What A Difference Today Makes
"Your critics have called
your budget intentions, as you well know, Voodoo II. Is it your
intention to turn back the clock and go back to the same
Reaganomics that ballooned the deficit in the first place?"
- Bryant Gumbel to Rep. John Kasich (R-Ohio), November 14 Today.
Bryant Gumbel: "You're a moderate, pro-choice Republican.
Are you totally comfortable with some of the extremists and
ideologues that seem headed for the 104th Congress and may
dominate the Republican Party?"
Rep.-elect Sonny Bono: "I'm my own man, and so when I get
there, I will just be me. In general, the philosophy I agree
with totally, so I'll get along fine there. The change Newt is
talking about I'm all for. I'm all for the term limits. I'm all
for the balanced budget amendment."
Gumbel: "You're all for school prayer? You're all for
gutting social programs?"
- Exchange on November 18 Today
"With Republicans taking control of Congress in January,
Senator Jesse Helms is slated to be the new chairman of the
Foreign Relations Committee, a prospect that is embarrassing to
many Republicans. His two most recent outbursts against the
President are just the latest in a long line of outrageous
remarks that have earned Helms the disrespect and disgust of
people from coast to coast."
- Today co-host Bryant Gumbel,
November 23.
"He's called the Prince of Darkness. A darling of the
ultra- right, he's been a rabid attack dog against anything
liberal... Critics call him a bigot, sexist, and homophobe, and
he seems to wear it like a badge of honor."
- NBC's Jim
Miklaszewski on Jesse Helms, November 23 Today news story.
The Lower-Tax Bribe
"The Republicans have resorted to demagoguery and
transparent bribes (like lower taxes). The legislature they
promise seems a blustery, selfish, self-righteous desert."
- Newsweek Senior Editor Joe Klein, October 31.
Newt's Honeymoon
"A lot of people are afraid of you. They think you're a
bomb- thrower. Worse, you're an intolerant bigot. Speak to
them....You talk about the Clintons as members of the
counterculture, the elitists, the left-wingers. How can you have
an accommodation with the President when you read him out of
'the Americans,' as you put it?"
- Sam Donaldson's
questions to Newt Gingrich on This Week with David Brinkley,
November 13.
"Look, America is in a heartless mood. They would throw all
those babies in the snow if they could. We will see how they
feel after it happens, but the impulse right now is to just take
away all their benefits and kick them out. Now, four years from
now, after people are dying in the streets, we'll have a
different debate."
- Newsweek Washington Bureau Chief Evan
Thomas on Inside Washington, November 19.
Dan Rather: "Soup kitchens around the country are reporting
demand for their services is up this Thanksgiving -
unfortunately, donations are down. And now with the coming shift
of power and agendas in Washington, many charitable groups are
worried about how they - and the people they help - can make
it."
Reporter Richard Threlkeld: "...The leaders of the next
Congress have already announced their intention to make major
cuts in welfare and other social services....Thanks to places
like the Pine Street Inn in Boston, this Thanksgiving there'll
be a hot meal and a bed for anyone who needs it. Next
Thanksgiving, though, Boston's homeless may not have that to be
thankful for."
- CBS Evening News, November 23.
Ted Koppel: Rationalizing Criminal Behavior
"Crime doesn't happen in a vacuum. If we were obliged only
to deal with sociopaths, with men and women who commit crimes
for the simple satisfaction it gives them, the solutions would
be relatively easy. But we are disproportionately hard on the
poor and ill-educated in this country. It is absolutely true
that even within that disadvantaged segment of our society there
are more honest men and women by far than criminals. But to be
poor and uneducated in America already constitutes two strikes,
and to automatically sentence someone to prison for life on a
third strike, without regard to circumstance or context, is
unjust, imprudent, and will not solve our problems."
-
Nightline host Ted Koppel concluding a series in a North
Carolina prison, November 18.
Those Brutal Governors
"[Massachusetts Gov. Bill] Weld's first term featured a
relentless, often brutal drive toward fiscal health for his
state....Michigan's Republican Governor John Engler earned a
reputation as a cold-hearted budget cutter who couldn't tell the
difference between fat, flesh and bone by eliminating payments
to the state's 83,000 single welfare recipients."
- Time
Associate Editor Richard Lacayo, November 21.
Gorby: Didn't Abhor Violence in Lithuania
"Relations with Yeltsin remain poor. Gorbachev, who
abhorred violence, denounced Yeltsin for resorting to shelling
the Russian Parliament building last year to quash a hard-line
revolt."
- Unbylined introduction to interview with
Gorbachev, November 1 Los Angeles Times.
The New Hillary?
"One new role now under consideration: national
Comforter-in- Chief, exhorting the nation to shed its poisonous
cynicism as Roosevelt did in the Depression."
- Newsweek
reporter Bob Cohn, November 21.
Negative Attacks on Republican Negativity
"Negativity is the essence of the conservatives' assault.
They have nurtured and exploited a negative public mood that, in
turn, has wrapped itself around the conservatives' message of
negative government. Cynicism has been used to breed cynicism.
The conservative program can be summarized as 'anti' -
anti-tax, anti-government, anti-incumbent, anti-immigrant,
anti-welfare, anti-criminal - with the all the categories
conflated into one angry impulse. This is rooted in traditions
of no-nothing [sic] nativism and Social Darwinism. No one should
be surprised that the celebrated conservative book of this
campaign season is The Bell Curve, which proclaims that blacks
are inherently inferior in intelligence."
- Former
Washington Post reporter Sidney Blumenthal in the Los Angeles
Times, October 30.
"How does a Republican candidate running in a state where
he must attract Democratic and independent votes square the
bankrupt policies of Reaganomics, which resulted in one of the
worst recessions since the '30s and changed the entire job
structure of the nation, made millionaires out of venture
capitalists who went to jail and still kept their great
fortunes, and sent the bill to the public for one of the largest
fiscal scandals of our government - the savings and loan
crisis?"
- Former Boston Globe Executive Editor and
Washington Bureau Chief Robert Healy, October 29.
No Hate on the Left
"I hope his wife feeds him lots of eggs and butter and he
dies early like many black men do, of heart disease....He is an
absolutely reprehensible person."
- USA Today columnist
Julianne Malveaux on Justice Clarence Thomas, November 4 PBS To
the Contrary.
Publisher:
L. Brent Bozell III
Editors: Brent H. Baker, Tim Graham
Media Analysts: James Forbes, Andrew Gabron,
Mark Honig, Steve Kaminski, Gesele Rey, Clay Waters
Circulation Manager: Kathleen Ruff
Interns: Melissa Gordon, Jim Renne