Notable Quotables - 04/11/1994

 

Licking Up Clinton's Sweat

"To watch this President connect with people emotionally is an awesome thing. It's a raw, needy, palpable, electrifying thing that happens. There was no smile. It's as if he's soaking up the people like he's soaking up the sun, with the warmth pouring deep and direct into his political soul and recharging him, refilling him somehow once again with his own humanity and some sense of his role in the destiny of his country. Then, the hunger slaked, the great beast of Need fed once again, it seemed you could almost see the gratitude pouring off his brow like sweat as he made his way."
- Washington Post reporter Phil McCombs, March 30 Style section story on Clinton vacationing in California.

 

Hillary, Target of Sexist Anxiety

CNN host Frank Sesno: "Tony, stick up for the First Lady here. Tell us, tell us this is a generational thing and America is hung up on a powerful woman."
Newsday reporter Susan Page: "...I'll say that part of this is a generational problem and people, some people in this country don't like powerful women, and that's one of the things that has operated as a hindrance to Mrs. Clinton."
Sesno: "I'm glad you said that."
- Exchange on CNN's Late Edition, March 6.

"She's a cultural pioneer and there are a lot of people who are very nervous about the fact that she has open power in this White House and doesn't just wield it in secret the way Nancy Reagan did."
- Newsweek's Eleanor Clift, March 12 McLaughlin Group.

"There is a lot of gleeful sexist reaction to her difficulties, a lot of piling on, a lot of men who never stood up for a woman's right to do anything who would be completely content to have her whispering sweet nothings to him in bed and manipulating him that way, and are simply terrorized by the thought that she may have real, formal, out-front power."
- NPR's Nina Totenberg on Inside Washington, March 12.

 

Dogged or Not by Whitewater?

Mrs. Clinton is cheered in Colorado Whitewater mentioned briefly
- Boston Globe, March 15

Whitewater Dogs First Lady on Road
- Los Angeles Times, same day

 

More Afraid of an Ally Than an Enemy

Bryant Gumbel: "I find it unusual that we're so outraged over Kim II sung's pursuit of nuclear weapons and Israel and South Africa did the same thing, we conveniently went like this (ignored it)."
Roger Ailes: "Oh, that's interesting. But he's threatening. There's a difference. He's threatening."
Gumbel: "From where I stand, South Africa's pretty threatening, thank you very much!"
- Exchange on CNBC's Talk Live, March 30.

 

The Pot Calls the Kettle Black

"I'm a great admirer of Jim Leach's, and I've always held him in the highest respect, but I thought the performance this week was less than I would have expected from him; that the evidence did not justify the conclusions, that it was weak, inconclusive, and that you know really, that if does that too much more often, that's the kind of thing one calls McCarthyistic."
- NPR reporter Nina Totenberg, who broke Anita Hill's uncorroborated allegations, on Inside Washington, March 26.

 

Dan Acts Up

Gays and lesbians are beaten to death in the streets with increasing frequency - in part due to irrational fear of AIDS but also because hatemongers, from comedians to the worst of the Christian right, send the message that homosexuals have no value in our society. Sometimes that message has a major-party affiliation and a request for a campaign contribution. In the post-cold war era, gays have been drafted to replace Communists as the new menace to the American Way."
- Dan Rather in The Nation, April 11.

 

No Hatred of a President Here

"Figures may not lie but they can be juggled, and William Bennett handles statistics as skillfully as a performer on the Venice boardwalk. He cites the high rates of abortion and teen-age pregnancy in America but fails to correlate those figures with a dearth of family planning information....Bennett sets the tone for this sermon to the choir when he decries the failure of Americans to provide moral education for the young - ignoring the examples set by the amoral policies of the administrations he served."
- Los Angeles Times paperback book reviewer Charles Solomon on Bill Bennett's Index of Leading Cultural Indicators, March 6.

"Both Greedy and The Ref find comic pay dirt in the spectacle of blood relations uncorking their revulsions and resentments in open insult. You could read them as belated tantrums against the patriarchal, money-obsessed Reagan '80s."
- Newsweek movie critic David Ansen, March 14 issue.

 

The Labeling Spectrum: From Ultraconservative to Left of Center

"Perched on the edge of Georgetown in the Center for Security Policy, an ultraconservative think tank he founded five years ago, Gaffney is waging guerrilla war against President Clinton's foreign policy....Some of Gaffney's charges against [ambassadorial nominee Derek] Shearer formed the basis for Sen. Hank Brown's questioning of the nominee....on his past affiliation with the left-of-center Institute for Policy Studies, another Washington think tank."
- Boston Globe reporters Mary Curtius and John Aloysius Farrell, March 21.

 

Clinton Tax Claims True or Not?

Tax Records Back Clinton Account
- Washington Post, March 26

Clinton tax papers lack support for deductions
- Washington Times, same day

 

Bill and Hillary, Abstract Art Lovers

"Can the Clintons clear the cloud of philistinism that has hovered above so many administrations?...While Mr. Carter borrowed about a dozen works by the American impressionists during his presidency, Ronald Reagan filled the corridors of the White House with pictures of cowboys and Indians. They depicted an America that never existed, a land where the skies are always blue and the good guys always win."
- New York Times art critic Deborah Solomon marking the return of abstract art to the White House, March 24.

 

Whitewater: Choreographed by George Bush

"Lee Hamilton has botched several investigations that had been held out there. The main one was Iran-Contra. He messed that up in a big way. And he messed up the investigation of [the] October Surprise and gave Bush the favor - he announced before the investigation that Bush was innocent...He usually expresses his views on the side of George Bush. We don't know how much influence George Bush is having in all this attack on Clinton, too."
- Reporter Sarah McClendon on Hamilton's call for Whitewater hearings, March 16 Fox Morning News.

 

Publisher: L. Brent Bozell III
Editors: Brent H. Baker, Tim Graham
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