Media in Mourning: Teddy's Liberal Dream "Derailed"
"On a personal note, you said last night the first call you made after your victory was to Ted Kennedy's widow, Vicki....How comfortable was that for both of you, knowing that you plan to do whatever you can to derail what Ted Kennedy called, called 'the cause of his lifetime,' which is health care reform?"
- NBC's Meredith Vieira to Senator-elect Scott Brown on Today, January 20. [Audio/video (0:19): Windows Media [1] | MP3 audio [2]]
"It's that rare election where voters know exactly what they're voting on. If they're with Democrat Martha Coakley, they get health care reform. If they go for Republican Scott Brown, it's deliberate, premeditated murder for health care!...These people been told one simple thing by this Republican. 'I'm keeping it simple. Vote for me, I vote no. I kill this thing in its bed.'"
- MSNBC's Chris Matthews on Hardball, January 19, a few hours before the polls closed in Massachusetts. [Audio/video (0:40): Windows Media [3] | MP3 audio [4]]
Lamenting "Shakespearean" "Tragedy" of ObamaCare's Demise
"Democrats in the White House and Capitol Hill are braced for a shattering loss. And it's really hard for them to wrap their head around it, the idea that...health care reform may be in peril because Democrats can't hold the seat that Teddy Kennedy held for nearly half a century. You know, one White House official summed it up in a single word: 'Shakespearean.'"
- ABC's George Stephanopoulos on World News, January 18.
"I was just going to say, quoting somebody in the White House, a tragedy of Greek proportions if Ted Kennedy's successor is the one, is the one who was responsible for the death of health care."
- PBS anchor Judy Woodruff, a veteran of CNN and NBC, on ABC's This Week, January 10.
MSNBC's Attempt at Last-Minute Smear
"In Scott Brown, we have an irresponsible, homophobic, racist, reactionary, ex-nude model, teabagging supporter of violence against women and against politicians with whom he disagrees. In any other time in our history, this man would have been laughed off the stage as unqualified and a disaster in the making by the most conservative of conservatives."
- MSNBC's Keith Olbermann in a "Quick Comment" on Countdown, January 18, the night before the special election. [Audio/video (0:25): Windows Media [5] | MP3 audio [6]]
"I wanted to apologize....I'm sorry, I left out the word 'sexist.'"
- Olbermann talking about his attack on Brown during a special 10pm ET edition of Countdown, January 19.
With One More Republican, Washington Will Be Getting "a Lot Uglier"
Anchor Katie Couric: "If this seat goes Republican, how will it change the political climate in Washington?"
CBS News political analyst John Dickerson: "It's going to get uglier. Republicans, no matter what the outcome is, feel emboldened, they feel excited and they see glory in attacking the President....It's just going to get a lot uglier in Washington."
- CBS Evening News, January 19.
Generous Obama a Victim of GOP's "Fear and Confusion"
"Instead of loudly fighting back, the President tried to bring Republicans into the fold, and it backfired....On health care reform, instead of telling Americans exactly what he wanted in a health care bill, President Obama left it up to lawmakers. Republicans used the President's strategy to create fear and confusion among voters."
- CNN's Carol Costello on American Morning, January 20.
Media Rally Around Harry Reid
"I don't understand what's demeaning. I talked to any number of black elected officials over, over the years, reporting on this book. And all of them have been called worse, including Barack Obama. Describing him as 'light-skinned,' is merely a descriptive, and saying he spoke without a Negro dialect unless he wanted one, was something that worked against him when black voters were saying that he wasn't black enough early in the campaign."
- PBS host Gwen Ifill on NBC's Today, January 11, talking about Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid's "Negro dialect" remark about President Obama.
"Many prominent African Americans we spoke to today were offended by Reid's words, but many also said his observation was correct."
- Correspondent Jake Tapper on ABC's World News, January 11.
Andrea Mitchell: "While what Reid said was politically incorrect and clearly outdated, he wasn't inaccurate."
NBC News Washington Bureau Chief Mark Whitaker: "Going back to the 19th century, black politicians with lighter skin have been more successful. It may not be a pleasant fact, it may be unfortunate that that's been the case historically, it may still be the case."
- NBC Nightly News, January 11.
ABC's Idea of a Grueling Interview?
ABC's George Stephanopoulos: "I assume this has been about the most packed year of your life."
President Barack Obama: "It has."
Stephanopoulos: "The most fulfilling?"
Obama: "Yes..."
- Excerpt of interview shown on ABC's World News, January 20.
Hearing Echoes of Camelot In Obama's Terror Fiasco
"Like another young President almost 50 years ago, Barack Obama found the so-called intelligence professionals, the veterans, the old hands, failed him and failed the country. And as John Kennedy did when the CIA blew an invasion of Cuba in 1961, President Obama took responsibility for the failure to stop and spot the underwear bomber."
- ABC investigative correspondent Brian Ross on Good Morning America, January 8. [Audio/video (0:26): Windows Media [7] | MP3 audio [8]]
Anchor Diane Sawyer: "George, I have to say, 'the buck stops here.' It's an echo of another young President in another time."
George Stephanopoulos: "John Kennedy after the Bay of Pigs. Huge intelligence failures at the Bay of Pigs. The President took responsibility, his popularity shot up. The White House is calculating with the President taking personal responsibility, they can put this behind them."
- Exchange on ABC's World News, January 7.
Halperin: Obama's Done "An Extraordinary Job"
"He's done, I think, an extraordinary job running the government, as [former Clinton Chief of Staff] John [Podesta] said, under difficult circumstances. He managed the economic crisis and kept the world from going into a depression. He staffed the government with very quality, quality people. He showed he could be commander-in-chief and manage these two difficult wars."
- Time's Mark Halperin on NBC's Meet the Press, January 17. [Audio/video (0:19): Windows Media [9] | MP3 audio [10]]
We Know Obama's Awesome - His Aides Say So
"Obama is the one candidate in [the 2008 campaign book] Game Change who most closely resembles his public persona. During the Rev. Jeremiah Wright uproar, his performance - 'calm, methodical, precise and strategic - impressed his team immensely,' with strategists Anita Dunn thinking 'this is a guy I want in a foxhole with me' and David Axelrod being 'blown away' by Obama's writing of a major address on race."
- Washington Post media reporter Howard Kurtz, in a January 18 article. (Italics in the original.)
Where Do Conservatives Find Morons Like Sarah Palin?
"How does the neo-conservative right, the hawkish right, find such success in finding these empty vessels like her? Like W.? Like, like Quayle? They find these empty vessels who know nothing about the world! Nothing about foreign policy! Who immediately begin to spout the neo-con line. I read her book - it's full of that crap....It's unbelievable how little this woman knows!...Don't put her on Jeopardy!"
- MSNBC's Chris Matthews to Mark Halperin and John Heilemann, authors of the book Game Change about the 2008 presidential campaign, January 12 Hardball. [Audio/video (0:54): Windows Media [11] | MP3 audio [12]]
Mocking Monochromatic "Tea Baggers"
"The tea baggers are an interesting group to watch. They're not far right. They're probably center-right, in fact some centrists. But they're generally, I think, Republican voters....And they're monochromatic, right?...Meaning they're all white, all of them. Every single one of them is white....What's that about?"
- Chris Matthews on MSNBC's Hardball, January 5.
Upset By Prospect of Uncollected Tax
Anchor John Berman: "One well-known federal law expired on New Year's Day: The estate tax. Congress let renewing the estate tax slip through the legislative cracks and gone with it is $14 billion for the U.S. Treasury...."
Reporter Laura Marquez: "Just one percent of American families are wealthy enough to pay the estate tax, but if they don't pay, it affects all of us because the federal government will lose billions of dollars in revenue."
- ABC's World News, January 2.
Exploiting Haiti Earthquake to Push ObamaCare
"Continuing our coverage of the second day after the earthquake, the 7.0 earthquake at Port-Au-Prince, Haiti....I think it's a good frame of reference in terms of the health care issue that we always talk about. We could easily have a natural disaster, if not quite on this scale, at least in the same broad ballpark. A slightly heavier earthquake in California could do extraordinary devastation to San Francisco or Los Angeles....How would survivors of something like this here fare in terms of getting on their own feet economically afterwards, with the health care system we have in place right now?"
- MSNBC's Keith Olbermann on Countdown, January 13. [Audio/video (0:57): Windows Media [13] | MP3 audio [14]]
Haiti Earthquake: Blame It On Global Warming
"I hope we seize this particular moment because the threat of what happened to Haiti is the threat that could happen anywhere in the Caribbean to these island nations, you know. They're all in peril because of global warming, they're all in peril because of climate change and all of this....When we look back at what we did at the climate summit in Copenhagen, this is the response, this is what happens, you know what I'm saying? But we have to act now."
- Actor and left-wing activist Danny Glover in an interview with the leftist GRITtv posted on YouTube, January 13. [MP3 audio [15] (0:30)]
"Star Struck" by "Thoughtful" and "Articulate" Obama
"I went to the White House and was star-struck by our President and First Lady....I think it is thrilling to have someone who is thoughtful and can articulate with a certain amount of passion and dispassion, the necessary choices that we have in the world."
- Actress Meryl Streep as quoted by the India Times, January 10.
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