Notable Quotables - 04/17/1989
Cuban Military Power
"These days Cuba
doesn't count for nearly as much in the Soviet military scheme of
things,...Much of the equipment...is old and obsolete. Although with its
militia the Cuban armed forces are the largest in Latin America, this Soviet
weaponry is years behind the times."
- ABC's Richard Threlkeld on World News Tonight, April 3.
"The Soviets have
spent billions of dollars keeping Fidel Castro supplied....The equipment, the
best the Soviet Union can supply....Fidel Castro still believes in the Mao
adage that power comes from the barrel of a gun. And his island bristles with
some of the most modern, such as these advanced MiG 23s."
- Reporter Barry Peterson on the CBS Evening News, same night.
Abortion
"Polls show that
more than 70 percent of Americans support a woman's right to a legal
abortion."
- NBC reporter Jamie Gangel, on the April 9 Nightly News.
""Most in US
favor ban on majority of abortions, poll finds"
- Boston Globe front page, March 31.
Mikhail Gorbachev
"I'm sure that
subjectively speaking, he is one of the most honest politicians of our
time."
- Dmitri Simes of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace on the March
26 CNN PrimeNews.
"Thatcher scolds
Gorbachev for selling bombers to Libya"
- Washington Times, April 7.
"Gorbachev
Criticizes Lack of U.S. Policy: Soviet Leader, in London, Voices Impatience
With Bush's 'Prolonged' Review of Options"
- Washington Post, same day.
Valdez Oil Spill
"More broadly, the
Reagan Administration's contribution to the debacle consisted of eight years
of disdain for environmentalism, hatred of 'government,' and worship of 'the
market.'"
- New Republic Senior Editor Hendrik Hertzberg, April
24 issue.
Newt Gingrich
"Although he still
resembles a frisky chipmunk scurrying from idea to idea and storing too many
bad ones, he became the conservative point man in the Bush campaign."
- U.S. News and World Report Assistant Managing Editor Gloria
Borger, March 27.
Jim Wright
"Wright cannily
switched his support to the peace plan of the five Central American
Presidents. Whatever the ethics committee says about him, Wright is secure in
the history books: he ended the war."
- Washington Post columnist Mary McGrory, March 16.
Cuba
"Medical care was
once for the privileged few. Today it is available to every Cuban and it is
free. Some of Cuba's health care is world class. In heart disease, for
example, in brain surgery. Health and education are the revolution's great
success stories."
- ABC's Peter Jennings on the April 3 World News Tonight.
"He [Castro] said
he wants to make a better life for Cuba's poor. Many who lived through the
revolution say he succeeded....Today even the poorest Cubans have food to eat,
their children are educated and even critics of the regime say Cubans have
better health care than most Latin Americans."
- Reporter Paula Zahn on Good Morning America, April 3.
"Cubans seem well
aware that although they have virtually no guaranteed rights of free speech,
thought, or assembly, neither do they have the widespread political terror
that prevails in El Salvador, Guatemala, or neighboring Haiti."
- Christian Science Monitor reporter J.D. Gannon, April 5.
"The fact is behind
the cheers and smiles of the Gorbachev-Castro summit, there's something sad:
neither country fulfilled its revolutionary promise, and each is a
disappointment to the other."
- Reporter Bob Abernethy on NBC Nightly News, April 2.
Communist Party Membership
"A testament to
courage: the courage of some unabashed trade unionists and civil rights
workers, Leftists and yes, American Communists, who fought for principles that
we now take for granted."
- Endorsement of Carl Bernstein's book Loyalties, from Ted Koppel.
Inflation
"There's some dark
at the end of the tunnel. Some experts say inflation will force interest rates
so high up to slow the economy down, that we'll find ourselves in a recession
by the end of this year."
- Conclusion of reporter Charles Feldman, CNN PrimeNews, March 21.
"Consumer Prices Up
0.4%; Rise Is Less Than Expected"
- Washington Post, March 22.
"February inflation
rate dips to 0.4%"
- Washington Times, same day.
Linda Ellerbee
"Well, am I a
liberal, a conservative, or what? What...I believe in sunny summer mornings
when the grass is sweet and the wind is green with possibilities. I believe in
chili with no beans and iced tea all year round....I believe music is too
important to be left to musicians, and that Ella Fitzgerald is the best
American singer ever, and that Beethoven would have liked Chuck Berry....And
so it goes."
- Linda Ellerbee in her first commentary on CNN, March 20.
"I have my own
business and I can say whatever I damn well please, because they can't fire me
or cancel me anymore."
- Linda Ellerbee, at Gannett's "Women, Men and Media" conference,
April 10.
"The problem with
getting paid to say what you think five days a week is that it presumes you
know what you think five days a week, and I don't always."
- Linda Ellerbee on the Arsenio Hall Show, March 28.
El Salvador
"I'm Jeff
Greenfield. Later on Nightline, remember El Salvador? The death
squads, guerilla attacks, the warnings of another Vietnam? An election this
weekend could bring it all back."
- March 17 promo.
"The point is that
our government supports this government, which has very little respect for the
lives, not only of its own people, but people from any country in the world.
That's the problem. That's the issue here."
- Newsweek photographer Bill Gentile on Nightline, March
20.
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
