Notable Quotables - 09/12/1994

 

Why Would Anyone Leave Cuba? It's a Worker's Paradise

"Back then, the island may have been a thorn in Washington's side, but it was a beacon of success for much of Latin America and the Third World. For decades, Cuba's health care and education systems were touted as great achievements of the revolution....Some say the trade ban has never given Cuba a chance to see whether or not Castro's socialism might work."
- CBS' Giselle Fernandez, September 4 Evening News.

"Welcome to Fidel Castro's playground, Cuba's Caribbean paradise few have seen, a Cuba the commandante is now inviting the world to enjoy. In the last two years alone, Cuba and its sultry beaches has become a major vacation hot spot...While tourism may be changing the landscape of Cuba's Caribbean shores, Fidel Castro is banking on it to save his workers' paradise from becoming a paradise lost."
- CBS This Morning reporter Giselle Fernandez, November 3, 1993.

 

We Never Cared About Freedom, Just Votes

"Did we ever have a Cuba policy, really? Or did we have a policy that was dictated by a minority of Cuban Americans and by the fact that Florida is a delegate-rich state?....nothing to do with the fact that Florida always goes Republican in elections, but we'll let that be."
- Today co-host Bryant Gumbel to Bob Squier, August 30.

 

Gump: A True Reaganite Conservative

"America is cheering [for Forrest Gump]. Much as it cheered Ronald Reagan, who more than Schweik or Candide, is the real proto-Gump. Reagan too was relentlessly upbeat. Reagan too was extraordinarily lucky. And his luck, like Gump's, was often built on the backs of people who suffered off-screen. Forest had bankrupt shrimpers, martyred Vietnam buddies, and his wife, whose death was remarkably demure, considering her ailment. Reagan scored points off America's poor; somehow managed to cloak himself in heroism while apologizing for a needless screw-up that killed 241 servicemen in Beirut; and avoided tarnishing his reputation for optimism by spending too much time on AIDS....

"Gumpism risks devolving quickly into a mindless, heartless conservatism where, if the next guy over is having a rough time of it, it's not because America has failed to grapple with the real and complex problems that face it - it's probably because he's not sufficiently upbeat. Or not decent enough. Lacks family values. Reads insufficiently of The Book of Virtues."
- Essay by Time Associate Editor David Van Biema, August 29.

 

Bill Clinton's Excellent Presidency

"Isn't it about time someone says something nice about President Clinton?...He proposed and got enacted a sound economic program. He proposed and got passed a strong anti-crime bill. And he and his wife have raised health care to the point where now we're all talking about it as a real problem that must be solved....Is that not a record to be proud of?...So, why is he getting all this guff? Because of blunderbusses on the radio and the dunderheads in his administration....The blunderbusses simply are wealthy cynics whose livelihoods would disappear if people felt good about this country and their President. So, on their radio talk shows, they fire noisily and randomly at anyone and anything related to the president."
- Former NBC News President Michael Gartner in his USA Today column, August 30.

"Well, it may seem the sheerest act of heresy to say so, but far from being pathologically dishonest, Bill Clinton has been more faithful to his word than any other chief executive in recent memory. He may have skirted the truth about the draft, Gennifer Flowers, Paula Jones, and so on. But Clinton has kept his contract with voters. On policy issues, he does done almost exactly what he said he was going to do, despite setbacks and enormous obstacles. And by so doing, he has made himself an excellent President."
- Former Newsweek reporter Jacob Weisberg in New York, September 5 issue.

 

No Taking Sides Here

"Nice to have you here. Hopefully we'll see that crime bill passed."
- ABC Good Morning America co-host Joan Lunden to gun control lobbyist Carol McCarthy, August 19.

So Much for the Conservative Argument

"Opponents, most of them Republicans determined to deny the President an easy victory on even the most politically easy subject, argued that the bill was loaded with special-interest spending, bleeding-heart prevention programs and onerous and anti-constitutional prohibitions on the right to bear arms. Most of these claims do not stand up to scrutiny."
- New York Times (and soon to be NBC News) reporter Gwen Ifill, August 28.

 

Does She Shoot the Rowdy Kids?

"Meier, is in a way, the Mikhail Gorbachev of American education, a social democrat who grew up with the values of the progressive left but concluded later that some ideas with a rightist taint - like choice of schools for parents and students - were necessary to kill off a bureaucratic monster strangling the profession she loved."
- Washington Post reporter Jay Mathews on teacher Deborah Meier, September 7.

 

Speaking of Cynicism...

"The Wall Street crowd is basically new money, which is to say they stole it fair and square. They are somewhat resented by 'old money' - those whose fathers or mothers stole it fair or square."
- Washington Post reporter Brett D. Fromson, August 14 news story on those vacationing in the Hamptons.

 

Clinton on Vacation? Could Be Worse

"Whenever Mr. Reagan got all worked up and sounded like he wanted to blow up the world or throw people out into the snow, his people said to him 'Take it easy. Relax.' And he did. Perhaps too much."
- CNN political analyst William Schneider, September 2 Inside Politics.

 

The West Can't Win

"Though Africa owes much of its current plight to Western meddling, the outside powers have worsened matters by turning their backs during the most desperate times."
- Newsweek general editor Joshua Hammer, August 1.

 

The Clintons on Health: Misunderstood Centrists

"The White House was not so much driven in this by the desire to boost government power, as its most vehement ideological opponents have insisted, as it was by the need to raise new money to expand insurance coverage, without raising taxes."
- Boston Globe reporter Peter Gosselin, August 18 news story.

 

Feeling at Home with Liberals

"At first it seemed preposterous. Ollie North asking me for money? After all, I live in Northern Virginia, hardly a hotbed of your political persuasion. And not just Northern Virginia but Reston....And not just Reston but the original Lake Anne area, a liberal bastion that has gone over the cliff for Humphrey, McGovern, Dukakis and a hundred other heartbreakers. In short, a place where I feel right at home."
- Robert Webb, an editor of The Washington Post Outlook section, on receiving direct mail from North, August 28.

 

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