Notable Quotables - 09/19/1988
Campaign '88: Bush
"Bush has been
having problems winning over blue-collar Democrats who voted for Ronald
Reagan. If today's reception is any indication, that task may be even more
difficult than he thought."
- NBC's Lisa Myers concluding September 6 story on shipyard workers booing
and heckling George Bush.
"Part of Bush's
challenge has been to hold on to the votes of working people who voted for
Ronald Reagan. He appeared to make few if any converts here today, but few of
those here today said they'd ever voted for Reagan, or any other
Republican."
- Brit Hume on ABC's World News Tonight, same day.
"Reporters now
describe Bush as confident and eloquent on the stump. I have to draw the line
here. When I tuned in C-SPAN the other day, Bush was endorsing the death
penalty for 'drugpins.' Sounds like something you play with tiny bowling balls
at the mall. ('Ma, can I have another quarter for drugpins?') Then he launched
into his loony Pledge of Allegiance routine. Stature ain't what it used to
be."
- Newsweek Washington correspondent Timothy Noah, in the September
26 New Republic.
Campaign '88: Quayle
Jacqueline Adams:
"At today's rally in a Dayton, Ohio suburb, Quayle's pro-defense rhetoric
was almost comical."
Dan Quayle: "Today
we are naked. We are absolutely nude to an attack. And we are going to move
forward with the Strategic Defense Initiative that will provide a defense for
America."
- CBS Evening News, August 20.
"We had
insufficient hard evidence at the beginning to justify the excessive coverage
that emanated from New Orleans. We were late in working the records offices
and officers in both Indiana and the Pentagon. As a result, we published
tentative and contradictory information and hearsay...It was not an issue in
the presidential campaigns of Gephardt, Hart, or Biden. It has not been made
an issue in the case of Dukakis who found refuge at Swarthmore while tens of
thousands of World War II veterans were called back to hump it through the
paddies and mountains of Korea...We resisted fairly well the temptation to
join the mob in the Dukakis 'mental health' episode; but in the present
[Quayle] case, in our eagerness to not be left behind, succumbed to the soiled
embrace of Paula Parkinson and the promotion department of Playboy
magazine."
- Internal memorandum to Washington Post staffers from Ombudsman
Richard Harwood. Published in the September 15 Washington Times.
Campaign '88: Dukakis
"According to a
report published at the time in The Boston Globe, Dukakis was
returning a toast at a banquet with Chinese officials in Canton when he
reminisced about his school days in Brookline and his then strong support for
the overthrow of China's republic by the Communists. 'I was a 13-year-old boy
at Baker School in Brookline and I was asked to debate changes in China,'
Dukakis told his hosts. 'I delivered a ringing condemnation of the Kuomintang
(the nationalist party, which ruled the Republic) and strongly advocated
revolution in China. So you see, you have a friend here.'"
- From a syndicated column by Donald Lambro.
Campaign '88: Economy
"John Schneider is
out of work and has quit looking for a job, but he is not counted in today's
unemployment figures. If he and others in his predicament were counted,
today's unemployment rate would be a lot higher...In major U.S. cities, a
federal study estimates that almost 35 percent of people 16 years and older
are neither employed nor looking for work because of lack of skills, poverty,
drug abuse, apathy or hopelessness."
- NBC's Irving R. Levine on 0.2 percent rise in unemployment rate, September
2 Nightly News.
Bill Moyers
"And in Nicaragua,
the Contras used weapons from the 'enterprise' against civilians. It's a
terrorist war they're fighting. Old men, women and children are caught in the
middle or killed deliberately as the Contras use violence against peasants to
pressure their government. Thousands have died. Even when the hearings were
taking place in Washington this summer, a Contra raid in Nicaragua killed
three children and a pregnant woman. As the casualties mounted, the secret
government in Washington knew that the Contra leaders were not such noble
freedom fighters after all."
- Bill Moyers in The Secret Government, the Constitution in Crisis,
repeated by PBS on September 14.
"Every filmmaker,
every journalist has to be arrogant. You have to say 'I have the truth, you
got to pay attention, you got to listen.'"
- Bill Moyers to movie producer David Puttnam during the PBS series A
World of Ideas.
Nicaragua
"Sandinistas end
orphan aid as a warning to Congress"
- Washington Times, September 14.
"Contras Disagree
on Talks: Expected Offer to Managua Falls Through"
- Washington Post, same day.
The 1960s
"I can only speak
for myself, but I was a long-haired Ivy League leftist in the late '60s, and
I'm still basically proud of what I did then."
- Newsweek Senior Writer Mickey Kaus, in a September 5 article
titled "Confessions of an Ex-Radical."
Cows & Dogs & Cats
"Every month a
truck would come from some slaughterhouse. I had become friendly with the
cows; I knew them as individuals....I first realized something was ethically
wrong with the milk industry - and I was right in the middle of it. You don't
really know your relationship with an animal until you're making your living
off of it. But I don't think it's right to exploit animals for money, or for
any reason....I want [pets] to be free of humans. I think we should have a
20-year plan to phase out breeding [dogs]. Then, after a few centuries, we can
move on to cats."
- Washington Post columnist Colman McCarthy in The Animals'
Agenda, an animal rights magazine. Thanks to Washington Times
columnist John Lofton, September 16.
- 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
