Notable Quotables - 09/17/1990
What Is The Second Amendment?
"A constitutional
right which gun lovers have lorded over us for years. But the right to bear
arms has blossomed into the right to deliver instruments of certain death into
the hands of people who probably aren't sportsmen and probably aren't
collectors...While our children are being gunned down by thugs and criminals,
we continue to allow ourselves to be bullied by a gun lobby which refuses to
budge on issues which make simple common sense....Constitutional rights? Ask
the parents of the children who were shot this summer about the right to bear
arms. They bear only the pain of their loss."
- CBS This Morning co-Host Harry Smith in his Friday feature
"The Record of Who We Are," August 31.
Is Knife Control Next?
"The slaying, and
those that preceded it and will follow it, certainly will intensify cries for
more police and harsher penalties for criminals. But as long as the type of
knife used to kill Watkins is sold in half of the variety stores in Times
Square, it will be difficult to recruit enough police to erase this crime
wave."
- Washington Post reporter Michael Specter on the stabbing of a Utah
man in New York, September 6.
Hardening or Softening on Iraq?
Bush, Gorbachev Toughen
Stand Against Iraq"
- Washington Post front page, September 10.
"Bush agrees to
soften Iraq embargo"
- Washington Times front page, same day.
America's Done the Same
"Though the
conventional wisdom regards Iraq's seizure of Kuwait as purely a demonstration
of Saddam's wickedness, there are extenuating circumstances...the British
arbitrarily created a kingdom of Iraq ....Kuwait's semisecret violation of
OPEC production agreements also helped drive down the price of oil. This was
fine for American motorists, but it deprived Iraq of badly needed funds. Such
conflicts have traditionally been regarded as fairly legitimate grounds for
war - the U.S. acquired California in 1846 on thinner pretexts."
- Time Senior Writer Otto Friedrich's "Essay," September
10.
Slave Labor: the Only Option
"To feed the
nation, the Kremlin had no choice but to order millions of city dwellers into
the fields."
- ABC reporter Mike von Fremd on solutions to the Soviet bread shortage,
September 4 World News Tonight.
Shapiro on Heroes
"Let Ronald Reagan
ride off into the sunset untroubled by fleeting memories of astrologers,
smoke-and-mirrors budget arithmetic, and arms-for-hostages swaps. Dwell
instead on those political tall timbers still standing, the heirs of
Jefferson, Madison, and Lincoln....Only Jesse Jackson, still an acquired taste
for most white Americans, can strike the kind of inspirational pose that one
could imagine being immortalized in granite."
- Time Senior Writer Walter Shapiro in the September GQ.
"What made Ferraro,
Hart, and Quayle targets was both the media's collective conviction that they
did not measure up - that they were unworthy of popular acclaim - and the
frustration of not being able to convey this simple truth within the
conventions of objective journalism. If, say, The Washington Post could have
run the front-page headline "BUSH LIGHTS ON DIM BULB," there might
not have been the same fascination with Quayle's front-line service in the
Indiana National Guard."
- Shapiro, same article.
Know-Nothing Conservatives
"Conservatives
reject the idea that artists deserve aid because cutting-edge ideas lead to
progress. Instead, the right had advanced the know-nothing notion that artists
tend to be leftist, godless, and sexually perverse and that public funding
amounts to promoting an 'antifamily agenda.'"
- Time Senior Writer William A. Henry III, September 10.
Reagan Fantasies
"Back in the days
when the economy was expanding, the cold war ending and the peace dividend
looming large, Ronald Reagan cherished a famous fantasy about flying with
Mikhail Gorbachev over the sun-soaked swatches of Southern California, with
its mosaic of turquoise swimming pools and tidy lawns and fat white garages
plump with new cars. 'Those are the homes of American workers,' he would
proudly declare, describing a Hollywood dreamland where auto mechanics have
summer houses and anyone can go to college."
- Time Associate Editor Nancy Gibs, September 10.
Forgetting Time's Liberal Prejudices
"That was as close
as [Time Editor-in-Chief Hedley] Donovan came to referring to
election years when [Time founder Henry] Luce's Republican prejudices
had poisoned Time's political coverage. Then came his pledge: 'The
vote of Time Inc. should never be considered to be in the pocket of any
particular political leader or party.' With that declaration Time Inc. came of
age."
- Time reporter Thomas Griffith in an August 27 eulogy of the late
Hedley Donovan.
Abortion Label Policy
"The terms
right-to-life and pro-life are used by advocates in the abortion controversy
to buttress their arguments. They should generally be used as part of an
organization's title and in quotations, but not as descriptive adjectives in
the text. Use abortion-rights advocates for those who support freedom of
choice in the matter, antiabortion for those who oppose it."
- Item in the Washington Post Deskbook on Style, pp. 185-186.
Rehnquist's Image Problems
"Chief Justice
Rehnquist had the kind of image problems that might be expected of a jurist
who habitually rejected constitutional equality for women, approved the
execution of allegedly insane prisoners without a hearing, denied
constitutional equality to aliens and bastards, asserted that the public did
not have a constitutional right to attend court trials, said prisoners had no
rights to practice religious freedom, and spoke warmly of the legendary Isaac
('Hanging Judge') Parker, who cheerfully ordered eighty-five executions."
- Former CBS News law reporter Fred Graham in his book Happy Talk.
Jeane's Friends
"As a democracy,
America has always had trouble figuring out how to deal with dictators....Jeane
Kirkpatrick, former U.N. Ambassador and friend of Argentine generals who
murdered tens of thousands of their countrymen, tried to elevate our
inconsistency into principle by arguing that Communist dictators are
totalitarian, while anti-Communist dictators were merely 'authoritarian' -
and thus more palatable. But it was an effort to give intellectual
respectability to a crude ideology, like slopping a coat of varnish on a
rough-hewn stool."
- U.S. News and World Report Senior Writer Stephen Budiansky,
September 10.
Starring in The Dan Rather Story...
"The best person to star in the movie of my life is: Arsenio Hall."
"Every New Year's I
resolve: To love more."
- Dan Rather answering a quiz in the Boston Herald, September 2.
- L. Brent
Bozell III; Publisher
- Brent H. Baker, Tim Graham; Editors
- Callista Gould, Jim Heiser, Marian Kelley, Gerard Scimeca; Media Analysts
- Kristin K. Bashore; Administrative Assistant
