Notable Quotables - 08/06/1990
A World Without Brennan
"The Brennan
departure has also caused concern about the survivability of affirmative
action programs. In civil rights circles, there is fear that a Supreme Court,
with a philosophical scale weighted to the right, will no longer be a force
for social change...Also seen at risk in a court without Brennan, the limits
of individual freedom."
- CNN reporter Candy Crowley on PrimeNews, July 21.
"Among the rights
certainly to be affected this time: abortion. Brennan was a forceful advocate
for women's rights and civil rights....Affirmative action programs which
Brennan supported may now be doomed. Freedom of speech and press."
- ABC legal reporter Tim O'Brien on World News Tonight, July 21.
William Brennan and Two Young Girls
"[Brennan] loved
the flag clearly, and the Constitution, too...Maybe the way to remember
Brennan's years on the Court is with some words he spoke to another Georgetown
University event back in 1979. 'The quest for freedom, dignity, and the rights
of man will never end,' he said. The quest, though always old, is never old,
like the poor old woman in Yeats' play. 'Did you see an old woman going down
the path?' asked Bridget. 'I did not,' replied Patrick, who had come into the
house just after the old woman had left it. 'But I saw a young girl and she
had the walk of a queen.' William Brennan loved and served two young girls who
walked like queens - his country, and its highest court."
- Conclusion to story by reporter Bruce Morton on the July 21 CBS Evening
News.
Robert Bork, Call Your Office
"It may not be
quite as easy as the President believes. Judge Souter's given high marks for
intellect, but marks that are not so high for a rather narrow view of
constitutional rights....there are a number of cases that some groups will
regard as troubling, in the church-state area, in the women's rights area, in
the age discrimination area, a certain insensitivity will certainly be
explored at length in the Senate hearings."
- Carl Stern on the July 23 NBC Nightly News.
"Souter wrote
several hundred opinions as a state court justice and they are bound to
generate some controversy. As a bachelor, he showed spare concern for women's
rights, taking a sometimes dim view of rape complaints....He was considered
hostile to claims of age discrimination, though in fairness he frequently was
bound in his decisions as a state judge by prior law. Souter seems just as
bright as the other justices. The question seems to be his commitment to
individual rights."
- Stern on Today, next morning.
Abortion, Women's Rights - Same Thing
"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.
My Hero, Jim Florio
"The problem for
Florio is that, as history has shown, when you step up and are a leader,
people often don't like you. And it can take a long time, even centuries, for
history to look back and say that was a good guy....I think that Florio will
go down as the first, I hope not the last, brave man of the '80s and
'90s."
- Washington Post "Outlook" section editor Jodie Allen on
New Jersey Governor who raised income taxes, July 29 Money Politics.
Never Should Have Left Albania
"These refugees
have been told little about the realities of life in the West, including the
fact that some people sleep on the street...They will soon learn that jobs are
hard to find, consumer goods expensive, relatives in Albania will be missed.
Many refugees, according to experts, will suffer from depression, and in some
cases, drug abuse."
- ABC's Mike Lee on what's facing fleeing Albanians, July 14 World News
Tonight.
You Can't Lie to Congress, But You Can to the People
"Presidents are not
defeated for changing course or for lying. Though it is not an admirable
trait, some political scientists think a President must be able to lie....It
is why President Bush can get away with his switch on tax policy. The
conservatives will howl that Bush is withdrawing from the policies of Ronald
Reagan. But Reagan was largely responsible for the economic mess in which Bush
now finds his presidency."
- Retired Boston Globe Washington Bureau Chief Robert Healy, July
17.
Embarrassed by Low Taxes
"The President has
finally acknowledged that shrinking the deficit will entail raising taxes. The
U.S. has the lowest tax level of any country among the seven represented in
Houston last week. That is a distinction that should inspire neither pride nor
optimism in Americans."
- Time Editor-at-Large Strobe Talbott,
July 23.
Kevin Phillips
"His book is a
tract that exposes massive profiteering by a tiny elite at the expense of the
legitimate productivity and growth of the overwhelming majority, to the
long-range detriment of the nation."
- Washington Post political reporter Thomas B. Edsall on
"conservative" Kevin Phillips' book The Politics of Rich and
Poor in The New Republic, July 30/August 6.
"[C]ountless
liberal analysts over the last five years have documented time and again how
Reaganomics delivered a feast to the greedheads and starvation to the
poor....[The Gilded Age and The Roaring Twenties] were marked by the same
kinds of excesses as the 1980s - gross concentrations of wealth in the hands
of a tiny privileged elite, achieved primarily by deliberate Republican
policies that left most Americans behind while debt, greed, and conspicuous
consumption soared out of control."
- Robert Rankin, national economics correspondent for Knight-Ridder
Newspapers, in the July 22 Philadelphia Inquirer.
Pro-Abortion Agenda?
"ABORTION POLITICS
ARE SAID TO HINDER USE OF FRENCH PILL: BACKLASH IN U.S. FEARED
- New York Times front page, July 29.
Millionaire Jane Pauley Decries the Decade of Greed
"There seems to be
a longing for something that is just more real...In the final analysis, we all
knew the '80s society wasn't real. The Wall Street finances, the yuppies, the
Perrier, the opulence, all of that was not real and after 10 years, maybe
we're starving for a good plain meal."
- Jane Pauley describing her new NBC series Real Life in USA
Today, July 17.
"Jane Pauley needs
a reality check. Real life for her is living in Manhattan and a million-dollar
salary. Stop trashing the '80s, Jane. It's the decade that made you rich and
famous."
- Letter responding to Pauley's remarks, July 19 USA Today.
Earth First, Group Sex Later
"Did Ms. Bari have
anything to do with the fire? 'It wasn't me,' she said. 'I was home in bed
with five witnesses.'"
- Wall Street Journal story on Earth First! activist's role in
burning of logging machine, June 19.
- L. Brent
Bozell III; Publisher
- Brent H. Baker, Tim Graham; Editors
- Callista Gould, Jim Heiser, Marian Kelley, Gerard Scimeca, Stewart Verdery;
Media Analysts
- Kristin K. Bashore; Administrative Assistant
