Notable Quotables - 10/13/2003
Double Standard on Sex Crimes
"A lot of these women have made very specific accusations about grabbing them sexually and making lewd suggestions. You described it as playful and rowdy, and the kind of mischief that you engaged in when you were a younger man. But based on their descriptions, in many states, what you did would be criminal, it would be a sexual assault of some kind."
-NBC's Tom Brokaw interviewing Arnold Schwarzenegger on the October 5
Dateline. In 1999, Brokaw refused to cover a woman's complaint that Bill Clinton raped her while he was running for Governor of Arkansas in 1978.
ABC Smears Arnold...
"ABC News obtained a copy of an unpublished book proposal with quotes from what it calls a verbatim transcript of an interview Schwarzenegger gave in 1975 while making the film, Pumping Iron. Asked who his heroes are, he is quoted as saying, 'I admired Hitler, for instance, because he came from being a little man with almost no formal education, up to power. I admire him for being such a good public speaker and for what he did with it.'"
-Linda Douglass on
World News Tonight, October 2.
Reality Check:
"I admired Hitler, for instance, because he came from being a little man with almost no formal education, up to power. I admire him for being such a good public speaker and
for his way of getting to the people and so on. But I don't admire him for what he did with it."
-Schwarzenegger's actual quote, as reported by David D. Kirkpatrick in the October 4
New York Times. (The underlined portion is what Douglass omitted.) World News Tonight never corrected its error.
...So Democrats Don't Have To
"Arnold Schwarzenegger says he's being slimed by dirty politics even though there is no evidence that Democrats planted the stories about his alleged groping of women or past statements he might have made about Hitler."
-Linda Douglass on
World News Tonight, October 3.
Have We Demoralized You, Yet?
"It cannot be easy to spend the last few days of this campaign having to deal constantly with being called a serial groper or a serial abuser of women and being compared, in some way, your admiration for Hitler. Is that tough?"
-Peter Jennings to Schwarzenegger in an interview shown on ABC's
This Week, October 5.
We Ruined Wonderful Iraq
"Before the war, Iraqi women had more freedom to study, to work and to dress as they like than in many Persian Gulf countries. Now they see those rights under threat from the lack of security and from Islamic fundamentalists....Some women will even say they were better off under Saddam. Hania's daughter broke into tears saying she missed him. They say things may get better, but their best hope may be to leave Iraq altogether."
-ABC's Jim Sciutto on
World News Tonight, Sept. 25.
Saddam Deserves an Apology
"Tonight, the man in charge of finding those weapons in Iraq, David Kay, went before Congress and said so far he has come up dry: no weapons, no mobile labs, no nuclear weapons or even an advanced program."
-NBC's Tom Brokaw on the October 2
Nightly News.
"Tonight in a new poll, the American people indicate declining confidence in President Bush on the economy and Iraq. Weapons of mass destruction search comes up empty, but the hunt goes on."
-Dan Rather on the October 2
CBS Evening News.
"The government's top weapons inspector says no weapons of mass destruction have been found in Iraq. The Bush administration says it needs $600 million more to look."
-Peter Jennings on
World News Tonight, October 2.
"Where are Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction? The search has gone on for months now, and a forthcoming report from the CIA's chief weapons hunter, David Kay, says nothing significant has been found."
-Dan Rather on the September 25
CBS Evening News.
"The first progress report on the hunt for chemical and biological weapons has been leaking out. We've had some of it before. It shows very little progress."
-Peter Jennings on ABC's
World News Tonight, Sept. 25.
Reality Check:
"I'm amazed at what was powerful information about both their intent and their actual activities that were not known and were hidden from UN inspectors seems not to have made it to the press. This is information that, had it been available last year, would have been headline news."
-David Kay, describing the findings of his interim report, on
Fox News Sunday, October 5.
Hated for Opposing Communism
"In 1952, [film director Elia] Kazan earned a much darker notoriety when he offered the names of colleagues he claimed to be communist to the House Committee on Un-American Activities. Many felt betrayed. Some never forgave him. When he was awarded an honorary Oscar in 1999, a few refused to acknowledge his accomplishments."
-Tom Brokaw on the Sept. 29
NBC Nightly News.
"2003 was not the first time dissent, the American virtue, the unique right of us Americans, suddenly became an ugly word....Everybody who ever tried to shut the dissenters up wound up hated and reviled, their accomplishments overshadowed by their lack of faith in freedom of speech....When we talk about the death of Elia Kazan, overshadowing his work was the time he unreluctantly and unremorsefully identified eight of his personal friends as communists during his testimony before the House Un-American Activities Committee."
-Keith Olbermann on MSNBC's
Countdown, Sept. 29.
Julie: Liberal Spin = "Good Point"
Bill Plante: "Democrats are already calling for a special counsel, saying the Bush Justice Department shouldnt be investigating the Bush White House, Julie."
Julie Chen: "That is a good point."
-Exchange about the investigation into the leak of a CIA agent's identity, CBS's
The Early Show, Sept. 30.
Even Hillary Says So
"Even Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, who fiercely fought having a special counsel investigate her husband's White House, today demanded one for George Bush."
-Andrea Mitchell on the October 1
NBC Nightly News.
ABC Seeks Out CIA Nemesis
ABC's Jake Tapper: "After former CIA agent Philip Agee published CIA Diary in 1975, blowing the cover of hundreds of CIA operatives, he was considered a traitor.... The first President Bush believed that Richard Welch, a CIA officer in Greece, was killed because Agee blew his cover. In the 1970s as CIA Director, and in the '80s as Vice President, Mr. Bush campaigned to make naming names illegal...."
Philip Agee: "I find it ironic that the son of the first President Bush would be the one to have an administration which would leak a name of a CIA officer undercover."
-World News Tonight, October 1. ABC interviewed Agee in communist Cuba, where he now lives.
Rush, the Retrograde Racist
"Derrick Jackson, who's a columnist for the
Boston Globe, Tim, back in July when ESPN hired Rush Limbaugh, he wrote a column about some of the comments that Mr. Limbaugh has made in the past. In the 1970s, according to this column, Limbaugh told an African-American caller 'take that bone out of your nose and call me back.' He goes on to say Limbaugh has always had crime and black people on the brain. He once said, 'have you ever noticed how all composite pictures of wanted criminals resemble Jesse Jackson?.'..Given the fact that Rush Limbaugh has made these kind of inflammatory comments in the past, was it appropriate for ESPN to hire him in this capacity?"
-NBC's Katie Couric to Tim Russert on the October 1
Today. Couric did not identify Jackson as a left-wing columnist or note that his source was a book published by a far-left group more than 10 years ago.
Limbaugh: Not Nice & Like Hitler
"When you say he's 'a good and decent man,' I don't know him that well personally myself, I have no way of judging one way or the other. But I must tell you I often listen to him when I'm driving into work, and what I hear on the radio is frequently - I don't want to say hateful, that's going a little too far - but he says and does things on the radio that are so disparaging of homosexuals, African-Americans, the homeless. As I say, I think it's clearly part of the act, but it's not gentlemanly, it's not kind."
-ABC's Ted Koppel on
Nightline Oct. 2, rejecting talk show host G. Gordon Liddy's description of Limbaugh.
"What must it be like to live in Rush Limbaugh's world? A world where when anyone other than conservative, white men attempts to do anything or enter any profession, be it business, politics, art or sports, the only reason they're allowed entry or incredibly attain excellence is because the standard was lowered. Be they liberals, people of color, women, the poor or anyone with an accent....Edgy, controversial, brilliant. What a way to shake up intelligent sports commentary. Hitler would have killed in talk radio. He was edgy, too."
-CBS
Sunday Morning contributor Nancy Giles, Oct. 5.
At Least He'll Be Gone By Then
"I'd say the chances are about 50-50 that humanity will be extinct or nearly extinct within 50 years. Weapons of mass destruction, disease, I mean this global warming is scaring the living daylights out of me."
-CNN founder Ted Turner at an Associated Press Managing Editors seminar on Sept. 27, according to an AP story in the
Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Sept. 29.
