Republicans Will Kill You
"Safe food, safe water,
safe air, safe transportation. You have this protection now, but
you might be about to lose it. Why? Watch a special In Depth
report on NBC Nightly News tomorrow."
- Promo at the end
of NBC Nightly News, July 17.
"There will be change, but
most hope the original intent of the law will not be lost.
Because if the plants and animals can't survive, what future is
there for the human species?"
- NBC reporter Roger O'Neil
concluding a story on proposed changes to the Endangered Species
Act, July 28 Nightly News.
"This is deregulation
madness! We're gonna have dirty water, dirty air. OSHA
regulations are being rolled back. There's gonna be no
competition in the telecommunications industry. And between
local cable and local phone, there's not gonna be competition at
the present time. It's gonna take awhile and there's gonna be no
regulation in the meantime. And so no, he [Clinton] can't go
along with this. And the people, the public isn't going to go
along with this. They don't want E. coli bacteria in their
drinking water."
- Time
columnist Margaret Carlson, August 5 Capital Gang.
"The onslaught of political
and legislative attacks on programs for the poor and for the
young is about to create even bigger problems for America's
troubled inner cities. Just yesterday, Congress killed nearly
$900 million in funding for summer youth jobs programs, a major
blow to disadvantaged inner-city youth and to cities trying to
keep young people occupied and out of trouble."
- ABC World News Saturday anchor John Cochran, July 22.
Artful Thoughts About Lobotomized Conservatives
"The conservatives' agenda,
if it goes through, is going to depress the quality of cultural
and educational life for everyone in America, young and old,
black, brown, male or female. This is one of the most
ill-conceived, profoundly anti-democratic ideas ever to get
loose in Congress. Private philanthropy will never be able to
restore what seems about to be taken away. Some will not notice
it; others won't care; given the shortness of American social
memory, perhaps the next generation won't know what happened.
Partial lobotomies work that way. They favor Beavis and
Butt-head. Is that the business of American government?"
- Time art critic Robert Hughes, concluding August 7 cover story on
plans to cut funding for the National Endowment for the Arts and
National Endowment for the Humanities.
"Welcome to the Hall of
Shame, Congressman Steve Chabot of Ohio. Chabot this week called
the National Endowment for the Humanities a `boondoggle' while
leading the House to cut the NEH budget by 40 percent. The House
also cut funding for the Smithsonian, the Kennedy Center, and
the Woodrow Wilson Center for Scholars. These are the prize
jewels of our national culture. As Arthur Miller writes in The
Nation, America's arts are getting far less government support
than any other advanced society."
- Washington Post reporter Juan Williams on CNN's Capital Gang Sunday, July 23.
A Man of Peace
"Yes Bob Dole, Phil Gramm,
you are the enemy. Yes Clarence Thomas, you poor confused
fellow, you are the enemy, and we are determined to turn you
around, and if we don't, you are leading our country to a racial
confrontation that we will all be the poorer for."
- Harlem's Reverend Calvin Butts, in July 25 NBC News at
Sunrise profile by anchor Ann Curry of the Abyssinian Baptist
"whose life's work has focused on fighting racial
divisions."
"The words of a peacemaker, Calvin
Butts."
- Curry, immediately after the story.
Atoning for Prosperity
"Senate Majority Leader
Robert J. Dole has deftly shifted far to the right on the tax
issue....Dole shepherded President Ronald Reagan's supply-side
tax-cut proposals through Congress in 1981, and then, as an act
of contrition, spent years trying to reverse the steady rise of
red ink fueled by a recession, Reagan's peacetime defense
buildup, and the impact of the tax cuts."
- Washington Post
reporter Eric Pianin, August 6.
The Objective Eleanor Clift
"I'm a journalist, and I
look at things objectively, and I think anybody looking at the
Bosnia situation will agree that there are no good answers; and
I don't really think this is something we want to play politics
about."
- Newsweek
reporter Eleanor Clift on CNN's Crossfire, July 21.
"That's right. It's not to
anyone's advantage to have sleaze on television, and that's
exactly what those hearings are. The Republicans do not have a
single shred of new evidence."
- Clift on Whitewater hearings, later in same show.
Know-Nothing Newt
"Great rhetoric, but
Gingrich has trouble on the specifics. To paraphrase Ronald
Reagan, it's not what he doesn't know about the economy that's
dangerous; it's what he does know that just ain't so....
"What's mostly missing from Gingrich's book is an analysis
of what `winning' would really mean for millions of Americans.
There is no mention of declining real wages or the growing gap
in incomes and wealth, possibly for fear that raising the
subject could fan some Democrats' demands for redistribution.
And while he stresses the importance of lifelong learning, he
doesn't reconcile this with proposed GOP cuts in federal student
loan programs. These are strange deficits from a man who would
clearly love to be President someday. Fortunately for the
economy, Gingrich probably has time to do more reading and
thinking before he ever sweeps into the Oval Office."
- U.S. News & World Report
Senior Writer Susan Dentzer reviewing Newt Gingrich's book To
Renew America, August 14.
Denying Liberal Bias is Nuts
"I think this is another
reflection of the overwhelming journalistic tilt towards
liberalism and those programs. Now the question is whether
that's bad or not, and that's another debate. But the idea that
many of us, and my colleagues deny that there is this kind of
bias is nuts, because there is in our world. I forget what the
surveys show but most of us are Democratic and probably most of
us line up in the fairly liberal world."
- Time
Washington contributing editor Hugh Sidey responding to a caller
who asked if journalists are in favor of affirmative action,
July 21 C-SPAN Washington Journal.
It's Good to See Athletes Speak Out - Unless They're Conservative
"Whatever one thinks of
Winslow's positions, it's encouraging to see a Stateside athlete
- particularly one who rose from the squalor of East St. Louis,
Ill., to earn a law degree - engaging himself in the world of
which sports is only a small part."
- Sports Illustrated's 'Scorecard' feature on Kellen Winslow's Pro Football Hall of
Fame induction speech supporting affirmative action and racial
quotas, August 7 issue.
vs.
"Champions for Life, a
10-minute-long piece of antiabortion propaganda that first
appeared 14 months ago, became the subject of controversy last
week when the New York Giants made it to the Super Bowl...No
matter how one feels about abortion, it's hard not to be
repulsed by the video's inflammatory language....Jimmy Burt,
Jr., the nine-year-old son of Jim Burt, a former Giant now with
the 49ers, looks into the camera from atop his father's
shoulders and says `It's great to be alive.'"
- Sports Illustrated, Feb. 4, 1991.
- L. Brent Bozell III; Publisher - Brent H. Baker, Tim Graham; Editors - Geoffrey Dickens, James Forbes, Steve Kaminski, Gesele Rey, Clay Waters; Media Analysts - Kathleen Ruff, Circulation Manager; Gene Eliasen, Melissa Gordon; Interns