Surprise - You Got A Middle-Class Tax Cut!
"There has been
something quite unusual, and admirable, about the first year of Bill Clinton's
presidency. He has expended great gobs of political capital on issues -
deficit reduction, free trade (for starters) - that yield him no immediate
political gain...The White House has even figured out, belatedly, how to sell
last summer's budget deal: there really was a middle-class tax cut after all.
It was called the Earned Income Tax Credit, designed to help the working
poor."
- Newsweek Senior Writer Joe Klein, November 29.
Carville's Greedy '90s
"[Campaign manager
James] Carville and the rest of the gang from the Clinton campaign -
consultant Paul Begala, media adviser Mandy Grunwald and polltaker Stan
Greenberg - are different from the GOP crew that preceded them. Republican
operatives were eager to cash in during the Reagan and Bush years, unabashedly
taking on corporate and foreign clients for whom they lobbied the
administrations they had helped elect. Carville & Co. aren't in it for the
buckraking."
- Newsweek's Howard Fineman, November 29.
"He's [Carville]
making speeches to corporate audiences for $15,000 a pop. And then there's the
book he and [wife Mary] Matalin are writing (which Newsweek has
bought the rights to excerpt.)"
- Next paragraph.
Weird Weeping Questions
Reporter Nina Totenberg:
"Have you cried over these cases?"
Supreme Court Justice
Harry Blackmun: "Have I ever what?"
Totenberg: "Have
you ever cried over them?"
Blackmun:
"No."
- Exchange about capital punishment cases on ABC's Nightline,
November 18.
The Media Tire of Turner
"We're trying to
set the record straight. We practiced genocide against these people for 300
years, and we've swept it under the rug...Native Americans' way of life was
much more sustainable than ours. Living in small groups, indigenous societies
shared and cared and put up peer pressure on group members to behave
responsibly. Our society is crumbling all around us. We could learn a lot from
indigenous peoples - before it's too late."
- CNN owner Ted Turner on his new "Native Americans" multi-network
project of TNT, TBS and CNN programs, quoted in the December 4 TV Guide.
"Yeah, like stop
burning coal to turn the turbines that produce the electricity that warms up
the TV sets that make millions for Ted, who doesn't have to lift anything
heavier than a phone."
- Washington Post television writer John Carmody reporting Turner's
quotes, November 29.
This Just In
"The Brady Bill
just passed the Senate right now. Fortunately, United States Senators know
that gun control is part of crime control."
- Wall Street Journal Executive Wash. Editor Al Hunt, CNN's Capital
Gang, Nov. 20.
America: No Workers' Paradise
Some 37 million
Americans, mainly the working poor, live without the basic peace of mind
offered by health insurance. Every other industrial country provides something
close to universal coverage and the ever-growing number of uninsured Americans
has long been seen by medical experts as an index of national shame."
- New York Times reporter Erik Eckholm, November 14.
French Socialism Beats American Freedom
"By French
standards it's just another day in preschool. But through American eyes,
what's going on in this Parisian preschool is extraordinary. This class is
part of a free, full-day, public preschool, or cole maternelle. Many New
Yorkers, Washingtonians and Californians pay $8,000 to $14,000 a year to send
a child to preschool or a day care center; if they are lucky enough to find a
place. In France, 99 percent of 3-, 4-, and 5-year olds attend preschool at no
or minimal charge....Comparing the French system with the American system -
if that word can be used to describe a jigsaw puzzle missing half its pieces
- is like comparing a vintage bottle of Chateau Margaux with a $4 bottle of
American wine."
- New York Times reporter Steven Greenhouse in the November 14 New
York Times Magazine.
CNN's Iron Curtain Nostalgia
"Across town at Red
Square, where for decades the Bolshevik revolution was revered with displays
of Soviet military might, this year many people simply came to remember their
history, nostalgic for the days when life was more certain."
- CNN Moscow reporter Siobhan Darrow, November 7 World News.
"Yet freedom, like
genius, has its price. Gone are the days when government socialism guaranteed
students jobs after graduation. Young East Germans must now make their own
way."
- CNN reporter Walter Rodgers, November 9 Prime News.
Anti-Castro Conservatives: Obstacle to Democracy
"It's long overdue
[lifting embargo], but it won't happen because of the Cuban-American community
in Florida, which is the biggest obstacle to the democratization of Cuba,
because if Castro goes, they won't be the ones to take over."
- Newsweek reporter Eleanor Clift, November 27 McLaughlin Group.
Homeless Lit 101
"Even the computer
on which Lars Eighner wrote his highly acclaimed book came from a dumpster.
Dumpsters are the Wal-Marts of the homeless."
- CBS reporter Bill Geist on Sunday Morning, November 21.
Remembering The Waltons
"My children and I
watched The Waltons every week together. It seemed, at the time, almost as
good as actually being that kind of family ourselves. But then everybody voted
for [Waltons grandfather] Will Geer for President, and somehow we got Ronald
Reagan; instead of Camelot, Disneyland."
- CBS Sunday Morning TV critic John Leonard, November 21.
Gore: The Spiritual Equivalent of A Cheese Melt?
"For 45 years, Al
Gore has been one of American politics' most gifted children, a man who knows
well the amphetamine of achievement, the frisson of expectation
fulfilled....Gore's own goals - a better understanding of what makes himself
tick; more balance in his personal life - are the spiritual equivalent of a
cheese melt: toasty, bland, patently reasonable."
- Washington Post "Outlook" section editor Katherine Boo
in her Washington Post Magazine cover story on Gore, November 28.
The No-Uterus Rule
"The other extreme
of the female public voice is perhaps represented by Jeane Kirkpatrick: a
voice so Olympian, so neck-up and uninflected by the experiences of the female
body, that the subtle message received by young female writers is: to enter
public voice, one must abide by the no-uterus rule."
- Feminist writer Naomi Wolf in The New Republic, November 29 issue.
- L. Brent Bozell III,
Publisher
- Brent H. Baker, Tim Graham; Editors
- Andrew Gabron, Mark Honig, Kristin Johnson, Steve Kaminski, Mark Rogers;
Media Analysts - Kathleen Ruff, Circulation Manager; - David Muska, Clay
Waters; Interns