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
