Notable Quotables - 04/04/1988
Oliver North
"President Reagan
suddenly threw himself back into the middle of the weapons for Iran criminal
case today, raising questions about potentially damaging presidential
interference in the judicial process. Before Oliver North and three other key
defendants have even gone on trial, Mr. Reagan declared that they are not
guilty and will be found innocent of charges they defrauded the United States
government and stole millions of taxpayer dollars."
- Dan Rather opening the March 25 CBS Evening News.
"The best favor
anybody could do for Lt. Col. Oliver North would be to send him a copy of the
U.S. Constitution."
- Mutual Broadcasting and CNN talk show host Larry King in his March 28 USA
Today column.
Campaign '88
"He's the Ronald
Reagan of his era. Ronald Reagan in 1980 preached a message made up of whole
cloth, often, but it got across."
- Sam Donaldson on Jesse Jackson, This Week with David Brinkley,
March 27.
Economy
"Today's figures
are not just bad news simply for homebuyers. Housing's a giant industry, and
when it slows down so do other industries supplying everything from plumbing
to furniture. And that could be trouble for the entire economy."
- Ray Brady on new home sales falling 9 percent in January. Lead story, March
2 CBS Evening News.
"New-Home Sales
Jump By 20.3%"
- New York Times, March 30.
CBS Evening News coverage of the 20 percent February housing sales jump: None.
Mozambique
"These
anti-government rebels called RENAMO are not receiving American help. Their
reputation as marauders who have massacred and looted has kept the Reagan
Administration from giving them the same military aid that anti-communist
guerrilla groups in Nicaragua, Angola, and Afghanistan have been given."
- Reporter Mike Boettcher, NBC Nightly News, March 27.
Senator Kennedy
"Ted Kennedy has
become the real success story of the party...Quietly, over the past year, he
has become the king of the Congress, dominating policy debate across an
expanse of issues in a manner unrivaled since Hubert Humphrey was in full
voice and Lyndon Johnson was at the peak of his persuasive powers."
- U.S.News & World Report Senior Editor Harrison Rainie, former
Chief of Staff to Senator Patrick Moynihan, writing in the April 4 issue.
White House Reporting
"Both obnoxious and
a bit slow on the uptake."
- Larry Speakes on NBC News reporter Chris Wallace. Excerpt from forthcoming
book, Speaking Out.
Hunger in America
"If they gave me
what it cost to build just one of those, I could feed more people than that
missile could kill."
- Social worker during ABC's March 21 movie God Bless the Child
urging more money be spent on welfare, less on ICBM's.
"And how many could
be fed for the cost of one network movie? It is considered impolite to
ask."
- Washington Times TV critic Richard Marin on the movie.
Ted Turner's Portrait of the Soviet Union
"The Soviet Union, draped in history, born in a bloody revolution, bound together by a dream that is still being dreamt. The dream of a socialist nation marching toward the world's first communist state."
"Once the Kremlin was the home of czars. Today it belongs to the people."
"Atheist though the state may be, freedom to worship as you believe is enshrined in the Soviet Constitution."
"Difficult as it
was, they did pull the economy of Western Russia up by its bootstraps. But
that was nothing compared to Central Asia. Modernization on a grand scale. A
great success."
- Statements by narrator Roy Scheider during three part WTBS cable "SuperStation"
series.
"The documentary
series, which took nearly two and a half years to complete at a cost of $3.5
million, not only captures how the people of the U.S.S.R. live and see
themselves, it also helps erase stereotypes Americans have held for
decades."
- Reviewer Martie Zad in The Washington Post TV Week, March 20-26.
"Until a few years
ago all we ever saw on American television was a May Day parade with tanks and
soldiers marching and grim-faced generals watching. I've been there six times.
I never saw that."
- Ted Turner.
Nicaraguan Invasion of Honduras
"For the first time
a new generation of Hondurans is learning to be wary of the United
States."
- ABC reporter Beth Nissen on Honduran reaction to U.S. troops in their
country. World News Tonight, March 24.
Contras
"It was Ronald
Reagan's covert war, waged by a CIA supported army of Contras opposed to the
leftist Sandinista government in Managua. A war that claimed perhaps 50,000
lives, including women, children and babies....Was the covert war a good idea?
It's hard to find many people in the capital today who think that it
was."
- CNN PrimeNews commentator David Wise, March 26.
- L. Brent
Bozell III; Publisher
- Brent H. Baker, Tim Graham; Editors
- Jim Heiser, Richard Marois, Patrick Swan, Dorothy Warner; Media Analysts
- Cynthia Bulman; Administrative Assistant
