THE LINDA ELLERBEE AWARDS
FOR DISTINGUISHED REPORTING
The Best Notable Quotables of 1989
First
under each award heading is the winner, followed in order by the next
top vote getters. Notable Quotables thanks the judges for helping us
determine the most outrageous and humorous utterances from the media
over the past year.
Award for the Silliest Analysis
"’These
boat people,’ says the government of Hong Kong, ‘they all want to go to
America.’ Well, I swear I don’t know why, do you? I mean take Vietnam.
Why would any Vietnamese come to America after what America did for
Vietnam? Don’t they remember My Lai, napalm, Sylvester Stallone? Clearly
they have no more sense over there, than say, Mexicans who keep trying
to get into this country even though this country stole large parts of
their country from them in the first place."
-- Linda Ellerbee, CNN
PrimeNews, June 2.
Runners-Up:
"Sadly, many home remedies
could damage a fetus instead of kill it."
-- Newsweek Senior Editor
Melinda Beck on self-performed abortions, July 17 issue.
"Well,
am I a liberal, a conservative, or what? What...I believe in sunny
summer mornings when the grass is sweet and the wind is green with
possibilities. I believe in chili with no beans and iced tea all year
round....I believe music is too important to be left to musicians, and
that Ella Fitzgerald is the best American singer ever, and that
Beethoven would have liked Chuck Berry....And so it goes."
-- Linda
Ellerbee in her first commentary on CNN, March 20.
"But certain
times with George Bush there seems to be an irrelevancy, or he gets
something wrong. We pointed out yesterday he referred to Benjamin
Harrison dying of pneumonia after a chilly inauguration day, and of
course it was William Tyler Harrison who died."
-- NBC’s John Cochran on
William Henry Harrison, January 20.
"The [Afghan] army has
controlled this beautifully rugged landscape with the help of women
right from the revolution. It’s the women of this country who have the
most to lose if this Marxist revolution fails, if the government falls
to the fundamentalist Muslim rebels. A woman’s place in such a society
would be back under the head to toe covering of the chaterra, cooking
and bearing children."
-- Reporter Steve Hurst on CNN PrimeNews, February 9.
The Good News Is Bad News Award
"Some
analysts said that the country’s now close to full employment, the point
at which the available labor pool dries up. That’s not the same as
saying that everyone who wants a job has a job. But business
correspondent Ray Brady reports the high employment rate is causing
problems."
-- CBS Evening News Anchor Charles Kuralt, March 10.
Runner-Up:
"The
danger is that as the economy picks up, it could become too much of a
good thing. Borrowing and buying by consumers could become excessive.
Prices and interest rates could take off. The problem would again become
how to avoid a hard landing."
-- Irving R. Levine on NBC Nightly News, same night.
Which Way Is It? The Economy
"Good evening. A
double dose of worrisome economic statistics tonight from the
government: inflation, with its highest quarterly gain in two years;
home building, sharply down. That left some economists alarmed."
-- Dan Rather opening the April 18 CBS Evening News.
versus...
"This
country’s economic expansion has now entered its seventh year and the
Joint Economic Committee of Congress says still more growth can be
expected. It warned, however, that this growth could be threatened by
huge budget deficits and renewed inflation. But, the inflation news
today is reassuring."
-- Tom Brokaw on NBC Nightly News, same night.
Runners-Up:
“Economy expanding, slightly stronger”
-- Washington Times, June 23
“GNP Figures Indicate a Slowdown”
-- Washington Post, same day
“Poverty Level Stabilizes at 31 Million”
-- Washington Post, October 19
“Number of Nation’s Poor Remains at 32 Million for a Second Year”
-- New York Times, same day
“Per capita income up, but experts say poor get poorer”
-- Chicago Tribune, same day
“Number of poor fell, Census Bureau says”
-- Washington Times, same day
“Economic expansion skips the poor”
-- Boston Globe, same day
“New method to count poor: Census report makes ‘em disappear”
-- New York Daily News, same day
Blame America First Award
"As
rockets made in the U.S.A. keep falling here and flares to deflect
those rockets keep burning small children, resentment towards the United
States grows...For the Russians, Afghanistan may no longer be what
Gorbachev called, ‘a bleeding wound.’ But for many here what is bleeding
now is America’s image."
-- Reporter Bob Faw on the May 1 CBS Evening
News.
Runners-Up:
"Latins do not believe the Soviets want
any more bases in this hemisphere: Cuba is enough, they say. Their hope,
as it has been for a long time, is that the U.S. will disband the
Contras once and for all, and then, maybe, just maybe, there will be a
chance for peace."
-- Reporter Ed Rabel on NBC Nightly News, October 28.
"The
latest incident of alleged Contra violence in south central Nicaragua
killed whatever chances there might have been for the 19-month-old
ceasefire agreement to be extended....The Sandinistas argue that they’ve
given the Contras ample opportunity to meet their obligations under
terms of the regional peace plan. Now they say the time has come for the
rebels and the Bush Administration to do their part if there is to be
peace in Nicaragua."
-- Beginning and end of story on CNN PrimeNews by
Ronnie Lovler, November 1.
"Sandinista critics’ direct
predictions of totalitarianism have also failed to come true...Nicaragua
today is neither a classless social democracy nor a communist dungeon.
Opposition parties and media thrive, despite Sandinista harassment and
their own incompetence....And a government socially committed to the
needs of the poorest has seen its education and health projects plummet
due to a lack of resources and the Contra war."
-- Christian Science Monitor reporter J.D. Gannon, July 18.
Media Hero Award
"A
testament to courage: the courage of some unabashed trade unionists and
civil rights workers, Leftists and yes, American Communists, who fought
for principles that we now take for granted."
-- Endorsement of Carl
Bernstein’s book Loyalties, from Ted Koppel.
Runners-Up:
"Ralph
Nader is a legend, perhaps the only universally recognized symbol of
pure honesty and clean energy left in a culture that, after being shot
through with greed, cynicism and weariness, is oddly proud of its
hardened self. Two decades after he slew General Motors, Nader, the
young dynamo who could not be bought, is a reminder of what we once
hoped to be."
-- Washington Post Magazine writer Marc Fisher, July 23.
"What
does realistic mean with Mr. Gorbachev any more? We used to know what
realism was in world affairs, but we have a Soviet leader as bold as we,
I think, have ever seen, and a man who seems to be some kind of
dreamer. He dreams new dreams. I think he’s saying ‘Match me in boldness
and we’ll create a new world.’"
-- "CBS News consultant" Stephen Cohen
on the CBS Evening News, October 24.
"He [George Mitchell] talks
about the record of legislation the Senate Democrats are building, the
substantive progress on issues from oil spills to rural development,
which so often gets overlooked in the day-to-day political analysis of
‘up or down, winner or loser.’ His logic is crisp, unassailable, his
manner far removed from the thrust and parry of contemporary politics.
He is the soul of judiciousness, highminded in his concern for
governance. But some in his party would like for a bit more of the
street fighter."
-- Reporter Robin Toner in The New York Times, October
17.
"For Gorbachev at the end of four years, it is the best of
times, it is the worst of times. There was triumph at the Moscow summit,
when cold warrior Ronald Reagan said the Evil Empire belonged to a time
now past. Bittersweet triumph when the Soviet troops came home from
Afghanistan. The Soviets did not win, but Gorbachev did. He had the
courage to end Soviet involvement."
-- CBS reporter Barry Petersen on the March 11 Evening News.
Which Way Is It? Foreign Affairs
"These
days Cuba doesn’t count for nearly as much in the Soviet military
scheme of things....Much of the equipment...is old and obsolete.
Although with its militia the Cuban armed forces are the largest in
Latin America, this Soviet weaponry is years behind the times."
-- ABC’s Richard Threlkeld on World News Tonight, April 3.
versus...
"The
Soviets have spent billions of dollars keeping Fidel Castro
supplied....The equipment, the best the Soviet Union can supply....Fidel
Castro still believes in the Mao adage that power comes from the barrel
of a gun. And his island bristles with some of the most modern, such as
these advanced MiG 23s."
-- Reporter Barry Petersen on the CBS Evening
News, same night.
Runners-Up:
“Supposedly neutral tribunal stacked to favor Sandinistas”
-- Washington Times, June 9
“Managua Forms Election Panel Containing Opposition Members”
-- Washington Post, same day
"U.S.
officials in Moscow said today they have been unable to determine,
after meetings with patients in Soviet mental hospitals, whether they
are being held because of their political beliefs."
-- NBC Nightly News
Anchor Connie Chung, March 11.
“U.S. PSYCHIATRISTS FAULT SOVIET UNITS: Team Finds Inmates Are Still Held for Political Reasons”
-- New York Times, next morning
Joe Isuzu Award
"Communism
got to be a terrible word here in the United States, but our attitude
toward it may have been unfair. Communism got in with a bad crowd when
it was young and never had a fair chance...
The Communist ideas of
creating a society in which everyone does his best for the good of
everyone is appealing and fundamentally a more uplifting idea than
capitalism. Communism’s only real weakness seems to be that it doesn’t
work."
-- 60 Minutes commentator Andy Rooney in The New York Times, June
26.
Runners-Up:
"Indeed, most observers and politicians
here agree that the election is just one part of a larger process
involving squaring the revolutionary side of Nicaraguan society -- the
meshing of the Sandinista party with the government and Army after 10
years of rule -- with a trend toward establishing a liberal democracy.
That is a long process fraught with contradictions that an opposition
victory could force to a conclusion too soon."
-- Reporter J.D. Gannon
in The Christian Science Monitor, October 26.
"The incident is
now known throughout the country as ‘Bloody Sunday’ and marked a
desperate moment in the leadership’s attempts to win public confidence
in its movement for democratic change."
-- Washington Post reporter
David Remnick on Soviet troops killing peaceful protesters in Georgia,
October 12.
"Medical care was once for the privileged few. Today
it is available to every Cuban and it is free. Some of Cuba’s health
care is world class. In heart disease, for example, in brain surgery.
Health and education are the revolution’s great success stories."
-- ABC’s Peter Jennings on the April 3 World News Tonight.
Damn Those Conservatives Award
"I’ve
known Barney Frank since was in college. He’s a man of surpassing
integrity that I’ve never known to be questioned. I think he’s a master
politician, which people forget. He’s also a magnificent Congressman,
and above all, there is nothing in this episode that counters any of
those other images, and I would expect him to survive this smear in good
standing."
-- Boston Globe Washington Bureau reporter and columnist Tom
Oliphant on Inside Washington, August 26.
Runners-Up:
"And
if his moving speech today does not restore those decencies he so
wistfully remembered today, then perhaps history will remember that at
least he tried."
-- Reporter Jim Wooten on Jim Wright’s resignation
announcement, ABC’s World News Tonight, May 31.
"You two fill the
voids left by those who were casualties of an ethics war Republicans
started."
-- NBC Today show co-host Bryant Gumbel to Rep. Richard
Gephardt and Rep. William Gray, June 15.
"Politics didn’t just
turn ugly. It evolved from a nasty presidential campaign that featured
the GOP’s famous Willie Horton ad."
-- Reporter Eric Engberg on the CBS Evening News, May 29.
Which Way Is It? American Politics
"Polls
show that more than 70 percent of Americans support a woman’s right to a
legal abortion."
-- NBC reporter Jamie Gangel, on the April 9 Nightly
News.
“Most in US favor ban on majority of abotions, poll finds”
-- Boston Globe front page, March 31
Runners-Up:
“47 Wright charges dropped”
-- USA Today, April 18
“Wright Violated Rules 69 Times, Ethics Panel Says”
-- Los Angeles Times, same day
“SEX SCANDAL PERILS FRANK: Back home, constituents reconsider”
-- Washington Times, August 31
“For Now, Constituents Supporting Rep. Frank”
-- Washington Post, same day
Award For The Most Honest Confession
"I
read Mother Jones carefully and look forward to every issue. After all,
stories that started out in Mother Jones have wound up on 60 Minutes."
-- CBS 60 Minutes correspondent Mike Wallace as quoted in subscription
letter for the far-left magazine.
Runner-Up:
"I predict
historians are going to be totally baffled by how the American people
fell in love with this man [Ronald Reagan] and followed him the way we
did."
-- CBS News White House reporter Lesley Stahl on NBC’s Later with Bob Costas, January 11.
The Real Ronald Reagan Award
"In
just seven weeks, the ‘80s will be behind us. It was a decade dominated,
in politics and in style, by the Reagans....While the wealthy got most
of the attention, those who needed it most were often ignored. More
homeless, less spending on housing. The gap between the top and the
bottom grew in the ‘80s....The AIDS crisis began in the ‘80s. Some say
the decade’s compassion gap made it worse."
-- CBS This Morning co-host
Kathleen Sullivan, November 13.
Runners-Up:
"Largely as a
result of the policies and priorities of the Reagan Administration, more
people are becoming poor and staying poor in this country than at any
time since World War II."
-- Today co-host Bryant Gumbel, July 17.
“The Reagan Legacy: A Swelling Medical Underclass in a Land of Plenty”
"An
unfortunate legacy of the Reagan revolution is a swelling medical
underclass: alcoholics and drug addicts who deluge emergency rooms and
fill prisons, AIDS babies and crack newborns in overwhelmed pediatric
wards, homeless children with anemia, schizophrenics and other mental
patients in shelters and jails and on the streets...While Ronald Reagan
did not cause the medical underclass, his laissez-faire approach to
social problems exacerbated the trend."
-- Abigail Trafford, Editor of
The Washington Post "Health" section, in a January 24 article under
headline above.
"But analysts will also recognize that Ronald
Reagan presided over a meltdown of the federal government during the
last eight years. Fundamental management was abandoned in favor of
rhetoric and imagery. A cynical disregard for the art of government led
to wide-scale abuse. Only now are we coming to realize the cost of Mr.
Reagan’s laissez-faire: the crisis in the savings and loan industry, the
scandal in the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the
deterioration of the nation’s nuclear weapons facilities, the dangerous
state of the air traffic control system -- not to mention the staggering
deficit."
-- CBS News reporter Terence Smith, in a November 5 New York
Times op-ed.
"After eight years of what many saw as the Reagan
Administration’s benign neglect of the poor and studied indifference to
civil rights, a lot of those who lived through this week in Overtown
[rioting in a section of Miami] seemed to think the best thing about
George Bush is that he is not Ronald Reagan....There is an Overtown in
every big city in America. Pockets of misery made even meaner and more
desperate the past eight years."
-- Reporter Richard Threlkeld on ABC’s World News Tonight, January 20.
The Real Jimmy Carter Award
"Perhaps
the Democrat who best personifies this republic of virtue is former
President Jimmy Carter. His reputation burnished by the elevated tone of
his retirement, Carter would actually bring to the task energy,
integrity and his legendary distaste for congressional business as
usual. He could even boast a made-to-order campaign slogan: ‘After the
Wright stuff, why not the best?’"
-- Time Senior Writer and former
Carter Administration official Margaret Carlson recommending a new House
Speaker, June 5 issue.
Runners-Up:
"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.
"The person we have chosen this week
[as "Person of the Week"] has continued his life with distinction,
considerable grace, and with a very strong commitment to peace and
justice...In the public’s mind, the scales were never balanced. Carter’s
successes in foreign affairs, peace between Egypt and Israel, renewed
respect for the United States in Latin America, have always been
outweighed in the public mind by the hostage crisis."
-- Peter Jennings on ABC’s World News Tonight, May 12.
The No Agenda Here Award
"Atwater’s
fouling the civic atmosphere with vicious misinformation is bad enough;
compounding that with the White House hypocrisy is too much. If Bush
really wants to prove himself a political environmentalist in search of a
kinder, gentler America, he should sack Atwater."
-- Time’s Laurence
Barrett in sidebar to a June 19 article on the "Foley memo."
Runners-Up:
"At
the same time, Atwater -- who cut his political teeth as a protege of
South Carolina’s once segregationist Senator Strom Thurmond --
downplayed his role in devising the crypto-racist Willie Horton ads that
helped Bush win the White House. ‘That’s in the past,’ he insisted."
--
Time reporters Jacob V. Lamar and Alessandra Stanley in the March 20
issue.
"Support Family Planning. In 1984 the Reagan
Administration cut off U.S. aid to the two major international
family-planning organizations...Unless the growth in the world
population is slowed, it will be impossible to make serious progress on
any environmental issue. The U.S. should immediately restore the aid it
withdrew."
-- Time’s recommendations on how to save the Earth, in the
January 2 "Planet of the Year" issue.
"Propose deep mutual cuts
in military forces and expenditures going well beyond those under
consideration in START and conventional-arms talks."
"Offer
most-favored-nation status, allowing the U.S.S.R. the same trading
arrangements provided to most industrial nations, including Hungary."
"Relax
technology-transfer regulations to allow sales of such items as
personal computers and communications equipment that could spur
autonomy."
-- Policies recommended by Time, November 6.
"The
documentary has held up as both true and sadly prophetic. While Congress
restored some of the cuts made in those first Reagan budgets, in the
years since, the poor and the working poor have borne the brunt of the
cost of the Reagan Revolution. The hardest-hit programs have been
welfare, housing and other anti-poverty measures. Even programs that
were not cut have failed to keep up with inflation. Meanwhile, rich
people go big tax breaks. And the middle class kept most of their
subsidies intact. As a result, the Reagan years brought on a wider gap
between rich and poor."
-- Bill Moyers after PBS re-airing of 1982 CBS Reports "People Like Us," June 20.
Walter Mondale Award For Tax Hike Insistence
"We
have this drug problem, we have an education problem in the country.
All we keep doing is cutting the domestic budget because taxes aren’t
being asked for. When does it become necessary to start investing in our
future by fixing these problems, and when you do decide it becomes
necessary, won’t it become necessary to raise taxes? And just isn’t that
a bald truth?"
-- Lesley Stahl to OMB Director Richard Darman, July 23
Face the Nation.
Runners-Up:
"If we don’t find some way to
raise new revenues, that means taxes, we’re going to continue this
self-deception, we’re going to continue to add to the national deficit,
we’re going to continue to cause this country to head toward an economic
abyss."
-- Sam Donaldson on This Week, September 24.
"Returning
from his foreign travels, George Bush came home to domestic economic
realities today. To the stubborn budget deficit that most economists say
will never be seriously reduced without the new taxes to which the
President remains opposed."
-- Reporter Mark Phillips on CBS Evening
News, July 18.
"The borrow-and-spend policies that Ronald Reagan
presided over have bequeathed to his chosen successor a downsized
presidency devoid of the resources to address long neglected domestic
problems. The Bush campaign strategists -- with the candidate’s active
complicity -- burdened the new President with an obdurate stance on
taxes."
-- Reporters Michael Duffy and Richard Hornik in Time, February 20.
Award For The Most Inane Comparison
"Thousands may
have been gunned down in Beijing, but what about the millions of
American kids whose lives are being ruined by an enormous failure of the
country’s educational system...We can and we should agonize about the
dead students in Beijing, but we’ve got a much bigger problem here at
home."
-- John Chancellor’s commentary on NBC Nightly News, June 20.
Runners-Up:
"In
a way, you might say that David Duke is the son of Willie Horton. Duke
is more overt, of course, but he’s really just pushing the same buttons
and sending the same coded messages that the Horton ads did so
effectively for the Bush campaign last year."
-- Reporter Judd Rose on
ABC’s Prime Time Live, November 2.
"Will the military leaders
there b embarrassed by this, will this be something like Kent State was
for our military?"
-- CBS reporter Eric Engberg referring to China on
Nightwatch, June 7.
"Like North, Castro has always portrayed
foreign policy as an endless struggle between darkness and light, and
the Fidels and Ollies of the world desperately need each other. ‘Great
Satans,’ observes Hunter, [of the Center for Strategic and International
Studies] ‘always come in pairs.’"
-- U.S. News & World Report Senior Writer Steven Roberts, April 17.
Quote of the Year
"For
the most part, the Nicaraguan Contras burned villages and murdered
civilians. On behalf of their cause, Reagan sold out his oath of office
and subverted the Constitution....
"Oliver North presented himself
as the immortal boy in the heroic green uniform of Peter Pan. Although
wishing to be seen as a humble patriot, the colonel’s testimony showed
him to be a treacherous and lying agent of the national security state,
willing to do anything asked of him by a President to whom he granted
the powers of an Oriental despot."
-- Harper’s Editor Lewis Lapham
narrating his PBS series America’s Century, November 28.
-- L. Brent Bozell III; Publisher
-- Brent H. Baker; Tim Graham; Editors
-- Jim Heiser, Gerard Scimeca, Stewart Verdery, Dorothy Warner; Media Analysts