Notable Quotables - 10/23/2006
ABC Rationalizes N. Korean Bomb
“[North Korean dictator] Kim [Jong-Il] has justified his missile tests and nuclear program as a deterrent to what he sees as an eventual U.S. invasion. It’s a longstanding fear dating back to the Korean War when Kim’s father, Kim Il Sung, feared the U.S. would use nuclear weapons against his country. That historic fear was reinforced 50 years later when the U.S. labeled North Korea part of an ‘Axis of Evil’ with Iran and Iraq. Kim Jong Il feared he would always be next after Iraq.”
— Reporter Mark Litke on ABC’s World News, October 9.
So What if the Kook Has Nukes?
“I want to ask you a question I’ve heard being asked this morning, which is, really, how can the U.S. tell other countries whether they can have nuclear weapons or not, when the U.S. has them and seven other countries as well? Does this mean that the genie is officially out of the bottle, and that the U.S. is no longer in a position to dictate who gets nuclear weapons?”
— Co-host Diane Sawyer to Donald Gregg, the former U.S. Ambassador to South Korea, on ABC’s Good Morning America, October 9.
Should Have Hit Kim, Not Saddam
“I don’t understand why we think it’s okay for us to have a nuclear weapon, but it isn’t okay for some other countries to have any. I don’t think any country should have nuclear weapons. And that includes ours....We’re a little late getting exercised about this. North Korea has always been more of a threat to world peace than Iraq ever was. And if we were going to attack someone three years ago to make the world safer, we should have attacked North Korea, not Iraq.”
— CBS’s Andy Rooney on the October 15 60 Minutes.
Ruing Loss of Clinton’s “Progress”
“You know, Bill Clinton and Madeleine Albright were progressing in October and November of 2000 towards the restoration of diplomatic relations [with North Korea], and if the Democrats had won that election that probably would have happened. Colin Powell recommended very strongly as the new Secretary of State in 2001 that that policy be pursued. But it was cut short in March of 2001 by President Bush, overruling his new Secretary of State, some people said cutting him off at the knees.”
— NBC’s Andrea Mitchell on Today, October 9.
Bitten by Bush’s Name-Calling
“Bush’s ‘Axis of Evil’ Comes Back to Haunt United States.”
— Headline over an October 10 “news analysis” by Washington Post reporters Glenn Kessler and Peter Baker.
Repulsed by “Values Voters”
“This word, ‘values,’ ‘values voters,’ which is just driving me nuts. This idea that somehow certain people have a monopoly on values, and that, you know, if you are not with them on these issues, that you somehow [mock tone of horror] ‘don’t share our values,’ and you’re not just wrong, but you’re somehow morally inferior if you’re on the other side. And I hope that this election is going to mark the demise of the ‘values voters,’ this idea that somehow people who feel so strongly about, you know, these so-called traditional values, that they don’t determine the election the way they were seen to have the last time around, and the indications are that they do have less clout this time out.”
— Newsweek Senior Editor Jonathan Alter on MSNBC’s Imus in the Morning, October 16.
CBS Probes GOP: Grand Oil Plot
Katie Couric: “As of tonight, gas is the lowest it’s been all year, a nationwide average of $2.23 a gallon. It hasn’t been that low since last Christmas. But is this an election-year present from President Bush to fellow Republicans?”
Reporter Anthony Mason: “...Gas started going down just as the fall campaign started heating up. Coincidence? Some drivers don’t think so.”
Man in a car: “And I think it’s basically a ploy to sort of get the American people to think, well, the economy is going good, let’s vote Republican.”
— CBS Evening News, October 16. As Mason spoke, CBS showed a bumper sticker, “GOP: Grand Oil Party.” (With WMV video clip/MP3 audio)
Calling for an Anti-Bush Mutiny
“If we had a draft today and my sons had to go in the service under this Commander-in-Chief and his military advisors, I’d be hard-pressed, Gordon, to say serve under them....Look at those young people who’ve been killed in Iraq, some of them 18 years old, 19 years old, flower of their youth, killed because of dumb decisions made by these people in the Pentagon. They impeached the President, Gordon, for having some relationship with an intern. What about the people who got us into this mess?”
— Washington Post Deputy Editorial Page Editor Colbert King on Inside Washington, October 6.
Bill Moyers, Mr. “Conservative”
Writer Harvey Blume: “Have you become more radical over the years?”
PBS’s Bill Moyers: “Radical in the sense of returning to the roots of the American experience, maybe, as in Thomas Paine radical....In other ways, I’m a conservative. I’ve been married to the same woman for 52 years. I’m a regular at church. I am a believer.”
— From a Q&A published in the Oct. 15 Boston Globe.
Railing Against U.S. “Arrogance”
NBC’s Andrea Mitchell: “[What] could be the most profound [foreign policy] problem...is how much hated the United States is, for a variety of reasons....”
CBS’s Gloria Borger: “That’s why the American voters... are going to say, ‘Next time around we want somebody who can work in a bipartisan way....We’re done with the arrogance of American foreign policy. We want to see people work together. We want to see us work with our allies, and we’re just not the bosses all the time.’ And I think that Americans are looking for that.”
— Exchange on the Chris Matthews Show, October 15.
Iraq War Caused Crime Wave?
CBS’s Byron Pitts: “Like so many cities its size, resources [in Minneapolis] are strained. One burden, dollars diverted to Homeland Security. An added burden, the war in Iraq.”
Minneapolis Police Officer Rich Jackson: “We have probably 30 to 40 officers that are serving in Iraq right now....”
Pitts, riding in a car with Jackson: “Have they been replaced with anybody?”
Jackson: “No.”
Pitts: “Since 2004, the Feds have cut funding for state and local police departments by nearly 50 percent. So with fewer police officers, more at-risk kids and more gangs go unwatched.”
— CBS Evening News, October 16. (With WMV video clip/MP3 audio)
Virginia Voters as Awful as Allen
“There was the time he [Senator George Allen] called an Indian-American volunteer from his opponent’s campaign ‘macaca’ and welcomed him to America. Allen’s been accused of using the N-word to refer to blacks. He denies ever doing that....You want to know why things are so screwed up in Washington D.C.? In spite of all the things I just mentioned, Allen is leading in the polls four weeks before the election. Maybe Allen is on to something — maybe character doesn’t matter to Virginia voters.”
— CNN’s Jack Cafferty, The Situation Room, October 10.
Liar Bush’s “Sell Out” of America
“The premise of a President who comes across as a compulsive liar is nothing less than terrifying....Mr. President... you want to preserve one political party’s power. And obviously you will sell this country out to do it.”
— Keith Olbermann in an 11-minute long “Special Comment” on MSNBC’s Countdown, October 5. (With WMV video clip/MP3 audio)
So Keith’s Rants Are Fox’s Fault?
“The Fox gestalt of insouciance, attitude, and even playfulness has had a bigger effect on the news media than any Bill O’Reilly rant. Fox taught TV news that voice, provocation and fun are not things to be afraid of....Keith Olbermann ranting at George W. Bush and O’Reilly on MSNBC’s Countdown: that’s Fox through and through, whether Olbermann would like to admit it or not.”
— Time critic James Poniewozik in “What Hath Fox Wrought,” posted October 6 on Time.com.
Old Media Were Blind to Own Bias
Former MSNBC President Erik Sorenson: “The difference-maker was the attitude of the channel that was not just a marketing slogan, but actually got lived within the programs virtually every minute of the day. Cue the slogan.”
Fox News Channel announcer: “Fair and balanced.”
Sorenson: “There was a full-on commitment to that premise, and there were far more people in America who seemed to hold that opinion of the liberal media bias than anyone in New York City, the media capital of the world, had estimated.”
— Excerpt from an October 8 Fox News Channel special, Fox News at 10: Thank You, America. (With WMV video clip/MP3 audio)
Rosie vs. the Bill of Rights
Co-host Rosie O’Donnell: “The horror of imagining 6- to 13-year-old girls handcuffed together and shot execution style, one by one, is perhaps enough to awaken the nation that maybe we need some stricter gun control laws....”
Co-host Elisabeth Hasselbeck: “You can’t take way the right to bear arms.”
O’Donnell: “Well, it’s not really a right....In the United States there is debate over whether or not the right to bear arms includes the lobby organization of the NRA, allowing no rules and no registration and absolutely, sort of, carte blanche, to make guns available to Americans in a way they’re not in the rest of the world....You can buy a gun in America and it is not licensed. We can’t trace who bought it, who owned it, or who is responsible. That’s wrong.”
— ABC’s The View, October 3.
PUBLISHER: L. Brent Bozell III
EDITORS: Brent H. Baker, Rich Noyes, Tim Graham
NEWS ANALYSTS: Geoffrey Dickens, Brad Wilmouth, Megan McCormack, Mike Rule, Scott Whitlock and Justin McCarthy
RESEARCH ASSOCIATE: Michelle Humphrey
CIRCULATION MANAGER: Jennifer Bookwalter
