Notable Quotables - 04/26/1993
CBS: Clinton Budget Supporters
"The Senate
Republicans are threatening to block the President's other big proposal, the
$16 billion job creation program."
- Anchor Connie Chung, CBS Evening News, April 1.
Chung: "The
government says the unemployment rate held at 7 percent last month. Held up in
the Senate is President Clinton's $16 billion plan to bring unemployment down.
Opponents are blocking a final vote. From Capitol Hill, Bob Schieffer reports
on the traffic jam on jobs.
Schieffer: "...For
sure the tie-up couldn't have come at a worse time: in New York, today's
gloomy economic news contributed to the stock market tumbling 68 points."
- CBS Evening News, April 2.
Chung: "President
Clinton still has a tough job getting his job creation plan out of gridlock in
the Senate. Mr. Clinton says the $16 billion program is crucial to boosting
the economy...
Reporter Bill Plante:
"At an unemployment office in Fairfax, Virginia, they don't understand
why politics is getting in the way of helping people find work."
- CBS Evening News, April 6.
"President
Clinton's $16 billion job creation program still can't get off the ground in
the Senate. Opponents are stalling a final vote. They say the jobs plan is
filled with pork. Mr. Clinton says it's all-beef, no fat."
- Chung, April 7 CBS Evening News.
NBC: Gumbel's "Victimized" Stimulus
"President Clinton
had more luck north of the border than inside the beltway. His summit with
Boris Yeltsin got favorable reviews even as his jobs bill was being victimized
by the Republican filibuster in the Senate."
- Today co-host Bryant Gumbel, April 6.
"Let's start with
the President's job stimulus package, if we could. It's hung up in the Senate,
victimized by a Republican filibuster."
- Gumbel to Clinton chief of staff Mack McLarty, April 7 Today.
For Counterpoint: ABC
"For the record,
four years ago, Senate Democrats filibustered to block a measure George Bush
said would stimulate the economy - a cut in the capital gains tax. The White
House claimed the bill would, that's right, create jobs. Senate Democratic
leader Mitchell, who now complains about this filibuster, led that one, which
succeeded."
- ABC reporter Brit Hume, April 5 World News Tonight.
"The most frequent
recommendation for dealing with these urban problems is jobs, and more jobs.
But government is not very good at creating jobs, and every day it makes it
more difficult for those who do create nearly all of them: small business.
Because every day, there are more rules, regulations, and paper
shuffles."
- David Brinkley on This Week, April 11.
Mean-Spirited Right-Wing Big-Oil Lunatics
"Then you've got
Bill Bennett out there, who is kind of a Torquemada...Bill Bennett is
basically a schismatic heretic practicing his own contrived lunatic version of
the Latin Mass in the basement. That's what Buchanan is doing, only with
Confederate flags flying. You have Phil Gramm from Texas, an incredibly
mean-spirited right-wing character backed by big-oil money. He is the kind of
perverse version of Lyndon Johnson whittled down to his vices and exaggerated.
Then you have Bob Dole: when he's most sardonic and cruel is when he's most
sincere. I think that's the Republican Party right now."
- New Yorker Washington reporter and former Washington Post
reporter Sidney Blumenthal in The Boston Phoenix, April 16.
Nobody Favored the Balanced Budget Amendment?
"I think a lot of
people in the country look at this and say blaming Bill Clinton for not having
a perfect deficit plan is like blaming the Wright brothers for not inventing
the jumbo jet. We went 12 years without having anybody care about the
deficit."
- Washington Post reporter E.J. Dionne, April 11 Face the Nation.
Clinton's Awesome Knowledge
"[Clinton] pointed
out the Andrew Jackson magnolia tree. He's a very good historian. Harry, I
think if you had been in the room, any viewer-listener who had been in that
room, would have been impressed with the breadth of his knowledge. I mean he
talked about the Oscars. He talked very knowingly about Clint Eastwood and his
new movie Unforgiven, Jack Nicholson's role in A Few Good Men, and then
switched very quickly to a knowledgeable analysis of Arkansas's chances
against North Carolina in the big basketball game tomorrow night."
- Dan Rather to CBS This Morning co-host Harry Smith, March 25.
Still Defending Rioters
"If I'm a young
black man in South Central L.A., where poverty is rampant and unemployment is
skyrocketing, I see that Washington's promises of a year ago have gone
unfulfilled, I see that perhaps for a second time, the court's inability to
mete out justice in a blind fashion, why shouldn't I vent my anger?"
- Bryant Gumbel to Rep. Maxine Waters, April 15 Today.
"Don't you ever
feel responsible for what happened in L.A. after your verdict?....On a radio
talk show last year after the riots, you said this, and I quote: `This was
nothing but a bunch of criminals burning down buildings in their own
neighborhood.' Is that it was? Is that all it was, though?...But that comment
is the kind of comment that so many people point to and say Larry Powell and
the other defendants really don't understand the underlying frustrations, and
discontents and pains that were in Los Angeles."
- ABC reporter Jay Schadler's questions to L.A. police officer Lawrence
Powell, April 11 Day One.
Excluding the Majority, We Look Terrible
"For infant
mortality, America couldn't do much worse. Excluding white newborns, America
ranks 70th in the world, roughly the same as Mongolia."
- CBS health reporter Dr. Bob Arnot, April 13 Evening News.
Humorless Feminists at the Helm
"Hillaryesque humor
is seen by some people as a comment on how many Americans, from TV monologists
to water-cooler wiseguys, are made uncomfortable by a powerful and ambitious
woman."
- Boston Globe reporter Nathan Cobb, April 6.
Michael Jackson Fan Club
"If either of the
two [Madonna or Michael Jackson] is the logical heir to Marilyn Monroe, it is
clearly Michael Jackson, who is the more bruised and authentically vulnerable
of the two....Not only is he black and white, male and female, but also young
and old, hip and square, the crotch-grabbing self-appointed guardian of the
world's children."
- MacNeil-Lehrer NewsHour essayist Anne Taylor Flemming, April 7.
Men Shouldn't Wear Pants
"Add to this visual
pop lexicon the newest hip eye-opener: cross- dressing. As if the punctuate
the end of the socially stagnant Reagan era, a parade of drag images is now
crossing screens big and small, mostly men bedecked in wigs, lipstick, and
scarfs to hide their protruding Adam's apples....Along with symbolizing
self-empowerment, cross-dressers also can remind us that sex roles and
costumes are fictional. Men wear pants because American society tells them
to."
- Boston Globe writer Matthew Gilbert, March 21.
Publisher: L. Brent
Bozell III
Editors: Brent H. Baker, Tim Graham
Media Analysts: Jessica Anderson, Eric Darbe,
Geoffrey Dickens, Mark Drake, Clay Waters
Research Associate: Kristina Sewell
Circulation Manager: Michelle Baetz
Interns: Stacey Felzenberg, Carrie Hale
