Margaret Carlson: President of the Hillary Fan Club
"As the icon of
American womanhood, she is the medium through which the remaining anxieties
over feminism are being played out....Perhaps in addition to the other items
on her agenda, Hillary Rodham Clinton will define for women that magical spot
where the important work of the world and love and children and an inner life
all come together. Like Ginger Rogers, she will do everything her partner
does, only backward and in high heels, and with what was missing in [Lee]
Atwater - a lot of heart."
- Time White House correspondent Margaret Carlson, May 10.
"While the pundits
and the medical establishment and men in general seem to enjoy taking potshots
at Hillary, the less privileged root for her at clinics in Virginia, farm
halls in Iowa, auditoriums in Florida, and hospitals in Pennsylvania. The
people who line up after the hearings for a word, an autograph, to shake her
hand, and the 100,000 people who have written to say they think she is doing
the right thing seem to appreciate her core of unbendable steel."
- Carlson in the June Vanity Fair.
"Well, she's
different, you know, and the last two decades have not been easy for any
woman. I think - wouldn't all of you rather just keep the goodies to yourself
and not share them in general?"
- Carlson to host Brian Lamb and two male reporters, C-SPAN's Journalists'
Roundtable, May 7.
Taking Hillary as Policy Wonk Seriously
"She's ecumenical
but prefers Italian and Mexican. The President fixes her eggs with jalapeo
peppers on the weekends. One Christmas she served black beans and chili as
part of a buffet. She carries Tabasco sauce wherever she goes....Valentine's
Day at the Red Sage restaurant. Even at a romantic outing, the President can
be the date from hell, talking to everyone but the girl he brung....Finally
alone, they have `painted soup' and the lamb baked in herbed bread. They
exchange gifts and touch each other more in two hours than the Bushes did in
four years."
- Carlson in the June Vanity Fair.
More Hillary Hype
"In the midst of
redesigning America's health care system and replacing Madonna as our leading
cult figure, the new First Lady has already begun working on her next project,
far more meta-physical and uplifting....She is both impersonal and poignant -
with much more depth, intellect and spirituality than we are used to in a
politician...She has goals, but they appear to be so huge and far off - grand
and noble things twinkling in the distance - that it's hard to see what she
sees."
- Washington Post reporter Martha Sherrill, May 4.
Janet Reno, Rock Star
"One top White
House official says Reno's become a rock star celebrity inside the
administration...There are certainly other potential stars: Health and Human
Services Secretary Donna Shalala, Henry Cisneros at HUD, Robert Reich at
Labor. But Bernie, when I posed the question who's the star, every single
person I asked said Janet Reno first."
- CNN reporter Charles Bierbauer, May 7 Inside Politics.
"In that instant,
Reno, who had already pretty much captivated Washington with one gutsy
performance after another, achieved full-fledged folk-hero status....She was
cheered on both sides of the aisle in Congress and in her own Justice
Department, where a succession of 25-watt, responsibility-ducking Attorneys
General had left morale lower than - well, lower than an alligator's
belly."
- Time contributing editor and former Washington Bureau Chief
Stanley Cloud, May 10.
Clinton's Gutsy Deficit Cuts
"It's really
remarkable because the American people now do associate Bill Clinton with
higher taxes, and...he hasn't made the case of what they're getting in return.
The fact is that this is the first President in a generation who had the guts
to try to do something about deficit reduction and to take on health care, and
he's somehow not selling that. He's still being perceived as an old-style
Democrat."
- NBC White House reporter Andrea Mitchell, May 2 Meet The Press.
"Essentially, the
[Clinton] plan maintains the balance which undoes the '80s: 70 percent of the
taxes fall on wealthier people. He does have a dollar in spending cuts for
every dollar in tax increases. It's true...It's the first serious attempt to
cut the deficit in this country."
- Newsweek reporter Eleanor Clift, May 15 McLaughlin Group.
All for Gun Control
"So in the absence
of the obvious solution in this country, of better gun control. Obvious. What
kind of practical things do you suggest could be done of an immediate
nature?"
- Today co-host Bryant Gumbel to criminologist James Alan Fox, May
7.
"It's time to
square off against guns. We are talking a sustained newspaper crusade. That
means more reporting, tougher investigative work and stronger editorial
pages...Investigate the NRA with renewed vigor. It may be on the run, but its
spokesman claims membership ($25 annual dues) is up 600,000 over 10 years ago.
Print names of elected officials who take NRA funds. Interview them. Support
all forms of gun licensing; in fact, all the causes NRA opposes."
- Former Boston Globe Editor Tom Winship, April 24 Editor &
Publisher.
Time for a Bigger Energy Tax - for the 25th Time in Four Years
"One way to reverse
that trend [of carbon dioxide emissions] is to discourage the use of fossil
fuels by raising energy taxes. Clinton has already proposed a tax on various
forms of energy that would take the country about a quarter of the way to the
target for carbon dioxide reduction. But even this modest proposal is running
into opposition, and it is hard to imagine a more ambitious tax getting
anywhere on Capitol Hill."
- Time Associate Editor Philip Elmer-DeWitt, May 3.
Dastardly Disney?
"There was a small,
sad note about Cold War history that came to light last week. A new biography
says that Walt Disney, the creator of an empire founded on charming children,
was an informant for the FBI....meaning that Uncle Walt finked on his own
cartoonists. You might wonder: did Mr. Disney believe Mickey's prodigious ears
were sending secret signals to the Soviets? Did Mr. Disney believe Donald
Duck's peculiar, scratchy speech concealed insidious messages only to be
decoded in Moscow? I hesitate to mention this so soon after Mother's Day, but
when Bambi's mother disappeared, was it because Uncle Walt turned her over to
the House Un-American Activities Committee?"
- NBC weekend Today co-host Scott Simon, May 15.
Oops
"`GM says we are a
bunch of incompetent boobs. We do not dispute this.'
- Stone Phillips, Dateline NBC co-host, April 1." - Notable
Quotables April Fools fake quote published as real in the May Quill,
the magazine of the Society of Professional Journalists.
- L. Brent Bozell III;
Publisher
- Brent H. Baker, Tim Graham; Editors
- Andrew Gabron, Kristin Johnson, Steve Kaminski, Mark Rogers, Bill Thompson;
Media Analysts
- Kathleen Ruff, Circulation Manager;
- David Felton, David Muska,; Interns