Most Popular Inauguration Ever
"It's an exciting time to be
in Washington. I work near the little store where they're selling the
Inaugural commemorative items and there is a line going out the door and
around the corner. People are excited. They're happy about change. They're
intrigued by Bill Clinton, Al Gore, and their families. And I think you're
going to see crowds for these inaugural events the likes of which we haven't
seen in Washington ever."
- Wall Street Journal reporter Jill Abramson on C-SPAN's Journalists'
Roundtable, January 8.
The Media Hope So
Clinton as National Idol: Can the
Honeymoon Last?
- New York Times front-page headline over Maureen Dowd story,
January 3
Touchy Clinton
"Without running the risk of
being considered `touchy-feely,' Clinton is known as a hugger of men and
women. Simple handshakes aren't enough for this man whose theme song easily
could be borrowed from the cotton industry's `the touch, the feel, the fabric
of our lives'....What one does with hands, lips, arms, trunks, and legs
carries far more weight that a barrage of insults, eloquent speeches, or sweet
poetry whispered in the ear. The problem is that many of us, unlike Clinton,
have lost touch with touch."
- "Style Plus" article in the December 14 Washington
Post.
Gore The Green
"1. Al Gore's Election: Only
a year ago, environmentalists were resigned to spending four more years as
voices crying in the wilderness. The anti-ecology Bush-Quayle Administration
looked tough to beat, and among the Democrats who weren't going to try was Al
Gore, author of the environmental manifesto Earth in the Balance. Now that he
will head Clinton's green team, look for efforts to boost energy efficiency,
preserve wetlands and reduce global warming."
- Time's "Best of Environment" stories of 1992,
Jan. 4 issue.
Defending the Clintonites
"I have known Ron Brown for
14 years, and anybody who calls him an `influence peddler,' with a sleazy
connotation, doesn't know him and doesn't know his record."
- Boston Globe columnist and former reporter Tom Oliphant,
January 9 Inside Washington.
"All I can tell you is that
the football coach at the University of Wisconsin didn't want her to leave -
I don't think she's any lefty."
- Wall Street Journal Washington Bureau Chief Al Hunt
defending HHS nominee Donna Shalala on CNN's Capital Gang, December
12.
No One Likes Quotas, But...
"If someone unsympathetic to
women names three, then the person sympathetic to women should name more,
wouldn't you think? There is a kind of a bar there he must clear.....[Clinton]
says 'I don't like quotas,' and in fact no one does. But you need to get in
the door, and then once you're in, you need to be listened to. And I think
that the President-elect has given every indication he knows how to listen to
a woman. I mean, he's married to a strong woman, he's stayed married to a
strong woman, and I think he respects them."
- Time Deputy Washington Bureau Chief Margaret Carlson,
December 21 MacNeil-Lehrer NewsHour.
Hillary's Critics: Anti-Happiness
"By combining equality with
ecstasy, liberty with laughter, [Hillary] Clinton violated the cardinal
trade-off rule of American womanhood. Women are told: OK gals, go ahead and do
your liberated thing, but you must pay the price with personal
happiness....That may be why many who favor a ban on abortion are willing to
look the other way when the woman in question has been raped or is the victim
of incest: she doesn't need to be punished because she hasn't gotten any
pleasure out of the encounter."
- Former Wall Street Journal reporter Susan Faludi in a
December 26 Boston Herald column.
Fire Walsh?
"It will never happen
because they're not that stupid. But it would be delicious, because it would
put Walsh absolutely into sainthood, and really put a major blight on George
Bush's place in history."
- Newsweek Washington reporter Eleanor Clift on The
McLaughlin Group, January 2.
"I thought the pardon of
Weinberger was justified, despite the fact that he misled Congress. For one
thing he was on the right side of what was a....disgraceful policy. But to
then give a blanket pardon to Clarridge, to George, to Elliott Abrams -
people who clearly lied. There wasn't any mistake made: they were liars. I
think that was an unconscionable act and all it does is pinpoint George Bush's
untruthfulness about this whole issue."
- Wall Street Journal Washington Bureau Chief Al Hunt on
CNN's Capital Gang, January 2.
Post-Communist Revisionism
"As there were celebrations
for peace in San Salvador this week, there was also some grisly accounting.
The United States paid the sticker price for continuing most of the war during
years when we saw El Salvador as another domino in Cuban or Soviet designs,
close to a billion dollars. But Salvadorans paid the real, incalculable
costs....For twelve years, most of us, U.S. taxpayers, who helped finance the
fighting, risked nothing real to keep it going. It was good policy to pay for
a war we were willing to watch but did not want to risk ourselves....As the
war ended this week in a world which has gone on to other crises, you might
wonder why the treaty Salvadorans celebrated couldn't have been signed twelve
years ago, before 75,000 people died; before, as Oscar Romero said, people
whose pockets are heavy with gold paid poor people to fight for food and
clothes."
- NBC weekend Today co-host Scott Simon, December 20.
Narrow-Minded Patriotism
"And then there were the
trillions spent on arms - far more than necessary (especially in the 1980s),
though it was hard to know when the buildup began. The newsreel playing over
and over in the minds of policymakers was the image of Chamberlain
capitulating to Hitler at Munich. This was the mental baggage that eventually
led to Vietnam. The ends of fighting communism were seen to justify all sorts
of unsavory means. Now, with the benefit of hindsight, it's clear that the
ends were nobler than the left admitted; communism was just as inhuman as it
was cracked up to be. And the means were meaner than the right admitted; laws
were broken and lives ruined in the name of narrow-minded patriotism."
- Newsweek Senior Writer Jonathan Alter on the World War II
generation, January 11.
Making Up Homeless Numbers
"Nationally, right now, five
million people are believed to be homeless....And the numbers are
increasing."
- NBC weekend Today co-host Jackie Nespral, January 9. (The
Census Bureau found 220,000.)
Gay Men's Choir
"And pretend that he is
Parson Brown. He'll say are you married, we'll say no man..."
- Rep. Barney Frank and his lover, Herb Moses, singing a line of
"Winter Wonderland" on ABC's Prime Time Live, December 31.
- L. Brent Bozell III; Publisher
- Brent H. Baker, Tim Graham; Editors
- Brant Clifton, Chris Crowley, Andrew Gabron, Steve Kaminski; Media Analysts
- Jennifer Hardebeck; Circulation Manager
- David Muska; Intern