Police Brutality? Not Enough "Diversity"
"But in a city where the
population is 61 percent minority and the police force is 68 percent white,
the problem may be more difficult to solve than simply going after bad cops.
The community which surrounds the 70th precinct, the sight of the alleged
police attack against Louima, is a mix of Pakistani, Asian, Hispanic, Orthodox
Jews and Caribbean blacks. The police force is 76 percent white...Last year,
more than three-quarters of the brutality complaints against the New York
Police Department came from minority groups...Former New York Governor Mario
Cuomo says what fuels racism and police brutality is a lack of diversity on
the force...The hope is that if the police department better resembles the
city it represents, there'll be greater sensitivity. And the gains they've
made this year in reducing police brutality may continue."
- ABC reporter
Alexander Johnson, August 17 World News Tonight.
"Clearly there's a gap in racial
understanding that needs to be bridged. A 1996 Amnesty International report
said that New York's populace is 57 percent nonwhite, but the police force is
72 percent white."
- Time Staff Writer Christopher John Farley, August 25.
Republicans Don't Have the Decency to be Hypocrites
"The Republicans don't even have
the decency to say that they don't want soft money. They don't even say it's
not a good idea. At least the President says it's not a good idea and then
goes on and raises it, because in fact you can't stop, one party is never
going to stop. There has to be a ceasefire because the party that stops ends
up sinking without a trace."
- Time's Margaret Carlson on Fox News Sunday, August 10.
Our Deficit-Cutting Hero: George Bush?
"You remember the guy: hated
broccoli and pronouns, played golf really fast. Well, let's raise a glass
tonight to George Herbert Walker Bush, not you, Jim Glassman. A few years ago
he agreed to cut spending and raise taxes; in other words, he moved his lips
and lost the presidency. Seven years later we have a humming economy and a
balanced budget in sight. In 1990, Bush's deal looked plain stupid. Now it
looks selfless, prudent, and almost wise."
- Newsweek Washington reporter
Howard Fineman's "Hall of Fame" pick on CNN's Capital Gang, August
10.
"While President Clinton and
Speaker Newt Gingrich are grandly congratulating themselves and each other
over the balanced budget deal they wrought, George Bush, the man who risked
the most and paid the biggest price for cutting the deficit, is off in Maine,
feeling unappreciated."
- The opening paragraph from an August 8 New York
Times story by reporter David Rosenbaum.
Reality Check:
"Not to put too fine a point on it, this is revisionist nonsense. Raising
taxes in 1990 not only didn't balance the budget, it triggered three years of
record-high deficits. It slowed an already limping economy, helping erase more
than 1 million jobs. It sent the national debt streaking upward, from $3.2
trillion in 1990 to $4.3 trillion in 1993. And far from curbing federal
spending, Bush's budget deal accelerated it by an average of $52 billion a
year."
- Boston Globe columnist Jeff Jacoby, August 12.
Tax Cuts Equal to One Percent of Spending Are the Problem
"Mr. President, on this deficit
reduction that you've just mentioned, that it's now fallen to $37 billion,
doesn't it raise the question that in fact the budget could be balanced a lot
sooner if you and Congress hadn't enacted $95 billion in tax cuts?"
- Larry
McQuillan of the Reuters news service to President Clinton during his August 6
press conference.
Liberalism Is Character
Tim Russert: "You told
The New York Times something I found very interesting and let me just read it
for our viewers. 'We define the character issue so narrowly. My idea of a
great President is a guy who cheated on his wife in such a damaging way it
pretty much ended their marriage, drank a pitcher of martinis every night,
cheated at poker with his friends, lied to his staff, sicked the IRS on his
enemies, and my father voted for him four times FDR.'"
Former Newsweek
writer Joe Klein: "That was inaccurate, my father pointed out to me,
it wasn't him, my grandfather voted for him. But it's true, it's absolutely
true."
- Exchange on CNBC's Tim Russert, August 9.
Helms Represents Far-Right Bigotry and Terrorism
James Warren, Chicago Tribune
Washington Bureau Chief: "I also find interesting this revisionism about
Senator Helms. We've sort of turned his dogmatism and bigotry into now, the
iron-willed principle of a man of the right."
Mona Charen: "What bigotry?"
Warren: "Oh, his gay-baiting, his union-bashing. His hatred of any
fundings for the arts. His isolationism."
- Exchange on August 3 edition of
CNN's Capital Gang.
"Albright wants to deal face to
face with the principals. It's going to be fascinating to see whether she can
charm Arafat. If she can charm Jesse Helms, which is sort of a good test, a
good warm-up game for Arafat. She has incredible gumption. She's a different
kind of Secretary of State. It will be a fascinating test for her."
- Former Newsweek Washington Bureau Chief Evan Thomas, August 9 Inside
Washington.
Without the NEA Life Itself Would Be Impossible
"It is a popular argument that
without the NEA the arts would do just fine. It's an argument they don't buy
at the Centrum Arts Education and Performance Center, located at an old Army
base in Port Townsend, a remote coastal town of 8,000. On the Centrum campus,
in an old balloon hangar, the Seattle Youth Symphony practices and performs.
It too gets NEA money for scholarships. Some of these young musicians wouldn't
be here without the NEA's help. Would the youth symphony survive if the
National Endowment for the Arts were abolished? Would other arts
organizations? We asked. The answer invariably was yes, but, there would be
casualties."
- CBS reporter Martha Teichner concluding an August 17 Sunday
Morning story on the National Endowment for the Arts.
God Is Dead?
"Died. William S. Burroughs, 83,
novelist, cult figure, and perhaps the most audacious member of a Beat
Generation trinity whose other two divinities were Jack Kerouac and Allen
Ginsberg ...His life was as extreme as the experimental fiction he pioneered,
involving alcohol, heroin, homosexuality, a celebrated obscenity trial in
Boston, and in 1951, his accidental killing of his wife while shooting a glass
off the top of her head."
Time magazine's "Milestones" column,
August 11.
What a Difference Jimmy Could Have Made
"The call came just a few weeks
before Elvis died, and when you talked to President Carter, he was sad when he
talked about it. Do you think that he wonders if he could have done something
to save Elvis?"
Today co-host Ann Curry to Douglas Brinkley, who wrote a
New Yorker article about Elvis calling President Carter, August 12.
Attack of the Killer Lawn Mowers
"Could your lawnmower kill
you? Perhaps. In fact, a new study finds that you could be risking your life
every time you cut the grass. In our News from Medicine report, CNN's Ed
Garsten tells us that matching you with the right mower may mean the
difference between life and death."
- CNN anchor Linden Soles, August 3 The World Today.