Notable Quotables - 08/01/1994

The Gump From Hope?

"No one would accuse Bill Clinton of being a slow-witted cipher or a sexual naif like Gump. Yet what is likable about this fictional hero (and magnified further by the irresistible Mr. Hanks) harks back to what many saw, or thought they saw, in the boyish Mr. Clinton as he, like Forrest Gump, caught fire with an American public hungry for inspiration two years ago...[Gump] is neither bitter nor cynical, but a healing figure, eager to put his and his country's past behind him to embrace idealism and hope. Isn't that what many Clinton voters felt on election night 1992?"
- New York Times columnist Frank Rich, July 21.

 

Apparently Voters Never Buy Gas

"Question to you, Bob Squier. Have the Republicans pulled a snow job on the American voters by making them believe Bill Clinton has raised their taxes?"
- CNN anchor Bernard Shaw on Inside Politics, July 19.

 

Tough Questions

"You talk about a culture of cynicism. Who's to blame for it? Is it our fault?"

"You have said, Mr. President, that you have been criticized more than any of your predecessors or any of your recent ones."

"How do you morally square passing a crime bill without a racial justice clause?"
- questions from Boston Globe editors and reporters in interview with President Clinton, July 20.

 

Rude, Sexist Far Right

"It is the election after the Year of the Woman, and the historic gains by women have collided with the radical right's nostalgia for the way things were. Conservative radio talk-show hosts feed the resentment of many men over what they perceive as 'fem- centric' policies that promote women's concerns at their expense. ..Much of the right-wing fear over 'fem-control' seems to center on the First Lady, and that is setting the tone for races across the country."
- Newsweek reporter Eleanor Clift in July 11 story headlined "The Year of the Smear: The far right is still talking about family values, but their political manners are ruder all the time."

"Senator Dole, when you embraced Oliver North, you began to back away from universal health care coverage...Some people said it is just a sign, that those moves are signs that the right wing, the far right, is slowly taking over the Republican Party, and maybe taking over in a way that the left wing took over in 1972...How do you feel about the impression that some people have, that the right wing, the far right wing, is moving into a very dominant position in the Republican Party. Do you think that's true?"
- Face the Nation host Bob Schieffer, July 17.

"We're back in just a moment to talk about the President's problems with the extremists of the religious right."
- Today co-host Bryant Gumbel, July 14.

 

Stingy Republicans?

"The Stingy Right (no mandate, puny subsidies)."
- Senator Bob Dole's health proposal as summarized in Newsweek chart, July 25 issue, page 20.

"Bob Dole has 40 Republicans lined up behind his modest package of insurance reforms (and a not-so-modest $100 billion in subsidies for the working poor)."
- Newsweek Senior Writer Joe Klein, three pages later.

 

ABC Reporter: I'm With You, Hillary

"So at least from the physicians represented here, you get a 100 percent vote, including mine, for universal coverage."
- ABC reporter Dr. Tim Johnson to Hillary Clinton on Good Morning America, July 19.

 

Souter's "Progressing"

"I remember when Blackmun came up. I think I was the first to call him and Burger the 'Minnesota Twins.' They voted identically, and that was conservative every time, and Blackmun progressed. And Souter is progressing."
- Associated Press reporter Barry Schweid on Washington Week in Review, July 15.

 

And For That Next Clinton Supreme Court Vacancy...

"I've changed my mind about the Second Amendment. I don't think it should be repealed after all...the Second Amendment provides a sound constitutional argument for banning handguns...That is not about guns at all. It is about safety. And guns are not a guarantee of safety; they are a threat to it. The amendment was designed to protect 'the security of a free state,' and 'not as a means of allowing an armed insurrection of that very state,' a committee of the Associaton of the Bar of the City of New York wrote to members of Congress late last year...And that's what the Second Amendment is about. It's about freedom. Freedom not to be shot."
- Former NBC News President Michael Gartner in his July 19 USA Today column.

 

Blathering Rush

"What you get at Rush Limbaugh is Rush Limbaugh. And you just get this blathering and it is entertaining and it's funny. But there are some messages there that are wrong, and there some that clearly are way off on the ideological spectrum."
- Los Angeles Times Washington reporter Glenn Bunting on C-SPAN's Journalists' Roundtable, July 8.

 

Let's Ensure That All Our Enemies Have a Couple of Nukes

"So far it's playing out brilliantly. And clearly Kim Il Sung desperately wanted a high-level guest. It was Billy Graham in February, [Senators] Nunn and Lugar almost went. Carter was the man. But what we are looking at now is perhaps a more mature way of evaluating nonproliferation. It may be better to have a stable North Korea with one or two bombs than a threatened regime with some sort of secret program."
- Newsweek's Eleanor Clift on The McLaughlin Group, June 25.

 

Looking Up Hyperbole in the Dictionary...

"Stonewall became a symbol to gays the world over, their Bunker Hill, their Bastille, their Tiananmen Square."
- The late Time drama critic William A. Henry III on The MacNeil-Lehrer NewsHour, June 27.

 

Let's Create a New Food Intake Regulatory Agency

"What is it do you think government can do about this? If we declare that obesity is a disease, would that make any difference at all?"
- CBS This Morning co-host Paula Zahn on a study marking one-third of Americans as obese, July 18.

 

This Is Your Brain on Drugs

"I have no doubt that if Rush Limbaugh or Pat Robertson or Ollie North ever got real power, there would be concentration camps and mass death."
- Radical poet Allen Ginsberg in The Progressive, August 1994.

 

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