Notable Quotables - 02/24/1997
Clinton on the Rock?
"His sturdy jaw precedes him. He
smiles from sea to shining sea. Is this President a candidate for Mt. Rushmore
or what?....In fact, when it comes to influencing the public, a single medley
of expressions from Clinton may be worth much more, to much of America, than
every ugly accusation Paula Jones can muster."
- Los Angeles Times television writer Howard Rosenberg reviewing Clinton's
Inaugural address, January 22.
Chinese Dictatorship No Better for Poor than Reagan
"And so in 1992, after a year
out of public view, Deng emerged from retirement and launched a campaign for
more and faster capitalist-style reform. The country responded with a boom
that gave China the highest economic growth rate in the world, and turned it
into a magnet for international investors who saw the emergence of a new
economic superpower. But the burst of development brought with it many of the
evils the communists had sought to eradicate: corruption, inflation, a growing
gap between rich and poor."
- CNN reporter Mike Chinoy reviewing dictator Deng Xiaoping's life on Prime
News, February 19.
Jefferson in North Korea?
"In much of the world today,
including Washington, governments and their diplomats are astonished still by
the news that such a senior official should have defected from communist North
Korea to the South. A diplomat in the Chinese capital Beijing said it was as
if Thomas Jefferson had bolted from the young United States."
- Peter Jennings on defector Hwang Jang Yop, February 13 World News
Tonight.
Love You, Jesse
"Well, Congressman Jackson, and
I love to be able to say that...You've had an interesting view of the
political process. You worked with your dad, you know the legacy of Dr. King,
you are now inside the process. Which, in your view, is a better place to be
able to bring about real change in this society?"
- ABC Good Morning America Sunday co-host Kevin Newman to Jesse Jackson Jr.
(D-Ill.), January 19.
Conservatives Are Racists
"[Dick Morris] attributed
[Colin] Powell's vulnerability to his support for positions on affirmative
action, gun control, and abortion. Other pundits (myself included) believe
Powell could change his position on all these issues and still be
overwhelmingly rejected by a Republican Party ideologically opposed to the
nomination of an African American to the highest office in the land."
- Former NPR President Frank Mankiewicz reviewing Morris's book Behind the
Oval Office, January 19 Los Angeles Times Book Review.
"That's sick. That's actually
perverse. Ralph Reed probably doesn't, other than that minister from Tuskegee,
probably can't count the number of black people he knows on one hand."
- Gannett reporter Deborah Mathis on a black minister's suggestion Reed was a
new black leader, February 1 Inside Washington.
What We're Missing in the Morning
"I said to somebody that if O.J.
killed his first wife, Marguerite [who is black], and her friend, then do I
think George Will and William F. Buckley would have written about it? No way.
Not on God's green earth. They wouldn't have even noticed."
- Bryant Gumbel in a Los Angeles Times Magazine profile, January 12 (Brackets
theirs).
Auschwitz vs. Macaroni Salad
ABC News President Roone Arledge:
"If you were a reporter in World War II, and we all know the atrocities
that went on in various countries during that war, and you heard about this
and got yourself a job as a guard at a prison camp and you were able to tell
the world everything that went on there which they didn't know anything about.
You got that job through deception. You're not a guard. You never intended to
be a guard. Is there anybody here who thinks that's a bad thing for
society?"
Syracuse University Professor Robert
Lissit: "Is there anybody here who wants to equate that with macaroni
salad?"
- Exchange on the February 12 ABC News Viewpoint program on Prime Time Live's
deceptive Food Lion story, which employed hidden cameras to show supposedly
tainted food.
Martin Luther King: Forget That Let's All Get Along Claptrap
"The real issue here is not
money, but whether people who oppose nearly everything King stood for have the
right to assert that his corpse is marching in their parade. [Black
conservative Ward] Connerly and his ilk quote King on a highly selective
basis....King, for all his commitment to nonviolence, was a radical advocate
of social change who deliberately disrupted the status quo in pursuit of
racial justice, not a milquetoast advocate of Hallmark Card-style brotherhood
between the races."
- Time columnist Jack E. White in a February 3 piece on Connerly, leader of
the pro-Proposition 209 forces in California.
Newsweek Insists Democrats are Republicans
"The rap on Clinton is that by
becoming essentially a moderate Republican on fiscal issues, he'll be
remembered mostly as a President who played a good game of defense against
extremist ideas, with some nice on-court cheerleading to make everyone feel
better."
- Newsweek's Jonathan Alter, January 27.
"Free-market capitalism is the
secular religion of our time. It is a creed triumphant. It won the Cold War -
and then the ideological battle in Washington, turning liberal Democrats into
`Eisenhower Republicans' and ordinary Republicans into small-government
zealots."
- Newsweek's Michael Hirsh, February 10.
Ah, That's Much Better
"In a risky tactic for a
candidate with little downstate political identity, Davis said that he plans
to favor moderate candidates over extreme conservatives and single-issue
politicians and that he is willing to endure criticism from the party's
conservative activists to do so."
- Washington Post reporters Eric Lipton and Mike Allen on U.S. Rep. Tom
Davis (R-Va.) creating a PAC, February 18 early edition (Italics ours).
"In a risky tactic for a
candidate with little downstate political identity, Davis said that he plans
to favor moderate candidates over far-right conservatives and single-issue
politicians and that he is willing to endure criticism from the party's
conservative activists to do so."
- Same story in the final edition.
Accept the Transgendered: That's an Order!
"Holiday Inn: The surgery that
changed `Bob' into the sexiest woman at the 1975 class reunion is likened to a
makeover of the lodging chain by Bass PLC. The racy spot is ruined by the
final shot, when a male classmate reacts to the new Bob with a horrified
grimace. What's next, narrow rooms for the narrow-minded?"
- New York Times advertising writer Stuart Elliott on Super Bowl ads, Jan. 28
Business Day section.
Stars on the Pope
Diane Sawyer: "I've always
thought the theological, the one theological question I'd like to ask him, and
it's a serious question, is what do you think Jesus would think of the way you
dress?"
Oprah Winfrey: "Ohhh! That's a great question!"
- Exchange on Oprah, February 19.
"I think you're more likely to
see the Pope ride through this room on a giraffe."
- Dan Rather on the possibility of a CBS News cable channel to Philadelphia
Inquirer TV writer Gail Shister, February 18.
- L. Brent Bozell, Publisher; Brent
H . Baker, Tim Graham; Editors
- Geoffrey Dickens, Gene Eliasen, Jim Forbes, Steve Kaminski, Clay Waters;
Media Analysts
- Kathy Ruff, Marketing Director; Carey Evans, Circulation Manager; Brian
Schmisek,Intern
