Notable Quotables - 07/18/1994

 

Rush Limbaugh: Look Who's Lecturing

"Why does anyone take Rush Limbaugh seriously?...He's entertaining. But, come on, he is to truthfulness as President Clinton is to faithfulness - he has but a passing acquaintance with it. He's toying with you, folks, getting you all riled up with a stew of half-truths and non-truths. He's making fools of you, feeding you swill - and you're taking it in....So keep listening if you want. But just remember that he's a charlatan."
- Former NBC News President Michael Gartner in a USA Today column, July 12.

vs.

"We remain convinced that taken in its entirety and in its detail, the segement that was broadcast on Dateline NBC was fair and accurate."
- Michael Gartner defending NBC's staged GM truck explosions, quoted in The Washington Post, February 9, 1993.

"Giving him his due, Truthman appears to be factually right at least as often as he's wrong. Hitting 50 or 60 percent of your shots makes you a star in basketball. However, that's un-acceptable for a self-defined oracle whose trustworthiness is taken for granted by a hefty number of Americans."
- Los Angeles Times TV critic Howard Rosenberg, June 29.

vs.

"President Clinton made comments about radio and TV personality Rush Limbaugh to a St. Louis radio station, not a meeting of radio talk-show hosts. In addition, Fairness & Accuracy in Media is located in New York, not Washington. Both facts were incorrectly reported in Wednesday's Calendar."
- Correction on Rosenberg's story on Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, next day.

 

Talking About Lies and Errors in the Media

"And the problem is compounded by the fact that two thirds of the voters believe that Clinton has both raised their taxes and intends to raise them more with health care reform. While neither is true, Republicans have happily promoted both notions."
- U.S. News Assistant Managing Editor Gloria Borger, June 27.

"For the last 50 years, the Department of Energy stood guard as a cold warrior, defending America with its bomb factories."
- CNN's Bernard Shaw on CNN Presents, July 3. (Dept. of Energy was created in 1977.)

 

America the Hateful

"Do you think there will ever come a time when there won't be any homophobia?"
- Today contributor Tabitha Soren to lesbian activist Storme de Larverie, June 27.

"We hear the stories of discrimination in education and housing and jobs all the time. We hear the violence between races. Do you think it's possible that America is simply an inherently racist place?"
- Today substitute co-host Matt Lauer, July 4.

"I found it affirming to see the real thing [South Africa], a place where everything was not only in black and white, but where racists had felt free enough to put it in writing. Americans are so much more subtle with their oppression, always leaving enough wiggle room to question the sanity of the victim, accuse him or her of paranoia."
- Washington Post reporter Mary Ann French in a Travel section article, July 10.

 

Europe Envy

"We're only kind of at the tip of the iceberg. We have a long way to go before we match up to European countries, don't we?"
- ABC Good Morning America co-host Joan Lunden talking about family leave with Ellen Galinsky of the Families and Work Institute, June 21.

 

Ollie Zhirinovsky?

"Oliver North and Vladimir Zhirinovsky: Two names out of the headlines that don't usually connect. But the would-be senator from Virginia and the Russian chauvinist steam along parallel political tracks: They pander to frustrated and angry voters consumed by an overwhelming sense of loss of their country....The separate but similar nationalisms that North and Zhirinovsky express are raw and crude, reeking of claims of manifest destiny and divine inspiration. They are not simply charlatans. They are geopolitical charlatans who would reassert a lost national greatness by intimidating smaller countries and dominating neighbors. That was North's style with Central America when he was in the White House."
- Washington Post columnist and former chief diplomatic correspondent Jim Hoagland, June 30.

"But the Republican conflict is part of an emerging national struggle, more structural than personal; Oliver North, America's Zhirinovsky, won the party's nomination in a state convention overrun by the religious right."
- Newsweek Senior Editor Joe Klein, July 18.

 

Heroism = Tax Hikes

"There were a few heroic moments. Senate Finance historically raises taxes only after members have been bought off with specific goodies for wealthy special interests. But in a fit of responsibility...the committee approved 11-9 an amendment by Bill Bradley to raise a bit of revenue and tamp down health-care costs by taxing gold-plated health plans. As Bradley noted, these are the very plans used by the lawyers and lobbyists in the audience. Cigarette taxes were headed for a big boost, too."
- Newsweek Jonathan Alter and Steven Waldman, July 11.

 

In 1981, When Congress Was Stupid

"It turned out the legislators who voted on the 1981 tax-cut bill...barely understood any of the provisions: Chief among them that the law would create the mega-deficits that have plagued the federal government since."
- Newsweek Contributing Editor Gregg Easterbrook in the Los Angeles Times, June 26.

 

Only the Rich Have Phones!

"Does it matter what is said and talked about on talk radio, given that there's a school of thought that says 'listen, you're basically talking with people in the upper tier of the economic system as opposed to those at the lower bottom.'"
- Dan Rather interviewing three radio talk show hosts during a prime time O.J. Simpson special, July 5.

 

Like to Dismiss Conservatives

"Well it's interesting that The American Spectator - as much as we all like to sort of dismiss it as fringe - when it writes something, it gets Xeroxed a lot and passed around among journalists in Washington. That's for sure."
- Los Angeles Times reporter Karen Tumulty, July 3.

 

Family Values

"Communes proved harder to sustain than plain old couples, and the conservatism of the '80s crushed the last vestiges of life-style experimentation...but the family, with its deep, impacted tensions and longings, can hardly be expected to be the moral foundation of everything else. In fact, many families could use a lot more outside interference in the form of counseling and policing, and some are so dangerously dysfunctional that they ought to be discouraged to disband right away....When, instead, the larger culture aggrandizes wife beaters, degrades women, or nods approvingly at child slappers, the family gets a little more dangerous for everyone, and so, inevitably, does the larger world."
- Time essayist Barbara Ehrenreich, July 18 issue.

 

Publisher: L. Brent Bozell III
Editors: Brent H. Baker, Tim Graham
Media Analysts: James Forbes, Andrew Gabron,
Mark Honig, Steve Kaminski, Mark Rogers, Clay Waters
Circulation Manager: Kathleen Ruff
Interns: Deanna Ducher, Patrick Pitman, Stephanie Swafford