Frightened Friedman
Thomas Friedman, New York
Times reporter and columnist: "Governor, I'm kind of a
foreign policy wonk, and it scares the bejesus out of me to have
someone as President of the United States, Commander-in-Chief,
and finger on the nuclear button who is such an outsider to
Washington and American foreign policy."
Lamar Alexander: "Well, did
Ronald Reagan scare you, Tom?"
Friedman: "He sure
did."
Alexander: "Did he? He
didn't scare me. I thought he was the best national defense and
Commander-in-Chief and foreign policy President we've had since
Eisenhower."
Friedman: "Ask 245 Marines
in Beirut about that."
- Exchange on CBS's Face the Nation, March 5.
We're Waving Goodbye
"I think that capitalism is
inherently amoral and it is folly to expect that a system run on
greed will be able to adopt some virtuous precepts to prevent
the violations of human rights."
- ABC News correspondent and former NPR reporter John
Hockenberry, in an America Online auditorium, March 2.
"Faced with a choice of a
crowd-pleasing fanatic trying to look like a Republican and
about a hundred real Repubs it looks tough to me."
- Hockenberry on Clinton's re-election chances.
"I think American politics
thrives on ignorance today. I think American policy works
without a backup plan as long as people are so unrepentantly
uninformed."
- Hockenberry on whether public well informed.
"Yes. I'm moving to
Switzerland."
- When asked if the Contract with America will work.
One of Those Socialist Editorials Newt Talked About
"The Republican jihad
against the poor, the young and the helpless rolls on. So far no
legislative assault has been too cruel, no budget cut too
loathsome for the party that took control of Congress at the
beginning of the year and has spent all its time since then
stomping on the last dying embers of idealism and compassion in
government....If anything is funny in this dismal period, it's
that the Republicans are touchy about being called heartless and
cold. That's a riot. Has anyone listened to Newt Gingrich
lately? To Dick Armey? To Phil Gramm? This is the coldest crew
to come down the pike since the Ice Age."
- Former NBC News reporter Bob Herbert in his February
25 New York Times column.
...And A Pointy White Hood Over His Head
"In addition to Senate
rules, Byrd is master of many other bodies of knowledge. He
reads the ancient Greeks and Romans and is an avid student of
their culture, lecturing the Senate regularly on its lessons for
contemporary America. He is on intimate terms with the Bible.
And he is a constitutional scholar who carries a dog-eared copy
of the U.S. Constitution in his breast pocket, over his
heart."
- Los Angeles Times reporter Melissa Healy
introducing Sen. Robert Byrd in interview titled "A Master
of the Senate Universe," January 30.
Pat Robertson's Seductive Snake Dance
"Let's put it in biblical
terms. The NEA is the head of John the Baptist, which will be
served on a golden platter to that seductive Salome, Pat
Robertson and the Christian Coalition, whose Nov. 8 snake-dance
so charmed Republican Herods in Congress that they are lining up
to grant the ruinous wish....Eager candidates for the
[presidential] nomination agree that the party's extreme right
wing, a minority prominently featured on the podium at the 1992
convention in Houston, will be necessary to its delivery. So
they're ready to deal, in order to keep the extremists
happy."
- Los Angeles Times art critic Christopher
Knight, February 27.
That Cowardly Amendment
"Good evening. Politicians
like to talk a lot about their courage, but when it comes to the
really tough choices in cutting the federal budget, courage
gives way to finding cover. And many believe they have an
answer: a constitutional amendment requiring a balanced budget
by the year 2002."
- NBC anchor Tom Brokaw, February 28 Nightly News.
"Some see the Simpson trial
as symptomatic of the legal system's failure in this country,
and in Washington, the Balanced Budget Amendment as political
cowardice."
- Brokaw introducing Bill Moyers, same evening.
The Contract's Not Done Until Every Child's Dead
"There was no doubt
Republicans in the House had enough votes tonight to pass
another key item in their agenda to rip up or rewrite government
programs going back to the Franklin Roosevelt era. It is a bill
making it harder, much harder, to protect health, safety, and
the environment. For example: the benefit of any new regulation
would be required to outweigh the financial cost."
- Dan Rather, February 28 CBS Evening News.
"The fate of the school
lunch program is still unclear. Key Republicans in the Senate
still haven't publicly staked out their positions, and the GOP
must battle the perception that the Contract with America is a
contract against children."
- CNN reporter Eugenia Halsey, February 23 World
News.
"The school lunch program,
by all accounts, has been incredibly successful, as has the WIC
program, and obviously provides good nutrition for children,
which is so crucial for development and education. Since the
states won't have to adhere to any federal guidelines and they
can basically do their own thing, aren't you worried that we're
going to go back to the days when Ronald Reagan suggested that
ketchup and relish be designated as vegetables?"
- Katie Couric to Rep. Duke Cunningham, February 22 Today.
(Reagan never suggested that).
Placing Themselves on the Far Left
"While others in the GOP
pack are running as Mr. Right, or Mr. Far Right, Senator Lugar
is stressing his foreign policy expertise."
- Dan Rather, March 3 CBS Evening News.
"You've been known in the
past as a moderate Republican, but some of your views could be
considered by some to be extreme. For example, you would shut
down the U.S. Education Department. You would shut down welfare
and Medicaid for the poor, eventually. Aren't you just
advocating shifting some enormous problems to states that may
not be well-equipped to deal with them?"
- Today substitute host Elizabeth Vargas to
Lamar Alexander, February 28.
"And now joining us from
Philadelphia, Senator Arlen Specter, who casts himself as an
alternative candidate to the far-right fringe."
- Today weekend host Giselle Fernandez,
February 19.
CNN Pays for This "Analysis"?
"The Reaganites allowed
themselves to believe a cockamamie theory called supply-side
economics - which held that if they cut taxes and increased
defense spending, government revenues would go up."
- CNN analyst William Schneider in the February 26 Los
Angeles Times.
Smarmy Calls for Equality
"The reaction of the black
community is likely to be cold fury, incendiary rhetoric - and
a deep sense of despair. `You are putting a formula together to
maintain white America in total control so that racial-minority
America can never be part of the system,' Willie Brown, the
state Assembly speaker, has said. The response from white
America is likely to be a disingenuous and slightly smarmy call
for a `colorblind society.'"
- Newsweek Senior Writer Joe Klein on
California's anti-quota ballot initiative, February 13.
- L.
Brent Bozell III, Publisher;
-Brent H. Baker, Tim Graham; Editors
- James Forbes, Andrew Gabron, Mark Honig, Steve Kaminski,
Gesele Rey, Clay Waters; Media Analysts
- Kathleen Ruff, Circulation Manager;
-Melissa Gordon, Anna Johnson; Interns