"Clearly" Guilty Cain Still Better than Perry or Bachmann
"At some point we're going to find out, maybe by the end of the week, what he actually did that caused all of this trouble. He clearly did something wrong....I think even if it's really bad, he has to put the context to it. He has to say, 'It was an extraordinary, I had too many drinks, I normally don't act like that, this is not me.' But he has to say it, you're right, that way."
— Hardball host Chris Matthews on NBC's Today, November 2, discussing the harassment allegations against GOP candidate Herman Cain. [Audio/video (0:30): Windows Media [1] | MP3 audio [2]]
"I think he's [Herman Cain is] better than Perry. Perry's not even competent to be in this — on that stage. What's her name, Bachmann, I've always said she's in a trance. I mean, she looks like she's been hypnotized."
— Matthews on NBC's Tonight Show, November 10.
Congratulations on Such a Wonderful Hit Piece
Chris Matthews: "Let's go to [Politico's] Jonathan Martin. J-Mart, congratulations on breaking this story...."
Washington Post's Nia-Malika Henderson: "Obviously, conservatives are blaming it on the liberal media. But I will say I think there have been rumors about this swirling around his campaign, swirling around press organizations, and, you know, kudos to you J-Mart for breaking this thing...."
Matthews: "Anyway, thank you Jonathan Martin, congratulations on the scoop I guess, and Nia-Malika Henderson, thank you for congratulating him for his scoop."
— MSNBC's Hardball, October 31.
"Alarmed" by "Right Wing" Support of Herman Cain
"I've always been impressed, well alarmed really, at how quickly the right wing jumps on an issue almost in unison....Mr. Limbaugh said the left was smearing Mr. Cain with 'the ugliest racial stereotypes' and Ms. Coulter said liberals 'are terrified of strong, conservative, black men.' That's ludicrous, unless you think the simple reporting of a legal action against an African-American man is an act of racism. This line is especially hard to take since it was the Republicans who perfected the art of injecting racial fears into modern-day politics (remember Willie Horton in 1988?) and have conducted an unrelenting personal attack on President Obama that sometimes has not-so-subtle racial overtones."
— New York Times editorial page editor Andrew Rosenthal in a November 1 posting [3] to NYTimes.com.
At Least CBS Noticed the Media Double Standard
"That's another thing that could help Herman Cain, because a lot of conservatives don't trust the media. They think there's this huge liberal bias against conservatives. You know, the media didn't cover Bill Clinton or Ted Kennedy like they're doing Herman Cain. So, some of this stuff could actually come back to help him."
— Correspondent Jan Crawford on CBS's Early Show, November 7.
GOP Candidates Just "Advertising Their Ignorance"
"What I find fascinating about his [Herman Cain's] candidacy, and really the tenor of a lot of what the Republican candidates are saying, including Rick Perry, is they are saying, 'We don't need to know all those fancy facts.'...They're advertising their ignorance, is what I'm saying!"
— Former Newsweek political correspondent Howard Fineman, now political editor of the Huffington Post, on MSNBC's Hardball, November 2. [Audio/video (0:49): Windows Media [4]| MP3 audio [5]]
Real Cain Scandal = Smoking in an Internet Ad
"I don't know whether they're selling Camel cigarettes or selling a candidate.... That's completely crazy, honestly, and this is indicative of what a lot of people say is the problem with Herman Cain."
— NBC's David Gregory on Today, October 26.
"I was stunned by that ad that he did with his campaign manager ending up smoking a cigarette which, in my judgment, is one of the great health hazards in America in terms of lethal diseases and also the costs of it all. I think that maybe 9-9-9 stands for 'You've got nine months to live with lung cancer, nine months to live with emphysema, nine months to live with coronary artery disease.' I can't imagine why they thought that was an effective image."
— Ex-Nightly News anchor Tom Brokaw on NBC's Meet the Press, October 30.
"Mr. Cain, I have to ask you what is the point of that? Having a man smoke a cigarette in a television commercial for you?...Well, let me just tell you, it's not funny to me. I am a cancer survivor like you. I had cancer that was smoking related. I don't think it serves the country well, and this is an editorial opinion here, to be showing someone smoking a cigarette. You're the frontrunner now and it seems to me as frontrunner you would have a responsibility not to take that kind of a tone in this campaign. I would suggest that perhaps as the frontrunner, you'd want to raise the level of the campaign....Why don't you take it off the Internet?"
— Host Bob Schieffer lecturing Cain on CBS's Face the Nation, October 30.
Williams Cues Up Guest to Exhort: "Get Into the Streets!"
Brian Williams: "As someone who is as steeped in it as you are, what's the one thing you want to shout from the mountaintops, a message that is in all of your books that people aren't hearing, aren't paying attention to?"...
Liberal author Michael Lewis: "We still have at the center of our life these massive banks that are too big to fail. And they should've been broken up three years ago....So what I would shout from the rooftops is, get out into the streets with the Occupy Wall Street movement and protest."
— Exchange on Williams' new NBC newsmagazine, Rock Center, November 7.
Times Double Standard on Misbehaving Protesters
"Many protesters say the lawless visitors constitute a tiny fringe and are not representative of the movement, which, they say, has espoused nonviolence and mutual aid. Some have suggested moving the kitchen area and the comfort station out of the park to discourage freeloaders from congregating there. But there are concerns that even if the criminal and antisocial elements are a small minority, they are becoming visible enough to tarnish the image of the entire group."
— New York Times reporters Colin Moynihan and Cara Buckley in a November 6 piece [6] on the Occupy Wall Street protests.
vs .
"It was difficult, if not disingenuous, for the Tea Party groups to try to disown the behavior. They had organized the rally, and under their model of self-policing, they were responsible for the behavior of people who were there. And after saying for months that anybody could be a Tea Party leader, they could not suddenly dismiss as faux Tea Partiers those protesters who made them look bad."
— New York Times reporter Kate Zernike in her 2010 book, Boiling Mad: Inside Tea Party America [7].
Inciting the Occupiers to "Firestorm" Restaurant Association
"...The National Restaurant Association headquarters at 1200 17th Street Northwest in Washington, D.C. That's at the intersection of 17th and M Streets — nearest Metro stop is Farragut North. That's only five blocks from the Occupy D.C. protests in McPherson Square, an easy walk for anyone who might feel like occupying the National Restaurant Association. Today may be the day to begin the National Restaurant Association occupation to force them to open their secret files [the settlement with Herman Cain's accuser]....If the National Restaurant Association decides to do the wrong thing tomorrow ... then a firestorm should be visited upon the 1200 17th Street Northwest and the members of the National Restaurant Association."
— Host Lawrence O'Donnell on MSNBC's The Last Word, November 3.
Boehner vs. Amanpour's Incessant Tax Hike Push
Host Christiane Amanpour: "Some 75 percent of Americans agree with an increase in tax on millionaires as a way to pay for these jobs provisions. Do you not feel that by opposing it you're basically out of step with the American people on this issue?...Are you concerned that these budget cuts are going to hurt the people who can least afford it?...There doesn't seem to be the sense amongst people here that the sacrifice is being shared because they point to taxes and tax cuts and who it benefits and who it doesn't."
House Speaker John Boehner: "Come on! The top one percent pay 38 percent of the income taxes in America. How much more do you want them to pay?"
— ABC's This Week, November 6.
As If the Media Have Nothing to Do with It
"Clearly the Republicans are being portrayed as the party that doesn't really care and are really, quote, unquote, 'the servants of the rich.' Does that need to change?"
— ABC's Christiane Amanpour to House Speaker John Boehner, November 6 This Week.
Just One Obama Admirer Talking to Another
Host Piers Morgan: "What is extraordinary about the President is his demeanor. You know, as all around is in chaos, the President has always maintained a confident and assured demeanor. Does he know something we don't? Or is he just quite cool under pressure?"
Obama advisor Dan Pfeiffer: "Well, he is quite cool under pressure...."
— CNN's Piers Morgan Tonight, November 9. [Audio/video (0:45): Windows Media [8] | MP3 audio [9]]
Blaming "Right Wing" Dallas for Kennedy Assassination?
"What made Dallas so right-wing, he kept asking the two men in the car with him that drizzly Friday morning in November. Why were they attacking him as a traitor? Why were they spitting on his people?...Jack Kennedy was just trying to sort it all that morning. He was living the life of an American politician, trying to figure things out politically, trying to figure out what was in the water down there in Dallas that made some people so viciously right wing. An hour later, he was gone."
— Chris Matthews on Hardball, October 28. Kennedy's assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, was a pro-communist Cuban sympathizer who had once defected to the Soviet Union. [Audio/video (1:23): Windows Media [10] | MP3 audio [11]]
The New York Times Is a Liberal Rag? Nonsense!
"You know, I think that the people who see the Times as like a liberal rag are wrong and that they sometimes don't understand the separation between our opinion side, which produces our editorials and our op-eds, and the news report....You know, the news reporters go into their stories with an open mind. And something I stress to our reporters at the Times is even when you think you know the story, go in ready to be surprised or illuminated by what somebody tells you."
— New York Times Executive Editor Jill Abramson on NPR's Diane Rehm Show, October 19. [MP3 audio [12] (1:08)]
I Can't Tell If You're Joking, But You're Gonna Need a Lot of Alligators
"You also said at one point that you might want to back that [border] fence up with a moat and fill it with alligators. Was that a joke, too?"
— CBS's Bob Schieffer to Cain on the October 30 Face the Nation.
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