Rush Limbaugh: Look Who's Lecturing
"Why does anyone take Rush
Limbaugh seriously?...He's entertaining. But, come on, he is to
truthfulness as President Clinton is to faithfulness - he has
but a passing acquaintance with it. He's toying with you, folks,
getting you all riled up with a stew of half-truths and
non-truths. He's making fools of you, feeding you swill - and
you're taking it in....So keep listening if you want. But just
remember that he's a charlatan."
- Former NBC News President Michael Gartner in a USA
Today column, July 12.
vs.
"We remain convinced that
taken in its entirety and in its detail, the segement that was
broadcast on Dateline NBC was fair and accurate."
- Michael Gartner defending NBC's staged GM truck
explosions, quoted in The Washington Post, February 9,
1993.
"Giving him his due,
Truthman appears to be factually right at least as often as he's
wrong. Hitting 50 or 60 percent of your shots makes you a star
in basketball. However, that's un-acceptable for a self-defined
oracle whose trustworthiness is taken for granted by a hefty
number of Americans."
- Los Angeles Times TV critic Howard Rosenberg,
June 29.
vs.
"President Clinton made
comments about radio and TV personality Rush Limbaugh to a St.
Louis radio station, not a meeting of radio talk-show hosts. In
addition, Fairness & Accuracy in Media is located in New
York, not Washington. Both facts were incorrectly reported in
Wednesday's Calendar."
- Correction on Rosenberg's story on Fairness and
Accuracy in Reporting, next day.
Talking About Lies and Errors in the Media
"And the problem is
compounded by the fact that two thirds of the voters believe
that Clinton has both raised their taxes and intends to raise
them more with health care reform. While neither is true,
Republicans have happily promoted both notions."
- U.S.
News Assistant Managing Editor Gloria Borger, June 27.
"For the last 50 years, the
Department of Energy stood guard as a cold warrior, defending
America with its bomb factories."
- CNN's Bernard Shaw on CNN Presents, July 3.
(Dept. of Energy was created in 1977.)
America the Hateful
"Do you think there will
ever come a time when there won't be any homophobia?"
- Today
contributor Tabitha Soren to lesbian activist Storme de Larverie,
June 27.
"We hear the stories of
discrimination in education and housing and jobs all the time.
We hear the violence between races. Do you think it's possible
that America is simply an inherently racist place?"
- Today substitute co-host Matt Lauer, July 4.
"I found it affirming to
see the real thing [South Africa], a place where everything was
not only in black and white, but where racists had felt free
enough to put it in writing. Americans are so much more subtle
with their oppression, always leaving enough wiggle room to
question the sanity of the victim, accuse him or her of
paranoia."
- Washington Post reporter Mary Ann French in a
Travel section article, July 10.
Europe Envy
"We're only kind of at the
tip of the iceberg. We have a long way to go before we match up
to European countries, don't we?"
- ABC Good Morning America co-host Joan Lunden
talking about family leave with Ellen Galinsky of the Families
and Work Institute, June 21.
Ollie Zhirinovsky?
"Oliver North and Vladimir
Zhirinovsky: Two names out of the headlines that don't usually
connect. But the would-be senator from Virginia and the Russian
chauvinist steam along parallel political tracks: They pander to
frustrated and angry voters consumed by an overwhelming sense of
loss of their country....The separate but similar nationalisms
that North and Zhirinovsky express are raw and crude, reeking of
claims of manifest destiny and divine inspiration. They are not
simply charlatans. They are geopolitical charlatans who would
reassert a lost national greatness by intimidating smaller
countries and dominating neighbors. That was North's style with
Central America when he was in the White House."
- Washington
Post columnist and former chief diplomatic correspondent
Jim Hoagland, June 30.
"But the Republican
conflict is part of an emerging national struggle, more
structural than personal; Oliver North, America's Zhirinovsky,
won the party's nomination in a state convention overrun by the
religious right."
- Newsweek Senior Editor Joe Klein, July 18.
Heroism = Tax Hikes
"There were a few heroic
moments. Senate Finance historically raises taxes only after
members have been bought off with specific goodies for wealthy
special interests. But in a fit of responsibility...the
committee approved 11-9 an amendment by Bill Bradley to raise a
bit of revenue and tamp down health-care costs by taxing
gold-plated health plans. As Bradley noted, these are the very
plans used by the lawyers and lobbyists in the audience.
Cigarette taxes were headed for a big boost, too."
- Newsweek Jonathan Alter and Steven Waldman,
July 11.
In 1981, When Congress Was Stupid
"It turned out the
legislators who voted on the 1981 tax-cut bill...barely
understood any of the provisions: Chief among them that the law
would create the mega-deficits that have plagued the federal
government since."
- Newsweek Contributing Editor Gregg
Easterbrook in the Los Angeles Times, June 26.
Only the Rich Have Phones!
"Does it matter what is
said and talked about on talk radio, given that there's a school
of thought that says 'listen, you're basically talking with
people in the upper tier of the economic system as opposed to
those at the lower bottom.'"
- Dan Rather interviewing three radio talk show hosts
during a prime time O.J. Simpson special, July 5.
Like to Dismiss Conservatives
"Well it's interesting that
The American Spectator - as much as we all like to
sort of dismiss it as fringe - when it writes something, it
gets Xeroxed a lot and passed around among journalists in
Washington. That's for sure."
- Los Angeles Times reporter Karen Tumulty,
July 3.
Family Values
"Communes proved harder to
sustain than plain old couples, and the conservatism of the '80s
crushed the last vestiges of life-style experimentation...but
the family, with its deep, impacted tensions and longings, can
hardly be expected to be the moral foundation of everything
else. In fact, many families could use a lot more outside
interference in the form of counseling and policing, and some
are so dangerously dysfunctional that they ought to be
discouraged to disband right away....When, instead, the larger
culture aggrandizes wife beaters, degrades women, or nods
approvingly at child slappers, the family gets a little more
dangerous for everyone, and so, inevitably, does the larger
world."
- Time essayist Barbara Ehrenreich, July
18 issue.
Publisher:
L. Brent Bozell III
Editors: Brent H. Baker, Tim Graham
Media Analysts: James Forbes, Andrew Gabron,
Mark Honig, Steve Kaminski, Mark Rogers, Clay Waters
Circulation Manager: Kathleen Ruff
Interns: Deanna Ducher, Patrick Pitman, Stephanie Swafford