Notable Quotables - 08/28/1995

 

Failing to Help CBS Democrats

 

"So why not stay in the Senate with your party and restore - if it's all broken, have you no responsibility to even your Democratic constituents from New Jersey who work right within this building?"
- CBS This Morning co-host Harry Smith to Senator Bill Bradley who announced he will not seek re-election, August 17.

 

Gephardt and Daschle: The Media's Middle

 

"The Democrats can offer only a cacophony of views, ranging from the leftist tract of [Jesse] Jackson to the more centrist perspectives of House minority leader Richard Gephardt of Missouri and Senate minority leader Tom Daschle."
- Time Washington reporter Jeffrey H. Birnbaum, in an August 14 story on what the parties can offer Perot voters. Gephardt's 1992 American Conservative Union (ACU) rating: 0. Americans for Democratic Action (ADA) rating in 1992: 85 percent. Daschle's 1992 ACU: 22 percent; 1992 ADA: 95.

 

A Massive Six Tenths of One Percent Slash from the Federal Budget

 

"A bitter battle on Capitol Hill has ended with a deep slash in federal spending. The House made more than $9 billion in cuts, hitting education and employment programs especially hard. NBC's Joe Johns has more."
- NBC Today anchor Matt Lauer, August 4.

 

More Concerned About Investigators Than Investigated

 

"The Whitewater scandal occupied key committees in both the House and Senate last week - a two-ring circus whose single goal seemed to be causing maximum embarrassment to Bill and Hillary Clinton and their friends."
- Opening sentence of August 21 Newsweek story headlined "An End in Sight (Maybe), Whitewater: Trying to finish the investigations." Story written by Mark Hosenball and Michael Isikoff.

"But these won't be the last ones. The Republicans plan several more rounds, and these hearings left us with more questions than answers about the tangled Whitewater mess and Republicans' motives."
- CNN's Bob Franken concluding an August 11 World News story.

 

White Men Ruin Everything

 

"Why don't we adequately fund urban education at the preschool and elementary level to eliminate the need for race-based admission standards later on?....The uncomfortable truth is that the tension about raceand gender in this country is not about facts; it is about fear. In the '60s and '70s, we settled all this on paper. We desegregated the schools. We admitted women to the Ivy League. We granted women control of their reproductive lives. And in response? White, middle class families abandoned our cities and schools to poor minorities. Universities educated the women they had admitted, then denied them tenure....We thought we had granted women the right to abortion in 1973. But barely a year goes by that the U.S. Supreme Court calendar does not include a case attempting to limit the right to abortion outlined in Roe v. Wade."
- Boston Globe reporter Eileen McNamara in an August 16 front page "commentary."

 

Internment Camps, Proposition 187: Same Thing

"Is it really a comfort to know that Canadians were as disdainful of civil liberties and common sense as the rest of us in our yellow fever?...In California, where I grew up, they're doing it all over again, punishing brown-skinned berry-pickers for the collapse of the aerospace industry and the savings-and-loan scandals."
- CBS Sunday Morning TV critic John Leonard on a movie about Japanese relocation camps in Canada during World War II, July 30.

 

Abandoned to Crazed Uncles and Big Business

 

"The Republicans say they are for the poor as well as the rich. So how come they want to offer no aid and comfort - and care - when the poor are put upon? How come they want to eliminate federal welfare programs and leave the poor and the sick and the unlucky at the mercy of the states - some of which don't have a great record of caring for people who don't make political contributions. Why do they want to let states take away aid to provide for abortions in case of rape and incest? So only the rich won't have to bear children of violent strangers or crazed uncles? Do the Republicans perhaps have a double standard - not of men and women, but of rich and poor?"
- Former NBC News President Michael Gartner in his USA Today column, August 15.

"The sordid, cynical effort to pass regulatory `reform' is all about money. The legislation is designed to enhance the profits of big business by tying the regulatory process in knots. Government officials will be virtually neutralized as they are forced to make endless cost-benefit analyses before determining whether to protect Americans from unsafe food or drugs, from dangers in the workplace, from a tainted blood supply, from pollutants in the environment, and on and on."
- Former NBC News reporter Bob Herbert, August 7 New York Times column.

"You're probably wondering how I'm going to make this segue from Gingrich to Galapagos but the point I was trying to make was that, in the 19th century, after Darwin, you had a movement called, that you know all about, called Social Darwinism, where people applied Darwin's rules of nature to society: survival of the fittest, the strong prosper, the weak don't. I'm wondering, do you, some people think we actually are headed back into Social Darwinism now, a new way of looking at society's responsibilities."
- Question from Newsweek Senior Editor Jonathan Alter to ABC's Forrest Sawyer, August 12 CNBC Talk Live.

 

Never Mind Current Events, Media Can't Get History Straight

 

"The Russians attacked on August 9th; on the 11th the U.S. assured the Japanese that they could keep their Emperor. [Historian Gar] Alperovitz says this assurance could have produced a surrender without the atomic bombs. That is now the prevailing view among U.S. historians."
- NBC reporter Gary Matsumoto, August 6 Today.

vs.

"Japanese students were still being drafted to prepare for the expected U.S. invasion; boys as young as 12 were being trained to fly Kamikaze suicide missions....Japan's Emperor and civilian leaders had wanted to end the war weeks earlier but feared a military revolt. Then came the atomic bombings. On August 9th Emperor Hirohito summoned top government officials to the Imperial Palace where he told them the end had come; it was time to accept the unthinkable. Kasotoshi Hondo wrote Japan's definitive history on the last hours of the war. Through a film based on his book many Japanese learned...how the military attempted a coup d'etat on the 14th of August. Several hundred troops stormed the palace trying to find the recording of the Emperor's surrender announcement."
- ABC's Mark Litke on World News Tonight, August 14.

 

Lionizing Politically Correct Cop Killers

 

"Sympathizers around the globe from Dublin to Soweto hail him as a political prisoner punished for taking journalistic aim at politicians, police and the prison system (most recently in a book entitled Live from Death Row). If he is put to death, they argue, he will be the first American since Ethel and Julius Rosenberg to be executed for his political beliefs."
- Time Senior Writer Jill Smolowe in August 7 story on battle to save Mumia Abu-Jamal, convicted of murdering a Philadelphia police officer.

 

- Brent Bozell III, Publisher; Brent H. Baker, Tim Graham; Editors
- Geoffrey Dickens, James Forbes, Steve Kaminski, Gesele Rey, Clay Waters; Media Analysts
- Kathleen Ruff, Circulation Manager; Gene Eliasen, Melissa Gordon; Interns