It’s Just Like Killing Hitler
“Probably there should be a rule against it. But there’s a rule against murder. If someone had murdered Hitler — a journalist interviewing him had murdered him — the world would be a better place. I only feel good, as a citizen, about getting rid of George Bush, who has been the most destructive president in my lifetime. I certainly don’t regret it.”
— New Yorker magazine writer Mark Singer explaining why he donated $250 to the liberal “Victory Campaign 2004.” Singer was quoted in a June 21 online story by MSNBC’s Bill Dedman, who used FEC records to determine that 125 journalists gave to “Democrats and liberal causes” while “only 16 gave to Republicans.”
Ruing Right Wing “War on Hillary”
“It’s her resilience and capacity to survive and thrive against all comers that partly fuels the haters’ fury....In-stalled in Washington, Hillary morphed into a comic-book villain for her detractors — a man-eating feminist, they claimed, who allegedly threw lamps at her husband, communed psychically with Eleanor Roosevelt and lit a White House Christmas tree adorned with sex toys. The narrative of depravity — a tissue of inventions by conservatives — was often hard to follow....The anti-Hillary industry has never managed to bring down Hillary herself — in fact, the more they have attacked, the higher she has risen.”
— Newsweek’s Jonathan Darman and Mark Hosenball in “The New War on Hillary,” June 18 issue.
Loves That Old Time Liberalism
Senator Barack Obama: “Let’s roll back the Bush tax cuts on the wealthiest Americans, let’s make certain that those resources go to the people who need it....We’re not going to solve it by pretending that issues of poverty and struggle among working families are just going to go away magically because the stock market is going up.”
Moderator Chris Matthews: “So much of what you say just grabs people like me, because it sounds like Bobby Kennedy. It sounds like the ’60s at its absolute best.”
— Exchange at AFSCME Democratic candidates forum shown live on MSNBC, June 19.
The Terrorists’ Media Helpers
“Are you in Iraq? Have you seen any troop movements? If you have any information you would like to share with the BBC, you can do so using the form below.”
— Request for reader tips posted for two hours June 20 on the BBC’s Web site as part of a news package about a U.S. military offensive against Iraqi insurgents.
Mr. Sicko’s Media Sycophants
“A lot of the film [Sicko] is about, is about the insurance companies and the condemnation of them. I just have to say, I don’t usually give opinions, but whatever — you’re Republican or Democrat or whatever you are, this is an amazing film. I thought it was — I think everybody should see it. When it premiered last night, you got a standing ovation. That’s unusual for you. Everybody loved you.”
— Barbara Walters to left-wing filmmaker Michael Moore on ABC’s The View, June 19. (With WMV video [1]/MP3 audio [2])
“You know, I gotta agree with him on this stuff. I gotta agree with him. He’s got a case and health care in this country is not working.”
— MSNBC’s Chris Matthews on Hardball, June 20.
“[Sicko] contends that the American system of private medical insurance is a disaster, and that a state-run system, such as exists nearly everywhere else in the industrialized world, would be better....[Moore] finds that British doctors are happy and well paid, that Canadians don’t have to wait very long in emergency rooms, and that the French are not taxed into penury....[Moore] wants us to be more like everybody else. When he plaintively asks, ‘Who are we?,’ he is not really wondering why our traditions of neighborliness and generosity have not found political expression in an expansive system of social welfare. He is insisting that such a system should exist, and also, rather ingeniously, daring his critics to explain why it shouldn’t.”
— New York Times critic A. O. Scott in a June 22 review.
ABC’s Terry Moran: “He [Moore] kept making the same point, the point his movie ultimately makes: Fixing health care is a moral, even a religious obligation....Is Sicko kind of a statement of faith for you?”
Michael Moore: “Yeah. It is, in a way....I believe, as a Christian, as a Catholic, that it’s my responsibility to make sure that, that not only that I’m covered, if something happens to me, but everyone else is covered.”
— ABC’s Nightline, June 13.
Lack of Socialism = Voters’ Fault
“Obviously, you blame the companies. They’re all about greed. You don’t like what they do. But why aren’t the voters to blame, the people to blame for the situation to the extent they don’t like it?”
— ABC’s Chris Cuomo to Michael Moore on Good Morning America, June 12.
A Little Balance, 28 Days Late
“As we have covered the immigration debate here, we have heard from numerous Americans who are trying to run businesses, make money and in some cases bring in ripe crops. They’ve been begging lawmakers for a workable immigration solution. A lot of people think this country is letting too many people in. Tonight we hear their take on immigration from NBC’s David Gregory.”
— NBC’s Brian Williams on the June 14 Nightly News introducing NBC’s first story on grassroots opponents of the Senate immigration bill, a full four weeks after the deal was first announced.
Like Pulling Down Pants of Jews
“This is going to result in racial profiling. If, in her America, in Michelle’s America, when you look, ‘Is that Hispanic guy an illegal or is he legal?’ It reminds me so much of when they used to pull down the pants of Jews to see if they were circumcised or not. It is, it is so, so pathetic. It’s so un-American....I want you to know, ladies and gentlemen, that what they are doing is using the police force of the United States to break up families and sow horror and pain.”
— Geraldo Rivera rejecting columnist Michelle Malkin’s argument that citizens should report illegal immigrants to the authorities, FNC’s The O’Reilly Factor, June 8. (With WMV video [3]/MP3 audio [4])
Pleading for More Government
“It’s something that every parent struggles with, how to balance work and family. And the U.S. lags far behind other countries in helping parents....The U.S. doesn’t make it easy: A recent Harvard-McGill study of more than 170 countries found that only four of them do not require paid leave for new mothers: Liberia, Papua New Guinea, Swaziland, and the U.S. The study also found that 145 countries provide paid sick days. The U.S. requires only unpaid family and medical leave and not all workers are covered.”
— ABC’s David Wright, June 21 Good Morning America.
CIA: Worse than Ever?
ABC’s Liz Marlantes: “It is the stuff of spy novels. Among the abuses: assassination conspiracies against foreign leaders like Fidel Castro; the infiltration of anti-war groups; and screening of private mail....This all comes when the CIA is under fire for an alleged array of current abuses, including the use of secret prisons and torture. Some say the activities of the past may look mild by comparison.”
Author James Bamford: “A lot of the things that were done in a very mild degree back in the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s are now being done on a whole scale basis.”
— ABC’s World News Sunday, June 24.
Al Gore’s Mystery Media Advisor
CNN’s Howard Kurtz: “Election Night 2000...It looks like George W. Bush is going to win. A senior network correspondent, you said, called you and warned, ‘The Florida numbers are wrong. Don’t let him concede.’ Why would a correspondent — this is not a commentator, this is not a columnist — be giving you that kind of advice?...This is going to fuel everybody who thinks there’s a liberal media, that there were journalists that were rooting for Gore, trying to spare your candidate from embarrassment.”
Former Gore campaign advisor Bob Shrum: “I don’t, I don’t. I actually think that if the situations had been reversed, there would have been correspondents who would have called the Bush campaign....”
Kurtz: “Do you want to take this opportunity to name the correspondent?”
Shrum: “No.”
— Exchange on CNN’s Reliable Sources, June 17. (With WMV video [5]/MP3 audio [6])
Callous Reagan, Suffering Clintons
“[Ronald Reagan] was very, very likable and yet it was very impersonal. He definitely had an agenda, and it was a social Darwinism, ‘If you can’t make it, tough,’ was, you know, survival of the fittest, this is the whole approach.... He really did think that government was the problem and not the solution, which he said to the very end. At the same time, he, I think, he obviously was well liked, and I think that the poor did not prosper under him at all.”
“I think the Clintons had suffered a lot on the campaign trail ....Everything was under investigation constantly. They never, I don’t know how they stood it. The resilience of that family....I think that the Clintons suffered a lot.”
— Former UPI White House correspondent Helen Thomas on CNBC’s Tim Russert, June 9.
Stupid Bloggers, Idiot Limbaugh
Democrat & Chronicle: “We are...ripped by the right-wing conservative talk show hosts and others who just brand the mainstream media as worthless. Do we deserve that?... And what can we do about it?”
USA Today founder Al Neuharth: “Well, when I travel across the country, my amusement comes from Rush Limbaugh’s show....I don’t become offended by the idiotic things he says; I become amused by them. But I also think that from my perspective that it’s OK for idiots like him to voice their opinion because that’s what this country is about....All the bloggers on the Internet have a right to all of their stupidity, too. And there’s a lot of it.”
— From a Q & A with Neuharth published in the June 18 Rochester Democrat & Chronicle. Ellipses in the original.
PUBLISHER: L. Brent Bozell III
EDITORS: Brent H. Baker, Rich Noyes, Tim Graham
MEDIA ANALYSTS: Geoffrey Dickens, Brad Wilmouth, Scott Whitlock, Justin McCarthy, Matthew Balan and Brendan Jones
RESEARCH ASSOCIATE: Michelle Humphrey
INTERNS: Michael Lanza, Joe Steigerwald
CIRCULATION MANAGER: Holly Schnitzler