Notable Quotables - 07/06/1992

 

Nice Prediction, Dan


"Senator Simon, is there any doubt in your mind that [Souter's] views pretty well parallel those of John Sununu's, which means he's anti-abortion or anti-women's rights, whichever way you want to put it?"
- Dan Rather on the CBS Evening News, July 23, 1990.

 

The Anti-Liberty Conservative Court


"For three decades, it was an aggressive guardian of individual liberties. But the Supreme Court's new conservative majority is demolishing that legacy, beating an ideological retreat from its activist role in deciding critical social issues."
- From Newsweek's table of contents, July 6 issue.


"Draconian" Pro-Life Laws


"Where's the Court headed, do you think? I mean, we are at the end of this term, but all of this stuff is down the road, including these really draconian anti-abortion laws. They are gradualists maybe, but are they gradually going further and further right?"
- CBS chief political correspondent Bruce Morton on Face the Nation, June 28.

"I think what this means in political terms over the next year or so is that the really draconian laws making abortion a crime, like the ones passed in Louisiana, Utah, and Guam, will be held unconstitutional."
- Morton in the CBS special report on the abortion decision, June 29.

 

Shales Shells Anti-Abortion Movement


"Obviously the story has relevance today, what with the Supreme Court reconsidering Roe vs. Wade and with anti-abortion groups assailing and harassing any who disagree. Does the United States have more busybodies and buttinskies per square acre than any other nation on earth, or does it just seem that way?"
- Washington Post TV critic Tom Shales on the HBO movie A Private Matter, June 20.

 

Sister Souljah: Clinton's Willie Horton?


"What would the political guys do without their welfare-queen fantasies, female sitcom characters, or rap and rock stars to kick around?....If Souljah advocates violence, she is clearly wrong. But she deserves a promotion to General Sistah for rapping Clinton, who used her as a scapegoat to win votes among whites."
- USA Today columnist Barbara Reynolds, June 19.

"I do not know exactly what she [Sister Souljah] meant...but I do know that the whole incident strikes an old, resonant chord in American racial relations....There are all the code words, used principally by politicians to whip fear and ignorance into votes: Willie Horton, law and order, welfare cheats. It's the language of stereotype, the American shorthand that keeps the discussion, and people, circumscribed."
- Newsweek contributing editor Lorene Cary, June 29.

 

Wake Up to Wonderful Willie


"Making headlines this morning: Bill Clinton comes up with a plan for the economy - tax the rich, cut the deficit, and help just about everyone."
- CBS This Morning co-host Paula Zahn, June 22.

"Clinton is saying and doing a lot of the correct things. How does he get some attention?"
- Bryant Gumbel on Today, June 3.

 

The Weekly Time Plug For A Gas Tax Hike


"One thing the bill avoided was any strong action to deal with the nation's excessive appetite for oil. Besides avoiding new auto standards, it neither raises gasoline taxes nor forces oil companies to pay for expanding the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to reduce reliance on foreign oil."
- Time's "The Week" segment, June 8.

"In the campaign to fashion a new environmental order, however, other nations are taking the lead....Scandinavian countries have imposed stiff taxes to discourage energy consumption."
- Time Science Editor Charles Alexander, June 15.

"Higher taxation, along with reduction in entitlements, is where the most significant progress in reducing the deficit can be made....a 12-cent additional tax on gasoline would yield $54.8 billion in five years. (It would have the added benefits of discouraging auto use and cleaning the air.)"
- Time Washington Bureau Chief Stanley Cloud, June 22.


More Airline Competitiveness? Raise Taxes


"Now here's an unpopular suggestion: ban, or at least tax, those genteel kickbacks known as frequent-flier programs. Killing the freebies (which are a powerful incentive to fly on a single large airline) would go a long way to making a more level playing field. Simply taxing the benefits could make them less attractive and blunt the big guys' advantage."
- Newsweek economics writer Rich Thomas, June 15.

 

Gender Gap Started with Reagan?


"For many years, this conservative disposition led women to vote more Republican more often than men. If women alone had voted in 1960, Richard Nixon would have won...In '72 and '76, [the women's vote] went to the Republican incumbents...Then came Ronald Reagan. He won the women's vote in both 1980 and 1984, but his presidency created what came to be called the gender gap."
- CNN reporter Brian Jenkins on Inside Politics, June 23.

 

Bernstein Scolds His Colleagues


"The hard and simple fact is that our reporting has not been good enough. It was not good enough in the Nixon years, it got worse in the Reagan years, and it is no better now. We are arrogant. We have failed to open up our own institutions in the media to the same kind of scrutiny that we demand of other powerful institutions in the society. We are no more forthcoming and gracious in acknowledging error or misjudgment than the congressional miscreants and bureaucratic felons we spent so much time scrutinizing."
- Former Washington Post and Time reporter Carl Bernstein in the June 8 New Republic.

 

Those Sexist Republicans


"There is an understandable reluctance on the part of many women to venture into a building already occupied by Jesse Helms or Bob Dornan, a building that was designed, for all we know, without a single ladies' room in the floor plan. Plus there has been the chilling effect of male politicos like former Republican Party chairman Clayton Yeutter, who reportedly addressed a high-powered donor as `little lady' and inquired as to whom she `belonged to' - thus sending a generation of Republican women out to join militantly separatist rural communes."
- Time essayist Barbara Ehrenreich, June 22.

 

CNN's Silly Questions


"When you grow up, and it's a choice between a clean river and a better car or a better Walkman or something like that, which are you going to choose?"
- CNN reporter Richard Blystone interviewing a Norwegian child, June 8 World News.

 

- L. Brent Bozell III; Publisher
- Brent H. Baker, Tim Graham; Editors
- Brant Clifton, Nicholas Damask, Steve Kaminski, Marian Kelley, Tim Lamer; Media Analysts
- Jennifer Hardebeck; Circulation Manager
- Joe Busher, Cameron Humphries, Mario Lopez; Interns