo
"Geraldo will
feature naked guests as well as partially or fully disrobed studio members.
'This is my way of saying to the critics what I think of them,' says tabloid
TV cover boy Rivera. 'The guests will be nude, the audience will be nude, and
it's yet to be determined if the host will be nude.'"
- from a January 26 USA Today article describing the then upcoming
February 2 Geraldo.
Reagan Legacy
"I never met the
former President, and never voted for him."
- Newsweek reporter Timothy Noah in The New Republic,
February 13.
"In 1984, he would
win again. It did not seem to matter that the deficit was growing; homeless
families were in the street; and real wages were declining. Reagan's campaign
team turned the whole first term into a movie, featuring the Americans with
restored faith. In 1984, Reagan had persuaded the majority of Americans that
it was morning again in America."
- Garry Wills on PBS Frontline, January 18.
"The Reagan Legacy:
A Swelling Medical Underclass in a Land of Plenty"
- The Washington Post, January 24.
"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 article under headline above.
"I think it pays us
to remember the last eight years, while some of us in the country have done a
lot better than we did in the previous eight years, a lot of people have done
a lot worse."
- Peter Jennings on NBC's Later with Bob Costas, January 13.
Dan Rather
"Will Rogers said
he never met a man he didn't like. Of course, he never met Dan Rather."
- Frank Sinatra as quoted by Jeannie Williams, USA Today, January
27.
Bush Agenda
"Bush is more
sensitive and caring than Ronald Reagan, more of a hands-on
administration...(if only to prove he is on top of his game), a pragmatic
moderate willing to accommodate reality rather than rail against it."
- Time political reporter Michael Kramer, January 30.
"To be sure, I'm
alarmed by the widening gulf between the rich and poor in our society. But
George Bush's 'kinder and gentler' rhetoric doesn't include any practical
solutions to the problem, such as a stiffer tax on the rich, or an expensive
federal jobs program. In fact, Bush's inaugural speech explicitly downplayed
the use of public money to end society's problems."
- Newsweek reporter Timothy Noah in The New Republic,
February 13.
The Washington Post
"One of the
best-kept secrets in journalism is the transformation of The Washington
Post into a right-wing newspaper."
- Ralph Nader in the February Progressive.
Sam Donaldson
"I have to admit we
considered making one final shipment to Iran, but no one could figure how to
get Sam Donaldson in a crate."
- Former President Reagan at the White House Correspondents Dinner, April
1987.
Tax Increase
"George Herbert
Walker Bush may not look like a gambler, but he has bet the farm on one risky
assumption: that the American economy will continue its unabated growth...Fear
of a recession is what drives the argument for raising government revenue
through taxes while cutting government spending. Some experts say a serious
attack on the deficit now would increase confidence in the government's
ability to put its house in order, and increased confidence is one way of
avoiding a recession."
- John Chancellor, NBC Nightly News, January 24.
Military Manpower
"Manpower: A Glut
at the Top. In 1945, the final year of World War II, there were 710 soldiers
for every officer above the rank of colonel in the Army or captain in the
Navy. But as of last year there were only 146 Indians for every chief."
- Newsweek, January 23.
"The military has
undergone an even faster trend to high technology but, unlike in the private
sector, there has been no shift in the ratio of officers to enlisted except in
the Air Force...In both the active and the reserves, we should reduce the
number of enlisted personnel and increase the number of officers."
- Former Secretary of the Navy John Lehman, The Washington Post
"Outlook" section, January 22.
- L. Brent
Bozell III; Publisher
- Brent H. Baker, Tim Graham, Marc S. Ryan; Editors
- Jim Heiser, Jay Marois, Patrick Swan, Dorothy Warner; Media Analysts
- Cynthia Bulman; Administrative Assistant
