Inauguration Ratherisms
"Mr. Clinton was about as
relaxed as a pound of liver."
- Dan Rather referring to his earlier interview with Clinton, January 20 CBS
This Morning.
"If an American inauguration
can't bring a lump to your throat and a tear to your eye, if you don't feel as
corny as Kansas in August, maybe you need a jump-start and some
vitamins."
- Rather during inauguration coverage.
In and Out of the Loops
Bush Makes Public Iran-Contra Diary
Entries Suggest He Did Not Know Details of Scandal
- New York Times, Jan. 16
>Diary says Bush Knew 'Details' of
Iran Arms Deal
- Washington Post, same day
Diary: Bush in loop on arms, not
Contras
- Boston Globe, same day
Excerpts reaffirm Bush claim
- Baltimore Sun, same day
Clinton the Messiah
"Roger [Clinton]'s life is in
some ways the story of any younger sibling clobbered by the spectacular
success of the one who came before. The presidential brother syndrome. If your
brother is Christ, you have a choice: become a disciple, or become an anti-christ,
or find yourself caught somewhere between the two."
- Washington Post reporter Laura Blumenfeld, January 24.
"The Clinton campaign was guided
throughout by a quiet messianism. It was more than just a holy war against the
pinched, divisive brand of conservatism that had overtaken the Republicans in
recent years; there was also a confluence of longstanding aspirations and
frustrations - Democrats, baby boomers, `new ideas' types all were hoping
that their moment had finally come, that it was time to reclaim the idealism
of the Kennedy years."
- Newsweek Senior Writer Joe Klein, January 25.
Shalala Reception
Shalala, Espy Received Warmly;
Christopher Still Coasting on Hill
- Washington Post, January 15
Shalala omissions irritate Moynihan
- Washington Times, same day
Most Important Inauguration of Our Lives?
"In 1978, Newsweek
introduced its readers to a young man with a dream. On Friday, Newsweek will
be the only newsweekly to mark the culmination of that dream, with a special
newsstand issue on his inauguration. An issue that's sure to be a collector's
item because it covers the most important inauguration of our life-time."
- Newsweek television commercial.
Chelseagate Crystallized
"Perhaps this tempest reflects
the extreme jitters of the public- school community after 12 years of
government neglect."
- U.S. News & World Report Assistant Managing Editor Wray
Herbert, January 18.
"Well, the fact is 12-year-olds
are not meant to be symbols of anything, unless it's the difficulties of
approaching adolescence....Well, now the parental decision has been made, and
the public can make its judgment. And then perhaps we should all just drop the
subject and let a 12-year-old, who's leaving friends behind to move into a big
house in a strange city, get on with life - with becoming a teenager."
- NBC anchor Garrick Utley's commentary, January 9 Nightly News.
Reliving Watergate
"It is often said that, during
Watergate, the system worked. But in dealing with its spiritual stepchild -
Iran-Contra and the continuing constitutional criminality of the Reagan-Bush
years - it is now painfully apparent that the system has failed....The
escalating criminality of the Bush-Reagan era - in which the
breaking-and-entering of Bill Clinton's passport records has become
emblematic, just as the break-in of Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist was a
symbol of the Watergate era - refuses to go away, like some dark stain on the
national conscience."
- Former Washington Post reporter Carl Bernstein, Jan. 10 Los
Angeles Times.
The Media Gas Tax Caucus
"We need to raise taxes...As for
gasoline - which costs about $3.75 per gal. throughout Europe - Ross Perot
was right. Phase in a 50-cent tax over five years, and you raise $50 billion a
year."
- Time "Money Angles" columnist Andrew Tobias, January 25.
"So Clinton is right to back off
his plan for a middle-class tax cut and right again to `revisit' the proposal
to increase gasoline taxes, regressive levies he routinely dismissed as
un-fair during the campaign."
- Time Chief Political Correspondent Michael Kramer, January 25.
"Norway has an admirable
environmental record in other respects. The U.S., for instance, might follow
its example and implement a carbon tax, which encourages efficiency and the
use of cleaner fuels....If there is anything positive in this pastiche of
cumbersome, expensive, and irrelevant initiatives, it is the trend championed
by the Republican predecessors to move away from regulations and toward market
incentives (hint: a gas tax!) to achieve environmental goals."
- Time Senior Writer Eugene Linden, February 1.
"Economists generally agree that
moderate increases in energy taxes - even as much as $50 billion a year - to
reduce the deficit would actually boost economic growth even though consumers
would be left with less money to spend and prices for just about everything
would rise slightly."
- Washington Post reporters Steven Pearlstein and Thomas W. Lippman,
January 1.
Touting The Progressive
"Never merely refractory, never
simply obstructionist, The Progressive has understood for three
generations now the responsibility of a good citizen. It knows that to
conserve the best things about America - basic things, like democracy and
liberty and equality - we need to face up to where we've gone wrong....It is
fully truthful enough to make us blush."
- PBS omnipresence Bill Moyers
touting the far-left magazine The Progressive in their direct mail
fundraising, in a letter on his own company stationery, Public Affairs
Television.
Bush Lost, But They Still Can't Forget Willie Horton
"And then there was the George
Bush who could be churlish, almost a childlike bully when he campaigned.
Commercials arousing fear and speeches veering into the absurd."
- NBC weekend Today host Scott Simon over video of the Willie Horton
commercial, January 16.
Publisher: L. Brent
Bozell III
Editors: Brent H. Baker, Tim Graham
Media Analysts: Jessica Anderson, Eric Darbe,
Geoffrey Dickens, Mark Drake, Clay Waters
Research Associate: Kristina Sewell
Circulation Manager: Michelle Baetz
Interns: Stacey Felzenberg, Carrie Hale