Notable Quotables - 06/07/1993
Dan Rather's Burning Love for the Clintons
"If we could be
one-hundredth as great as you and Hillary Rodham Clinton have been in the
White House, we'd take it right now and walk away winners...Thank you very
much and tell Mrs. Clinton we respect her and we're pulling for her."
- Dan Rather talking via satellite to President Clinton about his new on-air
partnership with Connie Chung at a CBS affiliates meeting, May 27.
Making a Myth: Lower Overall Spending in the Clinton Plan
"Three months after
Mr. Clinton outlined his plan to cut the deficit, by a combination of lower
spending and higher taxes, the tax portion has passed its first important test
on Capitol Hill."
- ABC anchor Peter Jennings, May 13 World News Tonight.
"This is a giant
plan, it's a plan that calls for massive cuts in government spending, but it
also calls for increases in taxes. Increases in the income tax rates for
wealthier Americans and it calls for a broad-based energy tax."
- CBS reporter Bob Schieffer, May 23 Sunday Morning.
"The House votes
this week on the President's economic proposal. It is a plan which raises
taxes and reduces government spending in an effort to bring the deficit into
line."
- Schieffer hosting Face the Nation, same day. (Annual federal
spending is expected to rise from $1.3 to $1.7 trillion by 1998.)
A Billion Here, A Billion There...
"The House voted
219-213 Thursday - 217 were needed for approval - for the guts of Clinton's
economic agenda: $250 billion in tax hikes. $90 billion in spending cuts over
five years."
- USA Today reporters Richard Wolf and William M. Welch, May 28.
"The Democratic
majority narrowly approved a package of some $250 billion in new taxes, and an
equal amount in spending cuts and other savings."
- Boston Globe reporter John Aloysius Farrell, same day.
Clinton's Right On, But's He's Screwing Up!
"What he says so
often, it seems to me, right on about where the economy is, what we need to do
to create more jobs in this country, what we need to do to tackle the deficit,
but something is missing in that White House because it's not delivering on
the other end...It was truly depressing. You say to yourself `we are at a
watershed moment in this country's history and these people are so muffing
it.' Yesterday I just wanted to get a hook and pull Stephanopoulos offstage
and say `George, go back, get your ducks in order, and then come out here,
because this is too serious!'"
- New York Times reporter Thomas Friedman, May 21 Washington
Week in Review.
"We're talking
about someone who with the help of his spouse is making a mess of his
presidency, whose obvious talents and worthy agenda make their failings all
the more infuriating."
- Boston Globe Washington columnist and former reporter Tom Oliphant,
May 30.
Get With the Program, Democrats
"Republicans have
done a good job of labeling Democrats as tax-and-spend liberals. Democrats
have done a poor job of explaining that the Republican alternative - borrow
and spend, stick the children with the bill - may not be any better."
- CBS chief political correspondent Bruce Morton's commentary, May 22 Evening
News.
Scott Simon's Last Suck-Up & Last Shots
"What's so
outrageous about a $200 haircut?...If the Pentagon contractor had done the job
it would have billed for $500, and not be done until three years after
deadline....Then there's this embarrassing business about a New Hampshire news
reporter being told by White House whippersnappers that she would have to
apply the makeup to President Clinton before an interview. A silly and
demeaning instruction, to be sure. Reporters were never asked to make up
President Reagan, although it often seemed they were willing to shine his
shoes."
- Soon to be departing weekend Today co-host Scott Simon, May 29.
"Maybe the
intensity of the events we watched made us feel closer to them than we
actually were, made us in a madcap cross section of quick cuts see ties that
were only in the image. The fires of war, fanning flames of protest, a rising
revolution of protest for peace, ending in the election of an old Cold Warrior
[video of Nixon]. Frankly, that's not what a lot of us had in mind."
- Simon remembering 1968, May 22 Today.
"Revealing" Reporting?
"Clarence Thomas
defenders are seizing on a new book by David Brock that purports to prove that
Anita Hill lied a few years ago. Well, a devastating critique in this week's
New Yorker by Jill Abramson and Jane Mayer, both Wall Street Journal
reporters and authors of a forthcoming book on the Hill-Thomas episode,
reveals not only did Mr. Brock get numerous key facts wrong, but that his book
was partially funded by the conservative Olin and Bradley foundations."
- Wall Street Journal Washington Bureau Chief Al Hunt's
"Outrage of the Week" on CNN's Capital Gang, May 29.
"Assistance from
the John M. Olin Foundation and the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation enabled
me to retain a research assistant, Hilary Adams, without whom my deadlines
would never have been met."
- From page xi of David Brock's "Author's Notes" in The Real
Anita Hill.
Therapeutic Killing
"I suspect there is
a compromise here [on federal funding of abortions] and that is, you allow
government funding for therapeutic abortions but not elective
abortions...Therapeutic abortions will be in as a matter of reproductive
health...it's not a euphemism."
- Newsweek reporter Eleanor Clift on the McLaughlin Group, May 22.
Criminalizing A Generation
"Federal judges
have criticized severe mandatory sentencing guidelines, congestion of the
courts, and the criminalization of a whole generation of young black
men."
- CBS reporter Bill Plante on Reagan-Bush drug prosecutions, May 3 This
Morning.
Agenda Against Sununu? Not Us
"It's fair to
suggest that the Post overplayed the story, or that reporters who
disliked Sununu jumped at the chance to wound him. But the idea that the paper
deliberately decided to strike a blow against Sununu's conservative views is
downright goofy. Sununu was a great story because reporters love to deflate
pomposity. No one cared whether he was to the right of Genghis Khan or to the
left of Lenin."
- Washington Post media reporter Howard Kurtz in his book Media
Circus: The Trouble with America's Newspapers.
The Greedy '80s: The Decade of Crazy Bosses
"With power comes
the abuse of power. And where there are bosses, there are crazy bosses. It's
nothing new - Louis B. Mayer, George Steinbrenner, Leona Helmsley. The past
is full of crazy bosses. So's the future. From burger joints to board rooms,
there seem to be more crazy bosses out there more than ever. Maybe it's part
of the price we're paying for the Greed is Good '80s, when calling someone an
S.O.B. was a compliment and bad behavior was mistaken for charisma."
- ABC's Judd Rose, May 13 Prime Time Live.
- L. Brent Bozell III;
Publisher
- Brent H. Baker, Tim Graham; Editors
- Andrew Gabron, Kristin Johnson, Steve Kaminski, Mark Rogers, Bill Thompson;
Media Analysts
- Kathleen Ruff, Circulation Manager;
- David Felton, David Muska,; Interns
