The Times Watch 'Quotes of Note Worst of 2005'
December 20, 2005
The Times Watch 'Quotes of Note
Worst of 2005'
The Deaniac Award for Iraq War
Defeatism
"And in the shadow of the bleak and often horrific news emerging from Iraq
nearly every day, historians and political experts are finding at least a wan
hope in those imperfect historical analogies. Even in the absence of a sudden
and dramatic shift on the battlefield toward a definitive victory, there may
still be a slight opening, as narrow as the eye of a needle, for the United
States to slip through and leave Iraq in the near future in a way that will not
be remembered as a national embarrassment."
- From reporter James Glanz's November 27 story for the Week in Review
section.
"The poetry of C. K. Williams is the antidote to patriotic jingoism, moral
smugness and the imbecility of the easily amused. His fierce, unrelenting moral
spotlight, turned unflinchingly on himself and the world around him, however,
has intensified with war and terrorism."
- From reporter Chris Hedges' "Public Lives" profile of radical anti-war
poet C.K. Williams, January 13.
"To many Democrats, images of Republicans in sequined gowns and designer tuxedos
nibbling roast quail and twirling the Texas two-step in last week's $40
million-plus inaugural extravaganza seemed inappropriate, unseemly, even
unpatriotic, when American soldiers are dying in Iraq."
- James Dao in a January 23 Week in Review story headlined " 'Don't They
Know There's a War On?' "
"A nostalgic insider turned outsider can still offer insights, however, and the
most useful is that cable news outlets were ludicrously rah-rah during the
invasion of Iraq and that embedded reporters felt a credibility-damaging kinship
with soldiers."
- From Ned Martel's February 4 review of a documentary by left-wing media
critic Danny Schechter.
"[Hollywood activists] were willing to accept - in fact, they recognized almost
viscerally - that the president's story about Iraq and weapons of mass
destruction was too richly timed and too tightly wrapped, and they understood
that once a storyteller began to tinker with facts, there was no end to the
scenarios he might invent that he might dubiously claim to be 'based on a true
story.'"
- Contributing writer Matt Bai, writing about the Hollywood left in the
November 13 New York Times Magazine.
"From bases in Iraq and across the United States to the Pentagon and the
military's war colleges, officers and enlisted personnel quietly raise a
question for political leaders: if America is truly on a war footing, why is so
little sacrifice asked of the nation at large? There is no serious talk of a
draft to share the burden of fighting across the broad citizenry, and neither
Republicans nor Democrats are pressing for a tax increase to force Americans to
cover the $5 billion a month in costs from Iraq, Afghanistan and new
counterterrorism missions. There are not even concerted efforts like the
savings-bond drives or gasoline rationing that helped to unite the country
behind its fighting forces in wars past."
- Reporter Thom Shanker, July 24.
Keeping Bush Down
"By most measures, the economy appears to be doing fine. No, scratch that, it
appears to be booming. But as always with the United States economy, it is not
quite that simple.It all means the economy is likely to end the year with a
splash. But before you splurge on a new car, consider this: Many economists do
not expect the party to continue, especially if the Federal Reserve continues
taking the punchbowl away and raises interest rates. That could further slow the
housing market, damp consumer spending and crimp corporate profits."
- Economics reporter Vikas Bajaj in a November 30 front-page story.
"In a few instances - most notably the centerpiece of his second-term agenda,
his call to reshape Social Security - [President Bush] is dangerously close to
a fiery wreck that could have lasting consequences for his standing and for the
Republican Party."
- White House reporter Richard Stevenson, June 20.
"When President Bush declared on May 7 in Latvia that the 1945 Yalta agreement
led to 'one of the greatest wrongs of history,' he reignited an ideological
debate from the era of Joseph McCarthy.Mr. Bush has criticized Yalta at least
six other times publicly, usually in Eastern Europe, but never so harshly. In
the dust kicked up by the quarreling, the central questions for White House
watchers are these: How did the unexpected attack on Yalta get in the
president's speech? What drove his thinking? Did the White House expect the
fallout?"
- White House reporter Elisabeth Bumiller, May 16.
"Nonetheless, [Bush campaign strategist Mark] McKinnon said that Mr. Bush had
not gone so far as to include on his playlist 'Fortunate Son,' the angry
anti-Vietnam war song about who has to go to war that [John] Fogerty sang when
he was with Creedence Clearwater Revival. ('I ain't no senator's son....Some
folks are born silver spoon in hand.') As the son of a two-term congressman and
a United States Senate candidate, Mr. Bush won a coveted spot with the Texas Air
National Guard to avoid combat in Vietnam."
- Elisabeth Bumiller's April 11 "White House Letter" on the songs on Bush's
iPod.
"The 1,130 soup kitchen guests, as they're respectfully called, began gathering
outside the church doors an hour early, curling around the corner in a long line
to await a free main meal - their safety-net highlight in another day of being
down and out, part of the working poor, or surviving somewhere in between.And
even more arrive as unemployment and other government programs run out. Much as
the diners at Holy Apostles peered ahead to see what was being dished up at the
steam tables, soup kitchen administrators across the country are currently eying
governments' trilevel budget season and wincing at all the politicians'
economizing vows. They know that 'budget tightening' eventually means longer
lines outside their doors."
- Editorial board member and former White House correspondent Francis X.
Clines, April 9.
"The view among a number of White House officials was that the big news would
come on Monday, when the president is to unveil a budget described as brutal in
its cuts in domestic programs."
- Elisabeth Bumiller and Anne Kornblut, February 3.
"The focus on money over grooming makes sense. The economy may be rebounding
slightly, but American confidence does not seem to be quite as buoyant - other
factors, like the war, the deficit, and a President intent on altering Social
Security, keep chipping away at inner peace. Why else would poker and casino
gambling have such explosive appeal right now?"
- Alessandra Stanley reviewing the new crop of reality shows in the January
30 Week in Review.
Murderous Communism "Not All Bad"
"My own sense is that Mao, however monstrous, also brought useful changes to
China.But Maos legacy is not all bad. Land reform in China, like the land
reform in Japan and Taiwan, helped lay the groundwork for prosperity today. The
emancipation of women and end of child marriages moved China from one of the
worst places in the world to be a girl to one where women have more equality
than in, say, Japan or Korea. Indeed, Maos entire assault on the old economic
and social structure made it easier for China to emerge as the worlds new
economic dragon.In the same way, I think, Mao's ruthlessness was a catastrophe
at the time, brilliantly captured in this extraordinary book - and yet there's
more to the story: Mao also helped lay the groundwork for the rebirth and rise
of China after five centuries of slumber."
- Foreign policy reporter turned columnist Nicholas Kristof reviewing a new
Mao biography in the October 23 Book Review.
In 1955 a clean-shaven young man in a spiffy suit came to New York with the
wild notion of raising money to finance a revolution in his homeland, Cuba. Even
then Fidel Castro knew the value of a good photo-op, so he was glad to meet a
countryman, Osvaldo Salas, who lived with his family in the Bronx and made a
living as a photographer.
- Annette Grant, June 12.
"It is the kind of public adoration that brings to mind another Latin American
leader, Fidel Castro, who for more than 45 years has drawn accolades wherever he
has gone, much to Washington's chagrin. Now, it seems, the torch is being
passed, and it is [Venezuelan President Hugo] Chvez who is emerging as this
generation's Castro - a charismatic figure and self-styled revolutionary who
bearhugs his counterparts on state visits, inspires populist left-wing movements
and draws out fervent well-wishers from Havana to Buenos Aires."
- Juan Forero, June 1.
"The [Amnesty International] report, released May 25, placed the United States
at the heart of its list of human rights offenders, citing indefinite detentions
of prisoners at Guantnamo Bay, prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib in Iraq and secret
renditions of prisoners to countries that practice torture. But it is the use of
the word gulag, a reference to the complex of labor camps where Stalin sent
thousands of dissidents, that has drawn the most attention."
- Lizette Alvarez, June 4. It's estimated some 2.7 million perished in
Stalin's slave labor camps.
"The larger-than-life actor and activist Paul Robeson is a tall order for any
play - or for that matter actor - to capture. Robeson was a dazzling polymath
(not to mention a stunning physical presence): a star athlete and valedictorian
at Rutgers; a lawyer; a world-famous singer and actor; and a celebrated defender
of civil rights, social justice and Soviet socialism, who was ultimately
blacklisted and had his passport revoked."
- Critic Phoebe Hoban on Stalinist actor Paul Robeson, in an April 26 review
of a play about Robeson's life.
Hillary, Centered
"A tangled tale of a slick operator, the first couple and dogged Clinton
haters."
- Text box of a February 9 story from Raymond Hernandez and Ian Urbina on a
fundraising investigation involving Hillary Clinton. The "haters" reference is
to Judicial Watch, an ethics watchdog group that has lodged complaints against
both political parties.
"In fact, [Sen. Hillary] Clinton has defied simple ideological labeling since
joining the Senate, ending up in the political center on issues like health
care, welfare, abortion, morality and values, and national defense, to name just
a few."
- Raymond Hernandez and Patrick Healy, July 13.
"Conservatives have long caricatured Hillary Rodham Clinton, New York's junior
senator, as the sort of Democrat whose positions on social issues are out of
step with Americans deeply concerned about religious and moral values. But while
Mrs. Clinton has been strongly identified with polarizing issues like abortion
rights, the picture that conservative Republicans paint of her is at odds with a
side of herself she has lately displayed as she enters a new phase of her public
life.A churchgoer for years, Mrs. Clinton also joined a prayer group led by
Republicans when she took office in the Senate in 2001, her associates and aides
note."
- From a February 1 profile of Sen. Hillary Clinton by Raymond Hernandez.
"It would be nave to think that Clinton doesn't have a national campaign very
much in mind as she stacks up one centrist credential after another.As first
lady, it was Clinton's job to placate the party's base, even if that meant
obscuring some of her more socially conservative instincts.Assuming that
Clinton is serious about a 2008 campaign, it's never too early to begin
redefining her image in the minds of independent and conservative voters. And
the thinking among her closest advisers holds that unlike other prospective
candidates with conservative leanings, like Senator Evan Bayh of Indiana or Gov.
Mark Warner of Virginia, Clinton doesn't have to worry about winning over more
liberal base voters."
- Contributing writer Matt Bai, October 2.
"Remember Hillary Rodham Clinton and the conventional wisdom about how
polarizing a figure she is? Well, think again. Recent polls have shown that Mrs.
Clinton, the junior senator from New York, may have turned a corner politically,
sharply reducing the number of voters in the state who harbor negative views of
her. Pollsters say the change is remarkable for a woman who has long been
shadowed by a seemingly implacable group of voters - commonly referred to as
Hillary haters - who dislike her, no matter what she does, and who pose a
potential obstacle to any presidential ambitions she may harbor.The result of
these comments has been an emerging image of Senator Clinton that is far
different from the caricature that Republicans have painted of her: that of a
secular liberal whose stances are largely at odds with a public that they say is
concerned about the nation's moral direction."
- Raymond Hernandez, February 22.
Reality Check: The American Conservative Union gives Sen. Hillary Clinton a
lifetime rating of 9 (with 100 being the most conservative), the same as liberal
Sen. Tom Harkin.
All Wet on Hurricane Katrina
"We have repeatedly been reminded in recent weeks of how Congress rejected a
proposal in the late 1990's to shore up the city's levees and wetlands. And the
crisis only deepened later as the government continued to reduce the corps's
budget. This represents more than a loss of nerve. It is an outgrowth of the
campaign against 'big government' that helped propel Ronald Reagan to the
presidency 25 years ago. And it was fueled by uglier motives, including a latent
fear of cities, a myth of the city as a breeding ground for immorality."
- Critic Nicholas Ouroussoff on the New Orleans flooding, October 9.
"An orphan, Oliver lands first in a workhouse (its resemblance to a
concentration camp is hardly accidental), and before long finds himself
apprenticed to a weak-willed coffin maker. At every turn he is menaced by adults
whose grotesqueness, while comical, is also a measure of their moral deformity,
and of the ugliness of the society that makes them possible. The worst thing
about these villains, who tend to occupy positions of at least relative power,
is that they believe their sadism and lack of compassion to be the highest
expressions of benevolence. Like Barbara Bush after seeing the 'underprivileged'
citizens of New Orleans exiled to the Astrodome, they insist on telling Oliver
that things are working out pretty well for him."
- From A.O. Scott's review of director Roman Polanski's "Oliver Twist,"
September 23.
"The populism of Huey Long was financially corrupt, but when it came to the
welfare of people, it was caring. The churchgoing cultural populism of George
Bush has given the United States an administration that worries about the House
of Saud and the welfare of oil companies while the poor drown in their attics
and their sons and daughters die in foreign deserts."
- Former Times Executive Editor Howell Raines in a column for the September
1 edition of the Los Angeles Times.
"Until Friday, Mr. Bush had all but invited the torrent of criticism that he was
out of touch with the scale of the human tragedy unfolding in Louisiana, often
sounding off-key in the context of what may prove to be the worst natural
disaster the nation has suffered."
- White House reporter Richard Stevenson, September 3.
"Mr. Bush did not go into the heart of the city's devastation, where thousands
of largely poor, black refugees have raged at the government's response to one
of the worst natural disasters in American history. The White House cited
security concerns and worries about causing more chaos as the reasons for
keeping Mr. Bush away from the streets and the New Orleans Superdome, where
refugees have lived in squalor and lawlessness for days.Throughout his day, Mr.
Bush did not address the shocking images of the desperate and dying on
television, even when he was asked by a reporter in Biloxi 'why the richest
nation on earth can't get food and water to those people that need it.'"
- White House reporter Elisabeth Bumiller, September 3.
"In a reflection of what has long been a hallmark of Mr. Rove's tough political
style, the administration is also working to shift the blame away from the White
House and toward officials of New Orleans and Louisiana who, as it happens, are
Democrats. 'The way that emergency operations act under the law is the
responsibility and the power, the authority, to order an evacuation rests with
state and local officials," Mr. Chertoff said in his television interview. 'The
federal government comes in and supports those officials.' That line of argument
was echoed throughout the day, in harsher language, by Republicans reflecting
the White House line."
- Adam Nagourney and Anne Kornblut, September 5.
"Most of those left behind in New Orleans are black."
- Text box to a September 2 story by David Gonzalez.
"Other Democrats cast Mr. Bush's first survey of the damage, from his window on
Air Force One two days after the hurricane hit, as an imperial act removed from
the suffering of the people below."
- Elisabeth Bumiller, September 2.
""Why were developers permitted to destroy wetlands and barrier islands
that could have held back the hurricane's surge? Why was Congress, before it
wandered off to vacation, engaged in slashing the budget for correcting some of
the gaping holes in the area's flood protection?"
- Editorial page, September 1.
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"Anyone who cares about responsible budgeting and the health of America's rivers
and wetlands should pay attention to a bill now before the Senate Committee on
Environment and Public Works. The bill would shovel $17 billion at the Army
Corps of Engineers for flood control and other water-related projects - this at
a time when President Bush is asking for major cuts in Medicaid and other
important domestic programs. Among these projects is a $2.7 billion boondoggle
on the Mississippi River that has twice flunked inspection by the National
Academy of Sciences. The Government Accountability Office and other watchdogs
accuse the corps of routinely inflating the economic benefits of its projects.
And environmentalists blame it for turning free-flowing rivers into lifeless
canals and destroying millions of acres of wetlands - usually in the name of
flood control and navigation but mostly to satisfy Congress's appetite for pork.
This is a bad piece of legislation."
- Editorial page, April 13.
Say What?
"Between Terri Schiavo and the pope, we've feasted on decomposing bodies for
almost a solid month now. The carefully edited, three-year-old video loops of
Ms. Schiavo may have been worthless as medical evidence but as necro-porn their
ubiquity rivaled that of TV's top entertainment franchise, the
all-forensics-all-the-time 'CSI.'"
- Arts Editor/columnist Frank Rich, April 10.
"Someone is sure to complain that the world doesn't really work the way it does
in 'Syriana': that oil companies, law firms and Middle Eastern regimes are not
really engaged in semiclandestine collusion, to control the global oil supply
and thus influence the destinies of millions of people. O.K., maybe. Call me
nave - or paranoid, or liberal, or whatever the favored epithet is this week
- but I'm inclined to give [writer-director Stephen] Gaghan the benefit of the
doubt. And even if the picture's rendering of current events turns out to be
entirely off base, the energy, care and intelligence with which it makes its
points are hard to dismiss."
- Movie critic A.O. Scott in his November 23 review of "Syriana."
"It is very conceivable that the gap-toothed [team cosponsor] David Letterman
understands what revs a woman's engine more than the gender-gapped George W.
Bush. Besides, knowing what women want is not the expertise of the Bush
administration."
- Sports columnist Selena Roberts May 30, using female Indy 500 driver
Danica Patrick to rant against Bush and in favor of Title IX, mandating parity
in funding for school-based male and female sports.
"Sitcoms are the television equivalent of the ozone layer: almost all indicators
suggest that both are imperiled, yet there is just enough evidence to allow
stubborn contrarians to hold out hope."
- Television-beat reporter Alessandra Stanley, May 18.
"Alan Greenspan, the Federal Reserve chairman, did recently warn of 'froth' in
the market. Was that, perhaps, a polite way of suggesting 'irrational
exuberance,' as he did about stocks before that market tumbled in 2001?"
- Business writer Mark Stein on the potential real estate "bubble," May 28.
The stock market began tumbling in 2000 (not 2001), four years after Greenspan
made his "irrational exuberance" claim.
"The four counties usually visible from the ocean-hugging slopes above Santa
Monica have been to the clean air struggle what the Deep South was to the civil
rights movement."
- Felicity Barringer on the impact of environmental regulations on southern
California, August 3.
"[Star Wars creator George] Lucas is clearly jabbing his light saber in the
direction of some real-world political leaders. At one point, Darth Vader,
already deep in the thrall of the dark side and echoing the words of George W.
Bush, hisses at Obi-Wan, 'If you're not with me, you're my enemy.' Obi-Wan's
response is likely to surface as a bumper sticker during the next election
campaign: 'Only a Sith thinks in absolutes.' You may applaud this
editorializing, or you may find it overwrought, but give Mr. Lucas his due. For
decades he has been blamed (unjustly) for helping to lead American movies away
from their early-70's engagement with political matters, and he deserves credit
for trying to bring them back."
- Movie critic A.O. Scott on "Revenge of the Sith," May 16.
"Wie Knows How to Play, And She Knows the Rules."
- Headline to an October 15 sports story on 16-year-old golf phenom
Michelle Wie.
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"Infraction Costs Wie First Payday."
- Headline to an October 17 story on Wie, who was disqualified for a
rule infraction the previous day.
Lousy Labeling
"But many in the crowd were openly and greatly distressed by the choice of the
new pope - widely regarded as an extreme conservative on a wide variety of
social issues. This included many Catholics who said he would take the church in
the wrong direction."
- Elisabeth Rosenthal, in the online version of her story on the choice of
Cardinal Ratzinger as pope, April 19.
"The Bush family omert demands silence and loyalty from all the president's
retinue, so Mrs. Whitman's decision to speak out is in itself an outrage.What
Mrs. Whitman will find out in the coming months is this: With Republicans
ascendant, and Washington awash with conservative hubris, is anyone in power
willing to listen?"
- From a January 26 profile by New Jersey Bureau Chief David Kocieniewski of
"moderate" Republican Christie Whitman, whose book "It's My Party, Too" is
critical of conservative Republicans.
"And as ultraconservatives and bottom liners circle, PBS appears to be too
accommodating in response. When conservatives attacked the respected Bill
Moyers, labeling him a dangerous liberal, PBS offered Tucker Carlson and
Paul Gigot. Whatever slight liberal flavor might be dug out of the Moyers
broadcasts, those are openly ideological conservative editorialists. Will
they do investigations like Mr. Moyers?"
- From a February 21 editorial defending PBS.
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"The entire federal government - the Congress, the executive, the courts
- is united behind a right-wing agenda for which George W. Bush believes
he now has a mandate. That agenda includes the power of the state to force
pregnant women to surrender control over their own lives. It includes
using the taxing power to transfer wealth from working people to the rich.
It includes giving corporations a free hand to eviscerate the environment
and control the regulatory agencies meant to hold them accountable. And it
includes secrecy on a scale you cannot imagine.And if you like God in
government, get ready for the Rapture."
- Some "slight liberal flavor" from Bill Moyers from the
November 8, 2002 edition of his old PBS show, "Now."
"Hamas, the Islamic group that combines philanthropy and militancy, confirmed
publicly on Saturday that it would take part in Palestinian legislative
elections scheduled for July 17, ending a 10-year boycott of the Palestinian
Authority."
- Israel-based reporter Steven Erlanger, March 13.
"[Israeli leader Ariel] Sharon has been handcuffed, too, by a struggle with the
more extreme elements of his own party, the right-wing Likud."
- From Steven Erlanger's October 14 story. Erlanger does not label the
Palestinian terror group Hamas as "extreme," only elements of the Israeli
political party Likud.
"[Palestinian candidate Mahmoud] Abbas, with no heroic history like that of his
predecessor as chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization, Yasir Arafat,
has been campaigning in Mr. Arafat's footsteps if not in his clothes."
- Steven Erlanger reporting from the Gaza Strip, January 6.
"Pataki Takes His Lumps, From the (Far) Right"
- The "jump page" headline to a Michael Cooper story on conservative
disaffection with New York Gov. George Pataki (which cited, among other Pataki
critics, the magazine National Review), February 12.
"You could call a fight for the hearts and minds of the far right in New
Jersey - a state that voted convincingly for John Kerry last November -
something of a Pyrrhic victory."
- New Jersey reporter Josh Benson on former Jersey City Mayor Bret
Schundler's battle for the Republican nomination for New Jersey governor,
March 13.
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"Germany's Far Right Tries to Put On a Normal Face."
- Headline to a March 14 report from Richard Bernstein about neo-Nazis
in Germany.
"An Advocate for the Right."
- Front-page headline on Bush Supreme Court nominee John Roberts, July 28,
2005.
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"Balanced Jurist at Home in the Middle."
- Headline on Clinton Supreme Court nominee Ruth Bader Ginsburg, June 27,
1993.
"An ABC News survey last weekend found that only 27 percent of Americans thought
it was 'appropriate' for Congress to 'get involved' in the Schiavo case and only
16 percent said it would want to be kept alive in her condition. But a majority
of American colonists didn't believe in witches during the Salem trials either
- any more than the Taliban reflected the views of a majority of Afghans."
- Arts editor/columnist Frank Rich, March 27.
Then Again, What Do We Know?
"Indeed, one of the favorite mantras of the current Bush White House and its
conservative allies is that the media suffer from a 'liberal bias' - a
constantly repeated accusation designed to drill this notion into the public
consciousness while putting the press on the defensive. Recent history flies in
the face of this assertion."
- Chief book critic Michiko Kakutani promoting an anti-Bush book by
Congressional Quarterly writer Craig Crawford, November 11.
