Notable Quotables - 09/18/1989
Drug Money I
"The President says
the issue is not money, but in fact it is money, and everything in this plan
is constrained by the fact that one, the President does not want to ask for
new taxes, and two, we're working under the Gramm-Rudman budget restrictions.
There just isn't money."
- Lesley Stahl on the CBS News special after Bush's speech, September 5.
Drug Money II
"It won't be as
easy to get Congress in line, because the fight's not really about drug
policy, it's about taxes. Congressional Democrats want the President to agree
to raising them so they can spend them on the drug war, and a lot of other
things."
- Brit Hume on ABC's World News Tonight, September 6.
It Naturally Follows...
"It's a big
business that blossomed six years ago when, in the midst of a recession,
Washington cut back on its help to the big city poor...And along came
crack."
- Richard Threlkeld on the CBS Evening News, September 5.
"Overall, U.S. drug
usage is declining. The crisis has grown acute in the ghetto because of the
mean, regressive priorities of the Reagan years. These have pushed so many of
the less fortunate into despair, crime and the use of crack."
- Boston Globe editorial writer Randolph Ryan, September 6.
Communist Freedom Fighter
"Jaruzelski: Polish
Patriot, Patron of the Opposition"
- August 27 Los Angeles Times headline for op-ed piece by Tad Szulc,
a former New York Times reporter.
KGB Chief
"Like Soviet
President Mikhail Gorbachev before him, Kryuchkov has taken the personal
route, talking of his fondness for Bellini's opera 'Norma.' He swoons over the
piano mastery of Van Cliburn, and hints that he would arrange a Moscow
apartment for the pianist if he would only come here more often. Then he sighs
over his exhausting workday at Dzerzhinsky Square: 'The KGB chairman's life is
no bed of roses.'"
- Reporter David Remnick in The Washington Post, September 8, 1989.
"According to an
article in The Washington Post, Andropov 'is fond of cynical political jokes
with an anti-regime twist....collects abstract art, likes jazz and Gypsy
music,' and 'has a record of stepping out of his high party official's cocoon
to contact dissidents'....Besides the Viennese waltz and the Hungarian czarda,
he 'dances the tango gracefully.'"
- Edward Jay Epstein in The New Republic, February 7, 1983.
Jimmy Carter
"While Reagan
peddles his time and talents to the highest bidder and Gerald Ford perfects
his putt and Richard Nixon struggles to gain a toehold in history, Carter,
like some jazzed superhero, circles the globe at 30,000 ft., seeking
opportunities to Do Good."
- Stanley Cloud, Time Washington Bureau Chief, September 11 issue.
No Liberals on TV
"The hiring of
Kinsley is a blow to liberal activists who had counted on a post-Braden Crossfire
giving them a regular voice - their only one - on national TV. Liberals have
argued for years - with justification - that public-affairs discussion shows
range from those firmly in the political center to the far-right crowd of The
McLaughlin Group, Buchanan's own The Capital Gang on CNN and, in
effect, Crossfire. Hence, the perspective of the left is inevitably
excluded, for panelists designated as liberals on these right-tilted shows are
almost always centrists."
- Los Angeles Times television reviewer Howard Rosenberg, August 30.
Bensonhurst and the Baltics
"Just at the time
the Big Bang threat to the world community is receding, each of the
superpowers has been rent internally by ancient and barely repressed
tribalisms. In the United States, that means race hatred and a racial killing
in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn. In the Soviet empire, that means nationalist and
ethnic strife."
- Harrison Rainie, U.S. News & World Report Assistant Managing
Editor and former top aide to Senator Moynihan (D-NY), September 11 issue.
Atoning for Environmental Sins
"It is easy for
Americans to criticize Brazil's record on the environment, since they already
live in a rich, industrialized country. But the U.S. achieved this status
largely by doing just what Brazil is condemned for: ruthlessly cutting down
most of its native forests-and fouling the environment in the process....
"But a willingness
by Americans to make painful choices in atoning for their own sins would go
far to defuse the Brazilians' indignation. Further stiffening of fuel-economy
standards for new American cars, for example, would send a strong signal. So
would an increase in federal gasoline taxes to bring U.S. fuel prices closer
to those in Brazil and the rest of the world. And perhaps most to the point,
the U.S. should stop its questionable logging of ancient forests in the
Pacific Northwest and Alaska."
- Michael D. Lemonick, Time Associate Editor, September 18.
Peter's Priorities
"And yet,
Congresswoman Schneider, in 1989, fiscal 1989 as we say in America, the
Environmental Protection Agency got 5.1 billion dollars and the Defense
Department got 290 billion dollars. What's that tell us about our
priorities?"
- ABC anchor Peter Jennings on the September 12 Capital to Capital
special "The Environment: Crisis In The Global Village."
PBS on Modern Art
"It has not been a
pleasant summer for art in your Nation's Capital. Censorship, exhibition
cancellations and protests followed by threats, recriminations, false
accusations and everyone talking about art few have seen. The stench of
hypocrisy and mendacity permeates the already hot, acrid air we breathe this
time of year in Washington."
- William Dunlap in an article in WETA's program guide, September issue.
Arrogance Incarnate
"A jack-leg
Governor from a horse's ass state. How could he play with us in the big
leagues?"
- Washington Post Executive Editor Benjamin Bradlee on how
Washington perceived White House Chief of Staff John Sununu, quoted by David
Shaw in the August 26 Los Angeles Times.
Freudian Slip of the Month
"This is not going
to tell you whether or not you are a racist or a liberal."
- Today co-host Bryant Gumbel on his then upcoming R.A.C.E.
NBC News special on racial attitudes, September 5.
- L. Brent
Bozell III; Publisher
- Brent H. Baker, Tim Graham; Editors
- Jim Heiser, Richard Marois, Patrick Swan, Dorothy Warner; Media Analysts
