Notable Quotables - 09/04/1989
Barney Frank
"I've known Barney
Frank since I was in college. He's a man of surpassing integrity that I've
never known to be questioned. I think he's a master politician, which people
forget. He's also a magnificent Congressman, and above all, there is nothing
in this episode that counters any of those other images, and I would expect
him to survive this smear in good standing."
- Boston Globe Washington Bureau reporter and columnist Tom Oliphant
on Inside Washington, August 26.
"SEX SCANDAL PERILS
FRANK: Back home, constituents reconsider"
- Washington Times, August 31.
"For Now,
Constituents Supporting Rep. Frank"
- Washington Post, same day.
More Troubling Good News
"There was some
welcome economic news today. Strong improvement in this country's trade
deficit...It was the smallest deficit in almost five years. However, some
economists are warning that the deficit could get worse as exports suffer from
the rising value of the dollar on the world markets these days."
- Tom Brokaw on NBC Nightly News, August 17.
First Things First
"Global warming is
not a fact, just a widely held theory. The problem is if man waits for proof,
it may be too late."
- CNN's Don Harrison narrating the conclusion to the CNN special Climate
In Crisis, August 1.
Cold War Riddles
"What do you call a
conservative in the age of Mikhail Gorbachev? Not a liberal, but maybe a
has-been-or an ostrich. Yes, a crackdown in Eastern Europe would quickly make
hard-liners seem prudent again. For now, though, their cherished ideas are
looking a little shopworn."
- Newsweek Senior Writer Jonathan Alter, September 4.
Bush & Blacks
"Okay, you've said
the niceties. Now let's talk about what he really said, and what he didn't
say. He didn't offer any resources to correct the problem. Are you
disappointed?....He offered no legislative action to address the void left by
recent Supreme Court rulings. You disappointed?....On the one hand, he says
he's committed to black opportunity, at the same time he applauds all the
recent Supreme Court rulings that were against that very opportunity. Are you
sure where he is?"
- NBC Today host Bryant Gumbel's questions to Urban League head John
Jacob, August 9.
Still Slinging the Sleaze Factor
"Mr. Attorney
General, conventional wisdom here in Washington has it that you and your
department are too busy dealing with what's leftover from the Reagan
Administration - those scandals - to do the rest of your work. For example,
there's the HUD scandal, there's the Pentagon procurement fraud. Do you ever
go to work and get angry and frustrated and think about the mess that you
inherited?...Are you just appalled by what happened during the Reagan
years?"
- White House reporter John Cochran on NBC's Meet the Press, August
20.
Reagan & Racism
"At the same time,
some experts said, years in which the Reagan Administration questioned the
value of racial quotas and affirmative action made speaking out against such
programs acceptable. This, they contend, made it easier for racists to openly
express their attitudes. Groups like the Klan and the Skinheads have both
begun targeting the young for recruitment."
- Kirk Johnson in The New York Times, August 27.
Homeless Exaggeration
"A new research
report is warning that homelessness in this country could easily double or
triple if there is a mild recession. Current estimates on the number of
homeless people in the United States range from about 655,000 to four million,
and the study by researchers at Rutgers University says the total is growing
20 to 40 per cent each year. It says there now are up to 40 million Americans
living on the knife edge of homelessness, many of them just one paycheck, one
domestic argument from the streets."
- Anchor Lou Waters on CNN PrimeNews, August 8.
Poland Comparisons
"You don't have
people starving there, as you do in some countries in the West. You don't have
people sleeping out in the streets, as I see them doing in New York, but
you've got a life of safe mediocrity."
- Bert Quint on CBS Sunday Morning, August 20.
Enforcing Drug Stereotypes
"It's very
interesting, Mr. Bennett, in your entire description of why people use drugs,
you didn't use the word poverty; you didn't use the word underprivileged; you
didn't use the word black or hispanic or poor white. Are you really such a
hardnose that you don't believe this has anything to do with it?"
- New York Times reporter R.W. Apple speaking to Drug Czar William
Bennett on NBC's Meet the Press, August 27.
Bush Ambassadors
"Rewarding a
political supporter by naming him ambassador to a desirable foreign capital is
a tradition almost as old as the Republic...Still, the Bush Administration is
carrying tradition to an extreme. Evidence shows that so far Bush's
ambassadorial appointees are more political and, in many cases, less qualified
than any in recent memory."
- Reporter Lisa Myers on NBC Nightly News, August 7.
"A study by Government
Executive magazine says nearly two thirds of Mr. Bush's nominees are
political appointments, not career diplomats. But a study by State Department
officials shows that Mr. Bush reappointed most of the career diplomats already
holding ambassadorships. Counted that way, the Bush political nominees account
for 36 percent of American diplomats, only slightly higher than the historical
average."
- ABC's John Martin on Nightline, July 24.
Moral Equivalent of the Founding Fathers?
"Watching the
Supreme Soviet invent itself is a little like speed-reading the Federalist
Papers."
- Moscow reporter Bill Keller in The New York Times Magazine, August
27.
Eulogy for a Socialist
"Most lasting, I
think, are not his organizational efforts....What will endure is his writing,
his scholarship...But as in most of Harrington's writing, the scholarly
research and analysis is merely the foundation upon which rests a call for a
new sensibility, for a new moral order, for new political and economic
structures that would improve the everyday lives of people throughout the
world...His admirers feel privileged that Michael Harrington shared his vision
with us."
- Kirk Scharfenberg, Deputy Managing Editor of The Boston Globe, in
a tribute to "Harrington's Heroic Brand of Socialism," August 20.
- L. Brent
Bozell III; Publisher
- Brent H. Baker, Tim Graham; Editors
- Jim Heiser, Richard Marois, Patrick Swan, Dorothy Warner; Media Analysts
- Cynthia Bulman; Administrative Assistant
