The Gump From Hope?
"No one would accuse Bill
Clinton of being a slow-witted cipher or a sexual naif like Gump.
Yet what is likable about this fictional hero (and magnified
further by the irresistible Mr. Hanks) harks back to what many
saw, or thought they saw, in the boyish Mr. Clinton as he, like
Forrest Gump, caught fire with an American public hungry for
inspiration two years ago...[Gump] is neither bitter nor
cynical, but a healing figure, eager to put his and his
country's past behind him to embrace idealism and hope. Isn't
that what many Clinton voters felt on election night 1992?"
- New York Times columnist Frank Rich, July 21.
Apparently Voters Never Buy Gas
"Question to you, Bob
Squier. Have the Republicans pulled a snow job on the American
voters by making them believe Bill Clinton has raised their
taxes?"
- CNN anchor Bernard Shaw on Inside Politics,
July 19.
Tough Questions
"You talk about a culture of cynicism. Who's to blame for it? Is it our fault?"
"You have said, Mr. President, that you have been criticized more than any of your predecessors or any of your recent ones."
"How do you morally square
passing a crime bill without a racial justice clause?"
- questions from Boston Globe editors and
reporters in interview with President Clinton, July 20.
Rude, Sexist Far Right
"It is the election after
the Year of the Woman, and the historic gains by women have
collided with the radical right's nostalgia for the way things
were. Conservative radio talk-show hosts feed the resentment of
many men over what they perceive as 'fem- centric' policies that
promote women's concerns at their expense. ..Much of the
right-wing fear over 'fem-control' seems to center on the First
Lady, and that is setting the tone for races across the
country."
- Newsweek reporter Eleanor Clift in July 11
story headlined "The Year of the Smear: The far right is
still talking about family values, but their political manners
are ruder all the time."
"Senator Dole, when you
embraced Oliver North, you began to back away from universal
health care coverage...Some people said it is just a sign, that
those moves are signs that the right wing, the far right, is
slowly taking over the Republican Party, and maybe taking over
in a way that the left wing took over in 1972...How do you feel
about the impression that some people have, that the right wing,
the far right wing, is moving into a very dominant position in
the Republican Party. Do you think that's true?"
- Face the Nation host Bob Schieffer, July 17.
"We're back in just a
moment to talk about the President's problems with the
extremists of the religious right."
- Today co-host Bryant Gumbel, July 14.
Stingy Republicans?
"The Stingy Right (no
mandate, puny subsidies)."
- Senator Bob Dole's health proposal as summarized in Newsweek
chart, July 25 issue, page 20.
"Bob Dole has 40
Republicans lined up behind his modest package of insurance
reforms (and a not-so-modest $100 billion in subsidies for the
working poor)."
- Newsweek Senior Writer Joe Klein, three pages
later.
ABC Reporter: I'm With You, Hillary
"So at least from the
physicians represented here, you get a 100 percent vote,
including mine, for universal coverage."
- ABC reporter Dr. Tim Johnson to Hillary Clinton on Good
Morning America, July 19.
Souter's "Progressing"
"I remember when Blackmun
came up. I think I was the first to call him and Burger the
'Minnesota Twins.' They voted identically, and that was
conservative every time, and Blackmun progressed. And Souter is
progressing."
- Associated Press reporter Barry Schweid on Washington
Week in Review, July 15.
And For That Next Clinton Supreme Court Vacancy...
"I've changed my mind about
the Second Amendment. I don't think it should be repealed after
all...the Second Amendment provides a sound constitutional
argument for banning handguns...That is not about guns at all.
It is about safety. And guns are not a guarantee of safety; they
are a threat to it. The amendment was designed to protect 'the
security of a free state,' and 'not as a means of allowing an
armed insurrection of that very state,' a committee of the
Associaton of the Bar of the City of New York wrote to members
of Congress late last year...And that's what the Second
Amendment is about. It's about freedom. Freedom not to be
shot."
- Former NBC News President Michael Gartner in his July
19 USA Today column.
Blathering Rush
"What you get at Rush
Limbaugh is Rush Limbaugh. And you just get this blathering and
it is entertaining and it's funny. But there are some messages
there that are wrong, and there some that clearly are way off on
the ideological spectrum."
- Los Angeles Times Washington reporter Glenn
Bunting on C-SPAN's Journalists' Roundtable, July 8.
Let's Ensure That All Our Enemies Have a Couple of Nukes
"So far it's playing out
brilliantly. And clearly Kim Il Sung desperately wanted a
high-level guest. It was Billy Graham in February, [Senators]
Nunn and Lugar almost went. Carter was the man. But what we are
looking at now is perhaps a more mature way of evaluating
nonproliferation. It may be better to have a stable North Korea
with one or two bombs than a threatened regime with some sort of
secret program."
- Newsweek's Eleanor Clift on The
McLaughlin Group, June 25.
Looking Up Hyperbole in the Dictionary...
"Stonewall became a symbol
to gays the world over, their Bunker Hill, their Bastille, their
Tiananmen Square."
- The late Time drama critic William A. Henry
III on The MacNeil-Lehrer NewsHour, June 27.
Let's Create a New Food Intake Regulatory Agency
"What is it do you think
government can do about this? If we declare that obesity is a
disease, would that make any difference at all?"
- CBS This Morning co-host Paula Zahn on a
study marking one-third of Americans as obese, July 18.
This Is Your Brain on Drugs
"I have no doubt that if
Rush Limbaugh or Pat Robertson or Ollie North ever got real
power, there would be concentration camps and mass death."
- Radical poet Allen Ginsberg in The Progressive,
August 1994.
Publisher:
L. Brent Bozell III
Editors: Brent H. Baker, Tim Graham
Media Analysts: James Forbes, Andrew Gabron,
Mark Honig, Steve Kaminski, Clay Waters
Circulation Manager: Kathleen Ruff
Interns: Patrick Pitman, Stephanie Swafford