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MRC’s 20th Anniversary Edition
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October 22, 2007 (Vol. Twenty; No. 22)
Since the Media Research Center was founded in October 1987,
our mission has been to document, expose and neutralize the media elite’s
liberal bias, and our bi-weekly Notable Quotables, which debuted in
February 1988, has been a vital tool in pursuing this mission. After publishing
more than 500 issues — more than 8,000 notable quotes — we are pleased to bring
you this super-sized 20th Anniversary edition with the most outrageous quotes
from the MRC’s first two decades.
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Useful Idiots for Communism |
“The Soviet
Union, draped in history, born of bloody revolution, bound together
by a dream that is still being dreamt. It is the dream of a
socialist nation marching towards the first communist state. The
Soviet Union, a mighty union....Once, the Kremlin was the home of
czars. Today, it belongs to the people....Atheist though the state
may be, freedom to worship as you please is enshrined in the Soviet
constitution.”
— From the first night of Ted Turner’s seven-hour TBS cable series
Portrait of the Soviet Union, March 20, 1988.
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“[Fidel] Castro has delivered the most to those who had the least....Education was once available to the rich and the well-connected. It is now free to all....Medical care was once for the privileged few. Today it is available to every Cuban and it is free....Health and education are the revolution’s great success stories.”
— Peter Jennings, ABC’s World News Tonight, April 3, 1989. |
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Bring Back the Iron Curtain |
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“A Gulag Breeds Rage, Yes, but Also Serenity”
— New York Times headline over article on last Soviet political
prisoners being released, February 12, 1992.
“Few tears
will be shed over the demise of the East German army, but what about
East Germany’s eighty symphony orchestras, bound to lose some
subsidies? Or the whole East German system, which covered everyone
in a security blanket from day care to health care, from housing to
education? Some people are beginning to express, if ever so
slightly, nostalgia for that Berlin Wall.”
— CBS’s Bob Simon, March 16, 1990 Evening News. |
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“It’s short of soap, so there are lice in the hospitals.
It’s short of pantyhose, so women’s legs go bare. It’s short of snowsuits,
so babies stay home in the winter....The problem isn’t communism; nobody
even talked about communism this week. The problem is shortages.”
— Commentator John Chancellor talking about the Soviet Union on NBC
Nightly News, August 21, 1991. |
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Reviling Ronald Reagan |
“After eight years of what many saw as the Reagan
administration’s benign neglect of the poor and studied indifference to
civil rights, a lot of those who lived through this week in Overtown
[rioting in a section of Miami] seemed to think the best thing about George
Bush is that he is not Ronald Reagan...There is an Overtown in every big
city in America — pockets of misery made even meaner and more desperate the
past eight years.”
— Reporter Richard Threlkeld on ABC’s World News Tonight, January 20,
1989, Reagan’s last day as President. |
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“The decade had its highs (Gorbachev, Bird)...and the decade
had its lows (Reagan, AIDS)”
— Boston Globe headline over two pages of ’80s reviews by the paper’s
columnists, December 28, 1989.
“The bottom line is more tax money is going to be needed.
Just how much will be the primary issue on the agenda when congressional
leaders meet with the President later today....It now seems the time has
come to pay the fiddler for our costly dance of the Reagan years.”
— Bryant Gumbel opening NBC’s Today, May 9, 1990. |
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“The amazing thing is most people seem content to believe
that almost everybody had a good time in the ’80s , a real shot at the
dream. But the fact is, they didn’t. Did we wear blinders? Did we think the
’80s left behind just the homeless? The fact is that almost nine in ten
Americans actually saw their lifestyle decline.
— NBC reporter Keith Morrison, February 7, 1992 Nightly News. Census
Bureau data shows median family income increased in all income classes from
1981 to 1989.
“In the plague years of the 1980s — that low decade of
denial, indifference, hostility, opportunism and idiocy — government fiddled
and medicine diddled, and the media were silent or hysterical. A
gerontocratic Ronald Reagan took this [AIDS] plague less seriously than
Gerald Ford had taken swine flu. After all, he didn’t need the ghettos and
he didn’t want the gays.”
— CBS’s John Leonard on Sunday Morning, September 5, 1993. |
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Rather: The Ambush that Failed |
“You and the President were being party to sending missiles
to the Ayatollah of Iran. Can you explain how — you were supposed to be the
— you are — you’re an anti-terrorist expert! Iran was officially a terrorist
state....The question is — but — you made us hypocrites in the face of the
world! How could you sign on to such a policy?!”
— Anchor Dan Rather in a live interview with Vice President George Bush,
January 25, 1988 CBS Evening News.
7 minute Flash version
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Touting a Tax-Hiker’s “Courage” |
“When he entered the race nearly a year ago, he had the
courage to say that as President he would probably have to raise taxes. And
he never recovered from his courage.”
— Peter Jennings on Bruce Babbitt’s dropping out of the presidential race,
ABC’s World News Tonight, February 18, 1988. |
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Multiple Media Gorbasms |
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“[Soviet dictator Mikhail] Gorbachev has probably moved more
quickly than any person in the history of the world. Moving faster than
Jesus Christ did.”
— Ted Turner as quoted in Time, January 22, 1990.
“By American presidential standards, Mikhail Gorbachev
accomplished enough in his seven-year term to qualify for a bust on Mount
Rushmore.”
— NBC’s Jim Maceda, December 25, 1991 Nightly News. |
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“What do you do for an encore after ending the Cold War and
reversing the arms race? How about saving the planet? That’s the latest
assignment for Mikhail Gorbachev, having assumed the presidency of the
International Green Cross, a new environmental organization...”
— Time’s “The Week” section, May 3, 1993. |
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Damn Those Conservatives |
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“Supreme Court nominee David Souter wants the world to stop
viewing him as a nerd. Senate Democrats want to know if, instead, Souter is
a neanderthal — a mean-spirited conservative bent on wrecking constitutional
protections for women, minorities, and accused criminals.”
— Beginning of September 13, 1990 USA Today cover story by legal
reporter Tony Mauro.
“Corporations pay public relations firms millions of dollars
to contrive the kind of grass-roots response that Falwell or Pat Robertson
can galvanize in a televised sermon. Their followers are largely poor,
uneducated, and easy to command.”
— Washington Post reporter Michael Weisskopf in a February 1, 1993
news story.
“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 and Pacifica Radio talk show host Julianne
Malveaux on Justice Clarence Thomas, November 4, 1994 PBS’s To the
Contrary. |
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The “Conscience of the Country” |
“He [Jesse Jackson] has become here, a kind of new, he’s
acquired a new status. He’s almost like Hubert Humphrey was, a sort of
conscience of the country.”
— Veteran correspondent Eric Sevareid during CBS News coverage of the
Democratic convention, July 20, 1988. |
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Not Enough Americans Died |
“Greenpeace, the public interest organization, believes that
the Iraqi death toll, civilian and military, during and after the war, may
be as high as 198,000. Allied military dead are counted in the low hundreds.
The disparity is huge and somewhat embarrassing.”
— NBC commentator John Chancellor a year after the first Gulf War ended,
March 12, 1992 Nightly News. |
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Proposal to Save Planet Earth |
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“It’s a morbid observation, but if everyone on Earth just
stopped breathing for an hour, the greenhouse effect would no longer be a
problem.”
— Newsweek Senior Writer Jerry Adler, December 31, 1990. |
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America, One Giant Mess |
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“The President was remarkably upbeat for a man who runs a
country with a monstrous national debt, huge balance of trade problems, a
crumbling infrastructure, dirty air, countless homeless people, a
coast-to-coast drug epidemic, and a faltering self-image.”
— CBS This Morning co-host Harry Smith the morning after President
George H. W. Bush’s State of the Union speech, February 2, 1990. |
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Reprehensible Republicans |
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“The whole week was double-ply, wall-to-wall ugly....The
Republican Party reached an unimaginable slouchy, and brazen, and constant,
level of mendacity last week....[President Bush] is in ‘campaign mode’ now,
which means mendacity doesn’t matter, aggression is all and wall-to-wall
ugly is the order of battle for the duration.”
— Senior Editor Joe Klein on the Republican convention, August 31, 1992
Newsweek.
“This is a party that is dominated by men, and this
convention is dominated by men as well....Do you think before tonight they
thought very much about what happens in America with rape?”
— NBC anchor Tom Brokaw interviewing rape victim Jan Licence after her
victims-rights speech to the GOP convention, August 13, 1996.
“Over the past 18 months, while Republicans fulminated about
welfare and affirmative action, more than 20 churches in Alabama and six
other Southern and Border states have been torched....There is already
enough evidence to indict the cynical conservatives who build their
political careers, George Wallace-style, on a foundation of race-baiting.
They may not start fires, but they fan the flames.”
— Time national correspondent Jack E. White, March 18, 1996 issue. |
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Fawning Over Bill & Hillary |
“I must say I was struck by the expanse of their chests,
though. They may have to put out their stats.”
— Newsweek reporter Eleanor Clift on Bill Clinton and Al Gore, CNN’s
Inside Politics, July 9, 1992. |
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“If we could be one-hundredth as great as you and Hillary
Rodham Clinton have been in the White House, we’d take it right now and walk
away winners....Tell Mrs. Clinton we respect her and we’re pulling for her.”
— Dan Rather to Bill Clinton at a May 27, 1993 CBS affiliates meeting,
talking about anchoring with Connie Chung.
“As the icon of American womanhood, she is the medium
through which the remaining anxieties over feminism are being played
out....Hillary Rodham Clinton will define for women that magical spot where
the important work of the world and love and children and an inner life all
come together. Like Ginger Rogers, she will do everything her partner does,
only backward and in high heels, and with what was missing in [Lee] Atwater
— a lot of heart.”
— Time correspondent Margaret Carlson, May 10, 1993.
“His sturdy jaw precedes him. He smiles from sea to shining
sea. Is this President a candidate for Mt. Rushmore or what?...A single
medley of expressions from Clinton may be worth much more, to much of
America, than every ugly accusation Paula Jones can muster.”
— Los Angeles Times television writer Howard Rosenberg reviewing
Clinton’s Inaugural Address, January 22, 1997.
“I’m endlessly fascinated by her [Hillary Clinton]....She’s
so smart. Virtually every time I’ve seen her perform, she has knocked my
socks off.”
— CBS’s Lesley Stahl, as quoted by Gail Shister in the December 8, 1999
Philadelphia Inquirer. |
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Admiring a Mad Bomber’s Ethics |
“[Ted Kaczynski] wasn’t a hypocrite. He lived as he wrote.
His manifesto — and there are a lot of things in it that I would agree with
and a lot of other people would, that industrialization and pollution all
are terrible things — but he carried it to an extreme. And, obviously,
murder is something that is far beyond any political philosophy, but he had
a bike. He didn’t have any plumbing; he didn’t have any electricity.”
— Time reporter Elaine Shannon talking about the Unabomber, April 7,
1996 C-SPAN Sunday Journal. |
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Happy Columbus Day |
“[Columbus] sailed just as Jews and Muslims were being
expelled from Spain, the persecution of those peoples and the riches robbed
from them paying for his small armada of ships, the Nina, the
Pinta, and the Santa Maria, to set sail for new plunder. For
Native Americans, the people who hardly felt discovered, Columbus’ landing
commenced a Holocaust. There’s really no other word for the death delivered
by settlers, as they scattered, enslaved, and obliterated Indian nations on
their own sacred lands.”
— Co-host Scott Simon on NBC’s Today, October 11, 1992. |
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Scolding Voters’ Temper Tantrum |
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“Some thoughts on those angry voters. Ask parents of any
two-year-old and they can tell you about those temper tantrums: the stomping
feet, the rolling eyes, the screaming. It’s clear that the anger controls
the child and not the other way around. It’s the job of the parent to teach
the child to control the anger and channel it in a positive way. Imagine a
nation full of uncontrolled two-year-old rage. The voters had a temper
tantrum last week [electing a GOP Congress]....Parenting and governing don’t
have to be dirty words: the nation can’t be run by an angry two-year-old.”
— Peter Jennings in his daily ABC Radio commentary, November 14, 1994. |
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Newt’s Deadly GOP Insurgency |
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“You called Gingrich and his ilk, your words, ‘trickle-down
terrorists who base their agenda on division, exclusion, and fear.’ Do you
think middle class Americans are in need of protection from that group?”
— NBC’s Bryant Gumbel to House Democratic Leader Richard Gephardt, January
4, 1995 Today.
“The new Republican majority in Congress took a big step
today on its legislative agenda to demolish or damage government aid
programs, many of them designed to help children and the poor.”
— Dan Rather, March 16, 1995 CBS Evening News. |
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“When NBC Nightly News continues: In Washington, if
they cut food stamps, who doesn’t eat?”
— Tom Brokaw, March 22, 1995.
“Next week on ABC’s World News Tonight, a series of
reports about our environment which will tell you precisely what the new
Congress has in mind: the most frontal assault on the environment in 25
years. Is this what the country wants?”
— Peter Jennings in an ABC promo during the July 9, 1995 This Week with
David Brinkley. |
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“In light of the new welfare reform bill, do you think the
children need more prayers than ever before?”
— Bryant Gumbel to Children’s Defense Fund leader Marian Wright Edelman,
September 23, 1996 Today. |
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Three Cheers for Liberalism |
“I think liberalism lives — the notion that we don’t have to
stay where we are as a society, we have promises to keep, and it is
liberalism, whether people like it or not, which has animated all the years
of my life. What on Earth did conservatism ever accomplish for our country?”
— Charles Kuralt talking with Morley Safer on the CBS special,
One for
the Road with Charles Kuralt, May 4, 1994. |
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How Sad — Babies that Don’t Die |
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“Sadly, many home remedies could damage a fetus instead of
kill it.”
— Newsweek Senior Editor Melinda Beck on self-performed abortions,
July 17, 1989 issue. |
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Castigating the Competition |
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“[Rush Limbaugh] is, above all, a sophisticated
propagandist, an avatar of the politics of meanness and envy....He must,
like all demagogues, scare his listeners, get them to believe in conspiracy,
rumor....Like Reagan, Limbaugh is neither curious nor brave; he would rather
tell his audiences fairy tales than have them face the world; he would
rather sneer at the weak than trouble the strong.”
— Former Washington Post reporter David Remnick in the Post’s
Outlook section, February 20, 1994.
“In a nation that has entertained and appalled itself for
years with hot talk on the radio and the campaign trail, the inflamed
rhetoric of the ’90s is suddenly an unindicted co-conspirator in the
[Oklahoma City federal building] blast.”
— Time Senior Writer Richard Lacayo, May 8, 1995.
“The bombing in Oklahoma City has focused renewed attention
on the rhetoric that’s been coming from the right and those who cater to
angry white men. While no one’s suggesting that right-wing radio jocks
approve of violence, the extent to which their approach fosters violence is
being questioned by many observers, including the President.... Right-wing
talk show hosts like Rush Limbaugh, Bob Grant, Oliver North, G. Gordon Liddy,
Michael Reagan, and others take to the air every day with basically the same
format: detail a problem, blame the government or a group, and invite
invective from like-minded people....Never do most of the radio hosts
encourage outright violence, but the extent to which their attitudes may
embolden or encourage some extremists has clearly become an issue.”
— Today co-host Bryant Gumbel, April 25, 1995. |
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“What must it be like to live in Rush Limbaugh’s world? A
world where when anyone other than conservative, white men attempts to do
anything or enter any profession, be it business, politics, art or sports,
the only reason they’re allowed entry or, incredibly, attain excellence is
because the standard was lowered....Edgy, controversial, brilliant. What a
way to shake up intelligent sports commentary. Hitler would have killed in
talk radio. He was edgy, too.”
— Nancy Giles on CBS’s Sunday Morning, October 5, 2003. |
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Blame Deaths on Christian Right |
“Let’s talk a little bit more about the right wing because I
know that’s something you feel very strongly about. But this is actually not
necessarily about the right wing, but perhaps a climate that some say has
been established by religious zealots or Christian conservatives. There have
been two recent incidents in the news I think that upset most people in this
country, that is the dragging death of James Byrd, Jr., and the beating
death of Matthew Shepard. I just would like you to reflect on whether you
feel people in this country are increasingly intolerant, mean-spirited, et
cetera, and what, if anything, can be done about that.”
— NBC’s Today co-host Katie Couric to former Texas Governor Ann
Richards as she hosted a 92nd Street Y appearance in New York City on March
3, 1999, an event shown by C-SPAN April 3, 1999. |
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Fair and Balanced Bryant Gumbel? |
Tim Russert: “Is it hard holding your own views in
check?”
Bryant Gumbel: “You know what? In terms of my political views, I hold
them in check. I don’t think that someone who watches is inclined to think
that I’m one way or the other.”
— CNBC’s Tim Russert, October 30, 1999. |
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“Largely as a result of the policies and priorities of the
Reagan administration, more people are becoming poor and staying poor in
this country than at any time since World War II.”
— Today co-host Bryant Gumbel, July 17, 1989. |
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“The boom years following World War II saw the U.S. economy
take off, giving rise to the growth of the great American middle class. The
rising standard of living meant homes, cars, TVs, college for the kids — all
in all, a piece of the American dream. But in the Reagan years, economic
erosion set in, so much so that the middle class now finds itself in
ever-deepening trouble.”
— Gumbel on NBC’s Today, January 22, 1992. |
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“You’re aligned to a party which owes many of its victories
to the so-called religious right and other conservative extremists who are
historically insensitive to minority concerns. That doesn’t bother you?”
— Gumbel to black Republican U.S. Rep.-elect J.C. Watts on NBC’s Today,
November 9, 1994.
“Let’s not debate his presidency, but his passing. As
opposed to a man like Reagan, [Richard] Nixon was highly regarded as a
genuine statesman with a first-class mind.”
— Gumbel on NBC’s Today, April 26, 1994. |
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White Games = GOP Convention |
“Finally tonight, the Winter Games. Count me among those who
don’t like ‘em and won’t watch ‘em. In fact, I figure when Thomas Paine
said, ‘These are the times that try men’s souls,’ he must have been talking
about the start of another Winter Olympics. Because they’re so trying, maybe
over the next three weeks we should all try, too....Try not to laugh when
someone says these are the world’s greatest athletes, despite a paucity of
blacks that makes the Winter Games look like a GOP convention.”
— Bryant Gumbel on HBO’s Real Sports, February 7, 2006. |
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Vive le Socialisme! |
NBC News reporter Keith Miller in Paris:
“Break out
the band, bring on the drinks. The French are calling it a miracle. A
government-mandated 35-hour work week is changing the French way of
life....Sixty percent of those on the job say their lives have improved.
These American women, all working in France, have time for lunch and a
life.” Katie Couric, following the end of Miller’s taped piece: “So
great, that young mother being able to come home at three every day and
spend that time with her child. Isn’t that nice? The French, they’ve got it
right, don’t they?”
— NBC’s Today, August 1, 2001. |
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The Clinton Defense Team |
“The case is being fomented by right-wing nuts, and yes, she
is not a very credible witness, and it’s really not a law case at all...some
sleazy woman with big hair coming out of the trailer parks...I think she’s a
dubious witness, I really do.”
— Newsweek Washington Bureau Chief Evan Thomas discussing Paula
Jones, May 7, 1994 Inside Washington. |
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“We’ve got an awful lot to talk about this week, including
the [Paula Jones] sexual harassment suit against the President. Of course,
in that one, it’s a little tough to figure out who’s really being harassed.”
— Today co-host Bryant Gumbel, May 10, 1994.
“If Ken Starr is a credible prosecutor he will bring this to
a conclusion and the Clintons will be exonerated.”
— Newsweek’s Eleanor Clift on independent counsel Ken Starr’s
investigation, February 10, 1996 McLaughlin Group.
“If there were an Ig-Nobel Peace Prize, who would win it?
• Slobodan Milosevic
• Osama bin Laden
• Saddam Hussein
• Linda Tripp”
— “What do you think?” question of the day on the ABCNews.com home page,
October 15, 1998.
“The best chance for Clinton to shine in history might be
for Congress to force him to pay the price for lying about sex. In the
unlikely event he is pushed from office, it would take only weeks, maybe
just days, before a vast national remorse set in. We destroyed our lovable
rogue prince of prosperity over this? Clinton would become a martyr to a
legal system run amok.”
— Newsweek’s Jonathan Alter in the August 24, 1998 issue.
“That herd of managers from the House, I mean frankly all
they were missing was white sheets. They’re like night riders going over.
This is bigger than Bill Clinton.”
— Eleanor Clift on The McLaughlin Group, January 9, 1999.
“Mr. President, we love you. I want to hug you, I want to
hug you, please do the right thing. This is nothing, this is nothing. Thomas
Jefferson did not have this in mind, I swear to God....I would give Ken
Starr the Nobel Peace Prize were he to be man enough not to refer a sex lie
to the House for impeachment.”
— Geraldo Rivera urging Clinton not to cooperate, August 6, 1998 edition of
Rivera Live on CNBC. |
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On Her Knees for Abortion Rights |
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“I would be happy to give him [Bill Clinton] a blow job just
to thank him for keeping abortion legal. I think American women should be
lining up with their presidential kneepads on to show their gratitude for
keeping the theocracy off our backs.”
— Time contributor and ex-reporter Nina Burleigh recalling a quote
she gave the Washington Post’s Howard Kurtz, as quoted in the
July 20, 1998 New York Observer. |
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“Bully” Starr = Himmler the Nazi |
“Twinkle, twinkle Kenneth Starr, now we see how crude you
are / Up above your jury high, like the judge up in the sky / Twinkle,
twinkle little Starr, now we see how wrong you are / When you drag the
agents in, when you bully moms and kin / Then you kiss the treacherous
Tripp, twinkle, twinkle DC drip / Twinkle, twinkle little Starr, now we see
how small you are.”
— Geraldo Rivera singing his version of “Twinkle Little Star,” July 21, 1998
Rivera Live on CNBC. |
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“Facially, it finally dawned on me that the person Ken Starr
has reminded me of facially all this time was Heinrich Himmler, including
the glasses. If he now pursues the President of the United States, who,
however flawed his apology was, came out and invoked God, family, his
daughter, a political conspiracy and everything but the kitchen sink, would
not there be some sort of comparison to a persecutor as opposed to a
prosecutor for Mr. Starr?”
— Keith Olbermann on MSNBC’s Big Show, in a question to the
Chicago Tribune’s James Warren, August 18, 1998. |
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Celebrating a Fairy Tale Marriage |
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“She’s ecumenical but prefers Italian and Mexican. The
President fixes her eggs with jalapeno peppers on the
weekends....Valentine’s Day at the Red Sage restaurant. Even at a romantic
outing, the President can be the date from hell, talking to everyone but the
girl he brung....Finally alone, they have ‘painted soup’ and the lamb baked
in herbed bread. They exchange gifts and touch each other more in two hours
than the Bushes did in four years.”
— Time reporter Margaret Carlson, June 1993 Vanity Fair.
“There is a simple alchemy to their relationship: she’s
goofy, flat-out in love with him and he with her. ‘They don’t kiss. They
devour each other,’ says one aide. He needs her — for intellectual solace,
political guidance and spiritual sustenance....They see themselves in almost
Messianic terms, as great leaders who have a mission to fulfill. Her friends
speculate that the Bible gives her a historical context for what she’s going
through. ‘There’s a lot of consolation, guidance and refueling that comes
from reading about centuries-old calamities,’ says a friend. Given the storm
they’re in, it’s a source of inspiration they’ll need.”
— Matthew Cooper and Karen Breslau writing in the February 9, 1998
Newsweek. |
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Dan’s Salute to “Honest” Bill |
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Host Bill O’Reilly: “I want to ask you flat out, do
you think President Clinton’s an honest man?”
Dan Rather: “Yes, I think he’s an honest man....I do.”
O’Reilly: “Even though he lied to Jim Lehrer’s face about the Lewinsky
case?”
Rather: “Who among us has not lied about something?...I know that you
consider it sort of astonishing anybody would say so, but I think you can be
an honest person and lie about any number of things.”
— Exchange on FNC’s The O’Reilly Factor, May 15, 2001. |
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Extolling Virtues of Fidel’s Prison |
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“Elian [Gonzalez] might expect a nurturing life in Cuba,
sheltered from the crime and social breakdown that would be part of his
upbringing in Miami....The boy will nestle again in a more peaceable society
that treasures its children.”
— Brook Larmer and John Leland, April 17, 2000 Newsweek.
“Frankly, to be a poor child in Cuba may in many instances be better than
being a poor child in Miami, and I’m not going to condemn their lifestyle so
gratuitously.”
— Eleanor Clift on The McLaughlin Group, April 8, 2000. |
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“For Castro, freedom starts with education. And if literacy alone were
the yardstick, Cuba would rank as one of the freest nations on Earth. The
literacy rate is 96 percent.”
— Barbara Walters on ABC’s 20/20, October 11, 2002. |
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Bush: Selected, Not Elected |
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“There is no question, or very little question, that Al Gore
won the votes cast in the state of Florida. The question is: Will he win the
votes counted?...If this race is counted fairly, Al Gore won more votes in
Florida.”
— George Stephanopoulos on This Week, November 12, 2000.
“Good evening. Texas Governor George Bush tonight will
assume the mantle and the honor of President-elect. This comes 24 hours
after a sharply split and, some say, politically and ideologically motivated
U.S. Supreme Court ended Vice President Gore’s contest of the Florida
election and, in effect, handed the presidency to Bush.”
— CBS’s Dan Rather on the December 13, 2000 Evening News. |
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Ruing Catastrophe of Tax Cuts |
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“Adios, surplus. When retired boomers dine on dog food, will
they say thanks for that $600?”
— Newsweek’s “Conventional Wisdom” box, assigning President Bush a
“down” arrow, September 3, 2001 issue.
“If you see a whole monkfish at the market, you’ll find its
massive mouth scarier than a shark’s. Apparently it sits on the bottom of
the ocean, opens its Godzilla jaws and waits for poor unsuspecting fishies
to swim right into it, not unlike the latest recipients of W’s capital-gains
cuts.”
— Food writer Jonathan Reynolds in a July 27, 2003 New York Times
Magazine article about Norway’s seafood. |
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Poisoning America’s Children |
“Remember when Ronald Reagan tried to save a few pennies on
the school lunch program by classifying ketchup as a vegetable? Last week
the Bush administration went further, axing a regulation that forced the
meat industry to test hamburgers served in school for salmonella. Imagine,
mad cow disease among children, K through 12. The day it hit the papers the
proposal was quickly withdrawn. [If] the Bush administration keeps trying to
kill health and safety regulations at this pace, soon we won’t be able to
eat, drink or breathe.”
— “Outrage of the Week” from Time magazine’s Margaret Carlson, April
7, 2001 Capital Gang on CNN. |
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9/11 = Our Fault |
“Some people who hated Americans set out to kill a lot of us
and they succeeded [on 9/11]....We’re trying to protect ourselves with more
weapons. We have to do it, I guess, but it might be better if we figured out
how to behave as a nation in a way that wouldn’t make so many people in the
world want to kill us.”
— CBS’s Andy Rooney on 60 Minutes, September 10, 2006. |
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Journalists 1st, Americans 2nd |
“The Pentagon as a legitimate target?...As a journalist, I
feel strongly that’s something that I should not be taking a position on.
I’m supposed to figure out what is and what is not, not what ought to be.”
— ABC News President David Westin at a Columbia University Graduate School
of Journalism event on October 23, 2001 shown four days later on C-SPAN. |
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“We all know that one man’s terrorist is another man’s
freedom fighter and that Reuters upholds the principle that we do not use
the word terrorist....To be frank, it adds little to call the attack on the
World Trade Center a terrorist attack.”
— Steven Jukes, global head of news for Reuters News Service, in an internal
memo cited by the Washington Post’s Howard Kurtz in a September 24,
2001 article. |
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America, the Real Evil Empire |
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“Recovery and debris removal work continues at the site of
the World Trade Center known as ‘ground zero’ in New York, March 25, 2002.
Human rights around the world have been a casualty of the U.S. ‘war on
terror’ since September 11.”
— Caption for a Reuters News Service photo distributed with a September 3,
2002 story by Richard Waddington headlined, “Rights the first victim of ‘war
on terror.’”
“I decided to put on my flag pin tonight — first time. Until
now I haven’t thought it necessary to display a little metallic icon of
patriotism for everyone to see....I put this on as a modest riposte to men
with flags in their lapels who shoot missiles from the safety of Washington
think tanks....I put it on to remind myself that not every patriot thinks we
should do to the people of Baghdad what bin Laden did to us.”
— Bill Moyers on PBS’s Now, February 28, 2003. |
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“I just want to say: Who are we? We are people who have
always been for inspections of prisons, for some degree of human rights, and
now we’re defending neither.... We have now violated everything that we
stand for. It is the first time in my life I have been ashamed of my
country.”
— NPR’s Nina Totenberg discussing secret CIA prisons for captured
terrorists, Inside Washington, November 4, 2005.
“I don’t support our troops....When you volunteer for the
U.S. military...you’re willingly signing up to be a fighting tool of
American imperialism....I’m not advocating that we spit on returning
veterans like they did after the Vietnam War, but we shouldn’t be
celebrating people for doing something we don’t think was a good idea.”
— Los Angeles Times columnist and former Time staff writer
Joel Stein in a January 24, 2006 column. |
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Hugs for Liberal Heroes |
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“If she had lived, Mary Jo Kopechne would be 62 years old.
Through his tireless work as a legislator, Edward Kennedy would have brought
comfort to her in her old age.”
— Charles Pierce in a January 5, 2003 Boston Globe Magazine article.
Kopechne drowned while trapped in Kennedy’s submerged car off Chappaquiddick
Island in July 1969, an accident Kennedy did not report for several hours.
Brian Williams: “Is it fair to call him [Jimmy Carter]
the best former President in, at minimum, modern American history, and
perhaps, well, I guess, the last 200 years?”
Historian Marshall Frady: “Which embraces all presidencies. I think
absolutely.”
— CNBC’s The News with Brian Williams, October 11, 2002. |
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“For Massachusetts Senator John Kerry, tonight’s acceptance
of the Democratic nomination is more than merely a day. It’s his
destiny....A gifted athlete and captain of the debate team at Yale, Kerry
followed his idol’s [John F. Kennedy’s] lead and enlisted in the Navy in
1966. In Vietnam, Lieutenant John F. Kerry rescued a comrade in combat,
killed an enemy soldier, won three Purple Hearts and one Bronze
Star....Tonight, the loner will stand alone here in his hometown one more
time and look to do what John F. Kerry has nearly always done — find a way
to win.”
— CBS’s Byron Pitts on The Early Show, July 29, 2004. |
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Sinister, Racist & Insensitive |
“I have a feeling that it [Osama bin Laden’s new videotape]
could tilt the election a bit. In fact, I’m a little inclined to think that
Karl Rove, the political manager at the White House, who is a very clever
man, that he probably set up bin Laden to this thing.”
— Former CBS Evening News anchor Walter Cronkite on CNN’s Larry
King Live, October 29, 2004. |
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“I think that anyone who’s not going to vote for Barack
Obama because he is black isn’t going to vote for a Democrat anyway.”
— George Stephanopoulos, This Week, May 13, 2007.
“You have made so many offensive comments over the years. Do
you regret any of them?...You seem indifferent to suffering. Have you ever
suffered yourself?”
— Two of the questions posed to National Review founder William F.
Buckley by the New York Times Magazine’s Deborah Solomon, July 11,
2004. |
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Just Like George Washington |
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Andrea Mitchell: “It is an iconic picture: American
hostages, hands bound and blindfolded, being paraded outside the U.S.
embassy in Tehran by their captors. But has one of those student radicals
now become Iran’s newly elected President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad?...”
Brian Williams: “Andrea, what would it all matter if proven true?
Someone brought up today the first several U.S. Presidents were certainly
revolutionaries and might have been called terrorists at the time by the
British Crown, after all.”
— NBC Nightly News, June 30, 2005. |
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Bracing for the End of the World |
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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.
Above all, it means judges with a political agenda appointed for life. If
you like the Supreme Court that put George W. Bush in the White House, you
will swoon over what’s coming. And if you like God in government, get ready
for the Rapture.”
— Bill Moyers’ commentary on PBS’s Now November 8, 2002, a few days
after Republicans won the midterm congressional elections. |
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Apologizing for Awful America |
“It wasn’t supposed to be this way. You weren’t supposed to
be graduating into an America fighting a misbegotten war in a foreign land.
You weren’t supposed to be graduating into a world where we are still
fighting for fundamental human rights, whether it’s the rights of immigrants
to start a new life, or the rights of gays to marry, or the rights of women
to choose. You weren’t supposed to be graduating into a world where oil
still drove policy and environmentalists have to fight relentlessly for
every gain. You weren’t. But you are. And for that, I’m sorry.”
— From New York Times Publisher Arthur Sulzberger, Jr.’s May 21
graduation address at the State University of New York at New Paltz, shown
on C-SPAN May 27, 2006. |
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Apocalypse Now |
“Today, life on Earth is disappearing faster than the days
when dinosaurs breathed their last, but for a very different reason....Us
homo sapiens are turning out to be as destructive a force as any
asteroid. Earth’s intricate web of ecosystems thrived for millions of years
as natural paradises, until we came along, paved paradise, and put up a
parking lot. Our assault on nature is killing off the very things we depend
on for our own lives....The stark reality is that there are simply too many
of us, and we consume way too much, especially here at home.”
— NBC’s Matt Lauer hosting Countdown to Doomsday, a two-hour June 14,
2006 Sci-Fi Channel special. |
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Good Riddance to the Gipper |
CBS’s Morley Safer: “You talk about a vision, and it’s
some kind of abstract, vague idea. Did his [Ronald Reagan’s] vision include
extraordinary deficits? Did his vision include cutting of the budgets for
education and a back of the hand in terms of public education?”
Larry King: “History will not be kind to him?”
Safer: “No, I don’t think history particularly will be kind....I don’t
think history has any reason to be kind to him.”
— CNN’s Larry King Live, June 14, 2004. |
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Typical Liberal Compassion |
Host Tina Gulland: “I don’t think I have any Jesse
Helms defenders here. Nina?”
NPR’s Nina Totenberg: “Not me. I think he ought to be worried about
what’s going on in the Good Lord’s mind, because if there is retributive
justice, he’ll get AIDS from a transfusion, or one of his grandchildren will
get it.”
— Exchange on the July 8, 1995 Inside Washington, after Helms said
the government spends too much on AIDS. |
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Run, Dick, Run |
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“The day I say Dick Cheney is going to run for President,
I’ll kill myself. All we need is one more liar.”
— Hearst White House columnist Helen Thomas, as quoted in The Hill
newspaper, July 28, 2005. |
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Just a Baffling Coincidence |
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“Crime Keeps On Falling; but Prisons Keep On Filling.”
— September 28, 1997 New York Times headline over Week in Review
article. |
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Ted Turner’s Bicycle Paradise |
Ted Turner: “I am absolutely convinced that the North
Koreans are absolutely sincere....I looked them right in the eyes. And they
looked like they meant the truth. You know, just because somebody’s done
something wrong in the past doesn’t mean they can’t do right in the future
or the present. That happens all the, all the time.”
Wolf Blitzer: “But this is one of the most despotic regimes and [North
Korean dictator] Kim Jong-il is one of the worst men on Earth. Isn’t that a
fair assessment?”
Turner: “Well, I didn’t get to meet him, but he didn’t look — in the
pictures that I’ve seen of him on CNN, he didn’t look too much different
than most other people.”
Blitzer: “But look at the way he’s treating his own people.”
Turner: “Well, hey, listen. I saw a lot of people over there. They were
thin and they were riding bicycles instead of driving in cars, but-”
Blitzer: “A lot of those people are starving.”
Turner: “I didn’t see any, I didn’t see any brutality....”
— CNN’s The Situation Room, September 19, 2005. |
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Real Terrorists Here at Home |
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“Since September 11, the word ‘terrorist’ has come to mean
someone who is radical, Islamic and foreign. But many believe we have as
much to fear from a home-grown group of anti-abortion crusaders.”
— Reporter Jami Floyd on ABC’s 20/20, November 28, 2001. |
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Just a Tad Self-Absorbed |
“I have to bask in this moment, for a moment, because I am
here talking to the most powerful man on the planet, who was a poor boy from
Arkansas....I am an African-American woman, grew up working class on the
south side of Chicago, and this is a pretty special moment for me, to be
here talking to you. How does it feel talking to me?”
— ABC’s Carole Simpson interviewing Bill Clinton on ABC’s World News
Tonight/Sunday, November 7, 1999. |
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Could Be More, Could Be Less |
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“Seven years ago, when the last referendum took place, Saddam
Hussein won 99.96 percent of the vote. Of course, it is impossible to say
whether that’s a true measure of the Iraqi people’s feelings.”
— ABC’s David Wright in Baghdad, on World News Tonight, October 15,
2002. |
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Rosie Rants Against America |
“As a result of the [9/11] attack and the killing of nearly
3,000 innocent people, we invaded two countries and killed innocent people
in their countries....Radical Christianity is just as threatening as radical
Islam in a country like America.”
— Rosie O’Donnell on ABC’s The View, September 12, 2006. |
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“I
just want to say something: 655,000 Iraqi civilians are dead. Who are the
terrorists?...If you were in Iraq, and the other country, the United States,
the richest in the world, invaded your country and killed 655,000 of your
citizens, what would you call us?”
— O’Donnell on ABC’s The View, May 17, 2007. |
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Good Morning Morons |
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“In a macro-political sense, do you think the Gore
preoccupation with morality is a frightening turn for the party?”
— Bryant Gumbel to Playboy founder Hugh Hefner on the August 15, 2000
The Early Show.
“So, I’m getting less chips, paying the same
amount of money. Is that legal for them to do this?”
— CBS’s Julie Chen questioning Carol Foreman Tucker of the Consumer
Federation of America about companies charging the same price for smaller
snack food packages, January 3, 2001 Early Show.
“After pepperoni pizza and banana milkshakes once, I dreamed about Bill
Clinton.”
— ABC’s Diane Sawyer talking with her Good Morning America co-host
Charles Gibson, July 10, 2001. |
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PUBLISHER: L. Brent Bozell III
EDITORS: Brent H. Baker, Rich Noyes, Tim Graham
MEDIA ANALYSTS: Geoffrey Dickens, Brad Wilmouth, Scott Whitlock, Matthew
Balan, Kyle Drennen and Justin McCarthy
RESEARCH ASSOCIATE: Michelle Humphrey
MEDIA CONTACT: Colleen O’Boyle (703) 683-5004
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