Notable Quotables - 04/24/2006
Biased Before, But Not Anymore
“The point of The View was to give your views on various issues. There’s nobody that doesn’t have biases one way or the other. It’s my responsibility once I’m on this show [Today] to put those aside. They have no place on this show. But there is nothing that I have said that I am ashamed of. I stand by anything that I’ve said.”
— ABC’s The View co-host Meredith Vieira at an April 6 press conference announcing her new job replacing Katie Couric as co-host of NBC’s Today.
Flashback:
“Everything’s been built on lies. Everything! I mean the entire pretext for war.”
— Vieira on ABC’s The View, June 17, 2004. On the August 30, 2004 The View, Vieira announced she marched in an anti-war protest: “I’m still so upset about this war.” (With WMV video clip/MP3 audio)
Clift: Vieira’s Anti-War Soulmate?
“President Clinton’s manipulation of words did not set off a chain of events that took us into an unnecessary war and cost people’s lives. It was a personal indiscretion of so much lesser magnitude than what we’re dealing here. A President may not be legally culpable for leaking classified information for political gain. But the legality here is irrelevant. It’s the political fallout....This is a crystalizing piece of information that people can understand...The President lied, they see the video clips and they know the consequences of a war with over two thousand people dead.”
— Newsweek’s Eleanor Clift referring to stories claiming President Bush ordered the release of pre-war intelligence to rebut critics, April 8 McLaughlin Group.
Millionaire Reporters Peddle Envy
Anchor Bob Schieffer: “The average American enters the golden years — retirement — expecting to live on less than $30,000 a year, and that includes Social Security. Well, it turns out to be a little more golden than that if you run a big oil company. Here’s Anthony Mason.”
Reporter Anthony Mason: “He was the mastermind of the ExxonMobil marriage, the merger that created the largest and most profitable oil company in the world. Now Lee Raymond is being rewarded in his retirement with a breathtaking package worth nearly $400 million....Lee Raymond earned $69 million in his last year as ExxonMobil’s chairman. That’s $190,000 a day. The average American worker, Bob, earns $43,000 a year.”
— CBS Evening News, April 13.
Illegal Aliens March, CBS Swoons
“Good evening, I’m Bob Schieffer. They are not American citizens yet, but they want to be....Not since the protests of the Vietnam era has there been anything quite like it....On every street, the message was the same: Give us new laws to make it easier for us to become citizens. In New York City, the arrival point for so many immigrants over the years, thousands marched to a rally at City Hall. And the scene there was repeated all over the country in city after city. In Houston, Texas, they cried, ‘Fix immigration. Don’t eliminate it.’ In Atlanta, marchers evoked memories of the civil rights movement and the 1960s. And in San Francisco, carrying U.S. and Mexican flags, they chanted, ‘Si, se puede,’ ‘Yes, we can.’”
— Bob Schieffer opening the April 10 CBS Evening News.
Draped in the American Dream?
“When you saw these pictures yesterday from these demonstrations in all these cities across the country, hundreds of thousands of people, American flags unfurled, people draping themselves in the American dream, what did you think?...It’s really unprecedented, this groundswell that has come up...People literally all over the country walking away from their jobs to stand in the street and say, ‘I count for something.’”
— CBS’s Harry Smith to CNN’s Lou Dobbs and Governor Bill Richardson (D-NM) on The Early Show, April 11.
Praying for Bill Clinton’s Return
Anchor Wolf Blitzer: “Jack, if Bill Clinton could run for President again, would he be re-elected?”
Jack Cafferty: “Oh, I think he probably would be, in a heartbeat, don’t you? The Democrats have no one....Clinton would be the answer to a prayer. Not Hillary, her husband.”
— CNN’s The Situation Room, April 11. (With WMV video clip/MP3 audio)
Feel Bad About Hounding Clinton?
ABC’s George Stephanopoulos: “You use the phrase ‘politics of personal destruction,’ you say you’ve been scrutinized by Democrats and I know you probably don’t like this comparison, when I hear those phrases I think of President Clinton. [Do] you feel more of a kinship now with him given what you’ve been through?”
Representative Tom DeLay (R-TX): “Not at all. President Clinton broke the law, he lied to a grand jury. I have not done anything against the law.”
— ABC’s Good Morning America, April 5. (With WMV video clip/MP3 audio)
Needs Help, Won’t Accept It
“I don’t need to be lectured on ethics from a much-married, obese, drug addict.”
— Fired CBS News producer Mary Mapes discussing Rush Limbaugh at a media panel at Middle Tennessee State University, as quoted by ex-Boston Globe reporter John Mashek in an April 7 posting to his blog on U.S. News & World Report’s Web site.
Castigating Ingraham’s Critique
Tape of Laura Ingraham on NBC’s Today, March 21: “To do a show from Iraq means to talk to the Iraqi military, to go out with the Iraqi military, to actually have a conversation with the people instead of reporting from hotel balconies about the latest IEDs going off.”
Howard Kurtz: “What do you make of that comment about reporting from hotel balconies?”
CBS chief foreign correspondent Lara Logan: “Well, I think it’s outrageous. I mean, Laura Ingraham should come to Iraq and not be talking about what journalists are doing from the comfort of her studio in the United States....It’s an outrage to point the finger at journalists and say that this is our fault. I really do. And I think it shows an abject lack of respect for any journalist that’s prepared to come to this country and risk their life....”
Kurtz: “I do want to point out that Laura Ingraham was in Iraq last month for eight days, and that was part of the reason for her appearance. Lara Logan, stay with us. I want to bring in-”
Logan: “For eight days!”
— Exchange on CNN’s Reliable Sources, March 26. (With WMV video clip/MP3 audio)
“That hotel balcony crack was unforgivable. It was unforgivable to the memory of David Bloom, it was unforgivable in consideration of Bob Woodruff and Doug Vogt....Is that what we’re left with about Iraq, defending the actions conducted in this nation’s name with desperation and stupidity?”
— MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann on Countdown, March 22.
NBC Exclusive: Bible Is Bunk
“On Tuesday, we learned that an oceanographer at Florida State University is now questioning whether Jesus ever really walked on water. His theory, surface ice might have formed on the Sea of Galilee at that time of year, which would throw a lot of the Bible into confusion....Yesterday, we learned that a manuscript, the only known text of the Gospel of Judas, has surfaced after 1,700 years. It’s a bit beaten up, but it shows Judas was well-regarded by Jesus and perhaps not a treacherous man after all.”
— Brian Williams wrapping up the April 7 Nightly News.
Upset by McCain’s “Right Turn”
Anchor Elizabeth Vargas: “During his 2000 campaign, [John] McCain gathered support as a straight-talking maverick by attacking some members of his party’s base. Now it appears he’s on a very different course....”
Reporter Dan Harris: “In 2000, John McCain ran for President as a different kind of politician....Straight talk included taking on powerful Christian conservatives like Jerry Falwell, whom he called an ‘agent of intolerance.’....McCain is [now] trying to repair relations with the religious right.... For McCain, doing so could jeopardize his reputation for being a different kind of politician.”
— ABC’s World News Tonight, April 14.
Stop Emperor Bush, Vote Democrat
“There’s nothing this administration won’t do under the guise of battling terrorism....The only way the American people can stop Bush’s imperial expansion of power short is to turn out in massive numbers to take back one or the other body of Congress from Republican control.”
— Eleanor Clift in her weekly “Capitol Letter” column posted on the Newsweek Web site, April 7.
Blasting the “Preposterous” MRC
“Leave it to the right wing to cross the preposterous line just when you think it reached that point long ago. The Media Research Center, an outfit dedicated to proving that every story in the newspapers or on TV is slanted left, every year hands out its DisHonors Award....For this gang to come along with its award is laughable. You could fill a Bible with the mistakes they make in their accusations against the press. They can dish it out but can’t take it.”
— Former Boston Globe reporter John Mashek in an April 6 posting on the U.S. News & World Report Web site.
Affleck: Bush Could Be Hung
Washington Examiner’s Bill Sammon: “A lot of critics are conflating the two and are saying that because Bush disclosed this piece of information [about Iraq], they’re implying that Bush leaked the [Valerie Plame’s] name.”
Actor/activist Ben Affleck: “He probably also leaked the name. There’s just no proof of that.”
Sammon: “Even the prosecutor, even [Patrick] Fitzgerald is saying Bush didn’t leak the name....”
Affleck: “Because if he did, you can be hung for that! That’s treason!...You could be killed. That’s not a joking around, Tom DeLay, ‘I’ll do a year, I bribed the state officials with corporate money.’ That’s like — they shoot you on the battlefield for doing that!”
— Exchange on HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher, April 7. (With WMV video clip/MP3 audio)
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