Notable Quotables - 06/21/1993
The Greedy '90s
"The deregulated
airline industry has come up with another way to save money and boost profits.
This time they're not cutting jobs or in-flight meals. No, this time they're
cutting fresh air. Flight crews and passengers say it's enough to make you
sick."
- Dan Rather, June 9 CBS Evening News.
Fire Gumbel & Split His $2 Million Salary Among 20 New Producers
"The Reagan Administration used to boast they created a lot of jobs. Most
of those were menial jobs that were quickly dissipated by a quadrupled budget
deficit. How do you suggest we make more high-paying jobs?"
- Bryant Gumbel to economist Irwin Kellner, June 2 Today.
Walter Cronkite, Liberal Activist
"The free market.
While the government helped build the trains and the roads to help bring the
United States into the 20th century, the economic philosophy of this country
has been laissez-faire. Germany and Japan, on the other hand, give industry
broad government support. The Japanese government invests 58 percent more than
the United States [government] in civilian research and development, Germany
42 percent. But American business has always fought a government-guided
industrial strategy. They called it socialism. Now many are calling it 21st
century economics."
- Walter Cronkite on The Cronkite Report: Help Unwanted on The Discovery
Channel, May 28.
"It is ironic that
People for the American Way could be considered by anyone controversial. What
it stands for to me is truly the American way."
- Cronkite quoted in the liberal group's recent direct-mail fundraising
appeal. (Thanks to Lucretia Nelson.)
Dumping Lani Guinier
A Hard Right Turn
- Newsweek headline, June 14
"I think Lani
Guinier arguably should have been confirmed. I don't think her views are that
radical....I think she believes in democracy...The fact is a lot of Americans
who are black, who are minorities, never have a chance to be in the
majority...What she was saying is how do we find some way so that everyone has
the chance to be in the majority from time to time."
- Sam Donaldson on This Week, June 6.
Sucking Up To The New Owner
"Now, as the Globe
comes under the umbrella of Times management in a deal struck yesterday, it
becomes a formal member of a journalism family conglomerate - an adopted
sister, if you will - that anchors the Fourth Estate through disciplined
reporting and editing; depth, breadth, and volume of news coverage; and sheer
intellectual firepower."
- Boston Globe reporter Mitchell Zuckoff on the Globe's sale to the New York
Times Company, June 11.
Judge Ginsburg Quotes Ultraconservatives
"Sixty-year-old
Ruth Bader Ginsburg has been an Appeals Court judge for 13 years. She's
considered moderate to liberal, but today she cited this guideline to judging
from ultraconservative Chief Justice William Rehnquist."
- CBS reporter Rita Braver, June 14 Evening News.
Florio's Political Courage
"Just last night on
television I saw your opponent for Governor complaining about your record,
saying how you had raised taxes, how it had cost 300,000 jobs. Are you afraid
your politically courageous moves are in fact going to cost you the
election?"
- Today co-host Katie Couric to N.J. Gov. Jim Florio, May 24.
"I think we're
going to find out that taxes are okay. I think the Congress should look at the
race in New Jersey and see that Florio has come back from the dead and vote,
and vote for Clinton's plan."
- Time White House reporter Margaret Carlson, June 14 Fox Morning
News.
Clinton, Decent and Faithful
"I think he is
really trying to do some decent things. I mean, let's face it, homosexuals are
people too. I mean, dealing with things in the inner city. I don't think the
program has been the problem, I think the execution has been the
problem."
- NPR reporter Phyllis Crockett on
CNN's Inside Politics, June 1.
"The plan
reflected, pretty faithfully, Clinton's campaign promises - raising taxes
primarily on the wealthy and upper-middle class, providing significant relief
for the working poor...while making some progress on deficit reduction."
- Newsweek Senior Editor Joe Klein, June 7.
Reporters on Reaganomics
"I think there's
considerable evidence that it did not create a growing number of jobs....I
don't see exactly what [the caller] thinks the trickle-down economy
accomplished. I think there are very few people even on the Republican side
who say that things were great. It added two billion dollars to the national
debt."
- Washington Post reporter Kenneth Cooper on C-SPAN's Journalists'
Roundtable, June 11.
"The interesting
thing to me is especially if trickle-down worked so well and even if you
believe Republican theory, which was that it was only the Democratic Congress
in the latter part of the Reagan years and the Bush administration that
screwed things up, you still did not see wealthy people or corporations
profiting from the tax cut, taking money and doing what Reagan and Laffer said
they would, which is building sophisticated high-tech new industries in
America. Instead, what an awful lot of them did is say `Oh, three dollars an
hour in Singapore or Taiwan. I'm moving my factory overseas.'"
- Boston Globe reporter John Aloysius Farrell, same show.
Remembering RFK
"With RFK gone, the
muscle fiber of liberalism went slack....And out with the bath water of defeat
went the once healthy liberal baby: a generosity of social conscience, a sense
of being in a common fight for a common good, a conviction that a democratic
society cannot thrive when its upper drawers are shut on the fingers of those
lower down."
- Newsweek Senior Editor Tom Mathews in May 31 story under the headline
"Separating the RFK myth from his legacy, 25 years after his death."
The Softball Conspiracy
"Like the country
club that bars women from the golf course, where many deals are made, the game
of softball can act as another barrier, another means of excluding women from
the corporate inner circle."
- USA Today reporter Julia Lawlor, June 1.
Rather Strange on the Range
"America, land of the free. Now, check the sign at the front gate. It
does not say the land is free. Any doubt? Ask a rancher. Any one of the
thousands at home on the range, where these days often is heard a discouraging
word."
- Dan Rather introducing story on ranching fees, June 3 CBS Evening News.
- 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, Rebecca Swaddling, Robert Vane; Interns
