The Czar of Bizarre
"It doesn't really matter if the
culture needs another cop show. Personally I'd like to see a weekly series
where social problems are solved through creative nonviolence after a Quaker
meeting by a collection of vegetarian carpenters. But I am not your Czar.
Another cop show is exactly what we get tonight immediately after the Super
Bowl."
- CBS Sunday Morning television critic John Leonard on the new NBC
cop show Homicide, January 31.
Tax Hikes: The Right Thing
"Clinton is much craftier than
George Bush in avoiding the kind of `Read My Lips' vow that allows no
maneuvering room. He can rewrite his promises to adjust to reality. That opens
him to `Slick Willie' catcalls. It also leaves him the option to do the right
thing."
- Newsweek reporter Eleanor Clift, February 8.
"The very cheapness of gas,
however, makes it an ideal target for a government bent on stopping a runaway
deficit....Yet while jacking up the gas tax might make good economic and
ecological sense, it is unlikely to happen anytime soon."
- Time Associate Editor John Greenwald, February 15 issue.
"Next Wednesday evening at about
8:15, the President will ask the wealthy to pay higher tax rates, and then at
about 8:20, he'll announce his energy tax, which is going to fall pretty
heavily on the middle class. I think the Administration has decided, to their
credit, that they have to be serious about taking on the budget deficit, and
that's going to mean higher taxes on the middle class."
- Wall Street Journal reporter Alan Murray on NBC News at
Sunrise, February 11.
Hailing Hillary
H.R. Clinton Feminaut explores gender
cosmos. The most fabulous woman in U.S. history?!?!
- Newsweek's "Conventional Wisdom Watch," February 15.
"It was the culmination of a
remarkable seven days in the Hillary Clinton story during which she has
displayed a versatility unmatched by all but the average working
mother...Consensus- building is supposed to be [Mrs.] Clinton's greatest
strength. Was that a sense of hope growing there on the Senate side of the
Capitol, suddenly, for a moment, that these vague and mysterious but wondrous
talents - along with her obvious power in the White House - could move the
bureaucratic mountain?"
- Washington Post reporter Martha Sherrill on the First Lady's trip
to Capitol Hill, February 5.
The New Age President
"There's no doubting that the
nation is about to be led by its first sensitive male chief executive. He's
the first President to have attended both Lamaze classes and family therapy
(as part of his brother's drug rehabilitation.) He can speak in the rhythms
and rhetoric of pop psychology and self-actualization. He can search for the
inner self while seeking connectedness with the greater whole."
- Newsweek Washington reporter Howard Fineman, January 25.
"Clinton is a prime
communicator, a beacon of middle-class charisma, a lover of being loved, a
believer in the importance - perhaps the primacy - of image, metaphor,
style....This huggy- bear President needs to feel the electromagnetism of
approval - but in a New Age way. His seeming candor is an amalgam of
born-again witnessing and self-help testifying, of the church and the couch;
you half expect his budget package to be a 12-step program."
- Time movie critic Richard Corliss, February 1 lead story.
Bias Trend of the '90s: Insulting the Religious
"Corporations pay public
relations firms millions of dollars to contrive the kind of grass-roots
response that Falwell or Pat Robertson can galvanize in a televised sermon.
Their followers are largely poor, uneducated, and easy to command."
- Washington Post reporter Michael Weisskopf, February 1.
"An article yesterday
characterized followers of television evangelists Jerry Falwell and Pat
Robertson as `largely poor, uneducated, and easy to command.' There is no
factual basis for that statement."
- Post corrections box, next day.
Rigid Republicans
"At the heart of the debate is
whether the GOP can erase an intolerant and rigid image after a divisive
August convention that at times denounced abortion, homosexuality, and women
with careers."
- USA Today reporter Richard Benedetto on the race for RNC chairman,
January 29.
"Senator Kassebaum thinks the
Republican Party is today still suffering from the damage done by its
convention last summer, which featured aggressive stands against abortion
rights and rigid conceptions of family life and social issues."
- CBS reporter David Culhane, January 24 Sunday Morning.
Elementary Homophobia
"If you wear green on Thursday
you're a queer, a pansy, a sissy. How many generations of contemporary
Americans, particularly American boys, entered grade school and learned
homophobia casually along with their ABC's, long before discovering anything
of the fluttering of the birds and the bees?"
- Beginning of Los Angeles Times reporter John Balzar's front-page
story headlined "Why Does America Fear Gays?," February 4.
Hurray for International Abortion
"The Reagan Administration
withdrew support for international population organizations because it refused
to endorse family- planning efforts with any connection at all to abortion or
abortion counseling - a tiny part of these organizations' efforts. That
volatile moral issue will no doubt be raised when the funding of these
programs comes up later this year. The Clinton policy shift sends a clear
signal that, after a decade of politically motivated neglect, the new
administration intends to treat stabilization of the population once again as
a pressing global issue."
- U.S. News & World Report Senior Editor Betsy Carpenter,
February 8.
Dan in the Hood
Dan Rather: "Some days I say
`Why is he [Clinton] doing that?' or `Gosh, can he do it a little better?' But
it may be time to, sort of as you say, chill. We know when it comes to
politics and governing, whatever you think of this President, whether you
voted for him or not, he can hang - which is to say he can do it...."
Arsenio Hall: "See! See! Dan is
deep, ain't he? Dan in the Hood!....I thank you for being here. You're a
special guy. And I hope whatever you have is contagious."
- Exchange from The Arsenio Hall Show, January 28.
Maria Shriver: Quayle's Not the Only Acceptional Speller
"I have tried to make First
Person unique in that, as the name implies, we try to tackle issues, whatever
they may be, from the perspective of the individual and his or her own
personal story. We wanted to make an acception with our interview but it just
didn't fit."
- Maria Shriver in a letter to Rev. Louis Sheldon apologizing for not using
any part of a three-hour interview with him in her January 26 First Person
on gays.
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