Notable Quotables - 06/26/1989
Foley Memo
"'Have you no sense
of decency sir?' That was the question Army counsel Joseph Welch asked Joseph
McCarthy 35 years ago when the Senator ruined the lives of those who did not
agree with him by impugning their character and patriotism. The same question
could be posed to Republican National Committee Chairman Lee Atwater, his
Communications Director Mark Goodin and Congressman Newt Gingrich."
- Time Senior Writer Margaret Carlson in the June 19 issue.
"Atwater's fouling
the civic atmosphere with vicious misinformation is bad enough; compounding
that with the White House hypocrisy is too much. If Bush really wants to prove
himself a political environmentalist in search of a kinder, gentler America,
he should sack Atwater."
- Time's Margaret Carlson in sidebar to the same June 19 news
article.
"Now Bush has his
own McCarthy in the form of RNC Chairman Lee Atwater and House Minority Whip
Newt Gingrich."
- former Boston Globe Washington Bureau Chief Robert Healy, June 15.
Nicaraguan Elections
"Supposedly neutral
tribunal stacked to favor Sandinistas"
- Washington Times, June 9.
"Managua Forms
Election Panel Containing Opposition Members"
- Washington Post, same day.
Bill Moyers
"The documentary
has held up as both true and sadly prophetic. While Congress restored some of
the cuts made in those first Reagan budgets, in the years since, the poor and
the working poor have born the brunt of the cost of the Reagan Revolution. The
hardest-hit programs have been welfare, housing and other anti-poverty
measures. Even programs that were not cut have failed to keep up with
inflation. Meanwhile, rich people got big tax breaks. And the middle class
kept most of their subsidies intact. As a result, the Reagan years brought on
a wider gap between rich and poor."
- Bill Moyers after PBS re-airing of 1982 CBS Reports People Like Us,
June 20.
Newt Gingrich
"It really looks
like this [Justice Dept. leaks about U.S. Rep. Gray] is Republican
inspired...So how do you put an end to what Jim Wright called 'mindless
cannibalism?' Do you put a muzzle on Newt Gingrich?"
- CBS This Morning co-host Kathleen Sullivan, June 1.
"But unlike
Atwater, whose blues-playing, guitar-strumming sideswipes can be entertaining,
Gingrich approaches his mission with a humorless holier-than-thou style that
makes him easy to dislike."
- Time reporter Nancy Traver in the magazine's June 12 issue.
North and the KGB
"North is the
product of something new that has been happening to the government...A shadow
government has come into being that is able to use unvouchered funds, engage
in secret operations affecting domestic and foreign policy, supersede the
presidency in vital respects, and exempt itself from the scrutiny of the
American people. The closest analogy is the KGB of the Soviet Union."
- Norman Cousins, former editor of The Saturday Review, in the June
6 Christian Science Monitor.
Hungarian Freedom
"Today Soviet
troops are withdrawing from Hungary. Hungary is on the verge of a multiparty
state and no one gets in trouble here for suggesting neutrality. All those
revolutionary demands [of 1956] are perfectly acceptable today, it just took
30 years."
- ABC's Peter Jennings, June 15.
China Comparisons
"Will the military
leaders there be embarrassed by this, will this be something like Kent State
was for our military?"
- CBS reporter Eric Engberg on Nightwatch, June 7.
"How does the
assumed obligation of the government of Nicaragua to have condemned China this
week compare with the past obligations of the United States to condemn, say,
university massacres in South Korea or El Salvador, or township massacres in
South Africa."
- Boston Globe staff writer Randolph Ryan, June 9.
"Stealing TV
pictures off satellites may be the most sophisticated manipulation of the
press so far, and the most insidious, but the impulse is nothing new, nor is
it restricted to totalitarian states. In the anti-war days of the sixties, FBI
agents often posed as reporters, taking pictures, using TV footage in court.
The U.S. government prevented press coverage of the invasion of Grenada."
- Reporter Susan Spencer on the CBS Evening News, June 17.
Washington Post News Agenda
"Wright's Texas
Friends Urge Him to Run Again: Supporters Seek Vindication of Ex-Speaker"
- June 20 story by Post reporter Tom Kenworthy, on page A4.
"Ethics Probe,
Eastern Strike Pose Worries for Gingrich at Home"
- Story by Kenworthy the same day, page A10.
El Salvador
"El Salvador has
entered another dreary chapter in a tortured history made worse by the
involvement of the United States. With U.S. taxpayers footing the $1.5
million-a-day bill - and with Salvadorans paying a price in suffering and
blood - the new government of President Alfredo Cristiani is likely to
soldier on with failed policies of the past nine years; war without end,
political settlement nowhere in sight, programs that might improve the life of
the poor continually throttled."
- Boston Globe editorial, June 6.
Supreme Court
"Supreme Court
narrows bias law"
- Boston Globe, June 16.
"Supreme Court
upholds major civil rights ruling"
- Boston Herald, same day.
"Ethics War"
"You two fill the
voids left by those who were casualties of an ethics war Republicans
started."
- NBC Today show co-host Bryant Gumbel to Rep. Richard Gephardt and
Rep. William Gray, June 15.
Quote of the Month
"Thousands may have
been gunned down in Beijing, but what about the millions of American kids
whose lives are being ruined by an enormous failure of the country's
educational system...We can and we should agonize about the dead students in
Beijing, but we've got a much bigger problem here at home."
- John Chancellor's commentary on NBC Nightly News, June 20.
- L. Brent
Bozell III; Publisher
- Brent H. Baker, Tim Graham; Editors
- Jim Heiser, Richard Marois, Patrick Swan, Dorothy Warner; Media Analysts
- Cynthia Bulman; Administrative Assistant
