Hating the 80s: It Never Ends
"Money, not ideology, is
the reason all modern spies sell out, according to one Senate
intelligence committee study. Ames was strapped by a divorce
settlement, and greed was a national pastime in the
mid-80s."
- Newsweek Washington Bureau Chief Evan
Thomas, March 7.
"The President had to play
defense after reports of two more secret briefings that White
House officials received months ago. The subject of those
briefings: Clinton family ties to an Arkansas banking and real
estate deal that went sour in the go-go '80s."
- Dan
Rather, March 3 CBS Evening News.
Hillary: The Working Woman's Mascot?
"As much as we try to think
otherwise, when you're covering some- one like yourself, and
your position in life is insecure, she's your mascot. Something
in you roots for her. You're rooting for your team. I try to get
that bias out, but for many of us it's there."
- Time
Senior Writer Margaret Carlson quoted in The Washington Post,
March 7.
Cronkite on Conspiracies
"I think one of the
absolute worst historical sins committed in recent years was
that Oliver stone thing on JFK, the assassination of JFK. That
totally distorted a major historical event. It indicted people
for whom there's no evidence that indictment is required. It
suggested conspiracies that nobody has ever established or
proved."
- Walter Cronkite on CNBC's The Dick Cavett
Show, March 4.
"Some of us were called in
by Caspar Weinberger, when he was the Secretary of Defense. This
was after Grenada, after the Grenada invasion, which again was
not covered. We don't know the full story today. No reporters
got in for three days. I don't know whether we really found a
warehouse full of AK-47s there or not. Maybe we planted them
there. I'm not saying we did, but we had three days to do it if
we wanted to because we had no reporters get there at the
beginning."
- Cronkite, same show, minutes later.
Henry Hyde Should Know Better
Former Quayle aide David
Beckwith: "Henry Hyde said '[Bush] broke his promise when
he moved his lips. He didn't tap the anger and frustration of
the American middle class at the nanny state's endless
intrusions into our lives.'"
Chicago Tribune
Washington reporter Steve Daley: "...Henry Hyde is usually
smarter than that. I think it's very easy for the Republican
Party to look at George Bush and decide to blame the entire
debacle on him. I think that the whole party - for Congressman
Hyde or any of these guys to be talking about reaching out to
the middle class after what they pulled off for 12 years - not
very credible."
- Exchange on C-SPAN's Sunday Journal,
March 6.
Rodney King, Family Man
"To his family, to his
friends, he is not Rodney. They call him by his middle name,
Glenn. He hurts inside. He's changed outside. Slimmed down, his
210 pounds resembling those of a pro football wide receiver. He
leads his family with serious focus."
- Bernard Shaw
anchoring the CNN special on Rodney King, Feb. 23.
"The past for him has drawn
an unwanted spotlight of troubles... There was the alley
incident with Hollywood vice police, who claimed King tried to
run them down after allegedly picking up a transvestite male
prostitute...King was arrested after his wife called police to
say she had been injured and feared for her life."
- Same
show, seconds later.
Eleanor: I'm A Moderate
"I also think I am, in the
great scale of politics, I am maybe, I am in the broad middle.
I'm not a screaming way-out liberal who can't find a home in our
political ideology. What bothers me is this caller uses the word
liberal as though it's some sort of epithet, and that really
reeks of a past campaign that was run, you remember ACLU cards
and all of that. George Bush ran on those issues very
successfully in 1988. He came back in '92 and tried to run a
similar version and it didn't work. I think we're beyond
that."
- Newsweek reporter Eleanor Clift on C-SPAN's
Journalists Roundtable, February 18.
Cuba's Advanced Health Care
"In the 35 years since the
revolution, Cuba has developed what is easily the finest health
care system in Latin America. One of the most cherished
'achievements' of the revolution, the health of the population
has come to be a metaphor for the health of the body
politic."
- Boston Globe reporter Sally Jacobs,
February 28.
"In the absence of
traditional medical supplies, herbal remedies known as 'green
medicine' have become commonplace in Cuban hospitals and
clinics. Lemon grass is used for circulation, bee pollen for
cleaning wounds. Oregano syrup is used for colds, cola nut for
stimulation. At one hospital, doctors are experimenting with
yogurt and sugar remedies in place of antiseptic."
-
Jacobs sidebar, same page.
Wishing Gorbachev Were Still in Charge
"Life has become so much
worse for so many Russians under Democratic pseudo
capitalism...the first market reforms and the erosion of state
authority have fostered a brutal cowboy capitalism. It is
manifest in the emergence of a lavish lifestyle amond a
flamboyant and vulgar new class of businessmen, made up mostly
of speculators, traders and outright criminals, all of whom are
stealing the country blind...No freedom from fear and no freedom
from want: Small wonder many Russians feel nostalgic for the
days when there was bread and law and order."
- U.S.
News & World Report Mortimer Zuckerman, March 7.
Killin's Sexy
"The first time I shot
somebody, it felt, God, it felt great. I mean, years later, I
read this like, magazine, and it likened the feeling to
ejaculation, or orgasm, and I thought about it, and it really
was....When John Wayne shoots somebody, he rides off into the
sunset. Why can't I, you know? Young people don't make the
logical connections that adults assume they make about those
kinds of things. That's why you've got to get rid of the
guns."
- Criminal-turned-Washington Post
reporter Nathan McCall on ABC's 20/20, Feb. 18.
The West Gets Stoned
"It seems like there has
always been a boom-bust cycle out West. Log it, mine it, graze
it, develop it, until there is nothing left, and then just move
on, because there's an infinite supply of land. Wrong notion.
How do you change that? How do you break the cycle?"
- Today
co-host Stone Phillips, February 21.
Gumbel Unloads
"Straight ahead in this
half hour we'll talk about a new book called Lethal Passage.
It deals with America's sickening love affair with guns."
- Today co-host Bryant Gumbel, February 23.
President Touchy-Feely
"Around the
global village, women cheered and grown men wept. At his press
conference, [Gold medal-winning speed skater Dan] Jansen paused
to take a call from the President, the man who's made America
safe again for tears."
- Newsweek reporter David
A. Kaplan, February 28.
Publisher: L. Brent Bozell III
Editors: Brent H. Baker, Tim Graham
Media Analysts: Andrew Gabron, Mark Honig,
Kristin Johnson, Steve Kaminski, Mark Rogers
Circulation Manager: Kathleen Ruff
Interns: David Muska, Clay Waters