I suspect many Chinese would argue it started in 1936I suspect many Chinese would argue it started in 1936....
I believe in a century or so the common historical view will be that ther was one great war in the 20th century and it began in 1914 and ended im 1945 (or possibly 1952 in Korea).
Just back from a great meal in the City with Sons, Daughters, Spouses and grandchildren, A new Italian restaurant specializing in Tuscan cuisine on California street, near the Embarcadero. Walter, what is that wonderful German word that refers to the sweetness of life?
Merry Christmas, McT. May santa bring you bags and bags of oats.
There was little difference between the inhuman tyrannies of the Nazis and the Soviets, and once they were at each other's throats, there was a good case for standing aside and watching. That was the viey of the "America First" Isolationists who are so often villified by uinquestioning people whio blandly accept conventinal views.
Most outrageous comments of 2006
How extreme were conservative commentators in their remarks this year? How about calls to nuke the Middle East and an allegation that a "gay ... mafia" used the congressional page program as its own "personal preserve." Right-wing rhetoric documented by Media Matters for America included the nonsensical (including Rush Limbaugh's claim that America's "obesity crisis" is caused by, among other things, our failure to "teach [the poor] how to butcher a -- slaughter a cow to get the butter, we gave them the butter"), the offensive (such as right-wing pundit Debbie Schlussel's question about "Barack Hussein Obama": is he "a man we want as President when we are fighting the war of our lives against Islam? Where will his loyalties be?"), and the simply bizarre (such as William A. Donohue's claim that some Hollywood stars would "sodomize their own mother in a movie"). Since there were so many outrageous statements, we included a list of honorable mentions along with the top 11, which, if not for Ann Coulter, we might have limited to 10.
The top 11 (in chronological order):
William A. Donohue, president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights: "Well, look, there are people in Hollywood, not all of them, but there are some people who are nothing more than harlots. They will do anything for the buck. They wouldn't care. If you asked them to sodomize their own mother in a movie, they would do so, and they would do it with a smile on their face." [2/9/06]
Fox News host John Gibson: "Do your duty. Make more babies. That's a lesson drawn out of two interesting stories over the last couple of days. First, a story yesterday that half of the kids in this country under five years old are minorities. By far, the greatest number are Hispanic. You know what that means? Twenty-five years and the majority of the population is Hispanic. Why is that? Well, Hispanics are having more kids than others. Notably, the ones Hispanics call 'gabachos' -- white people -- are having fewer." [5/11/06]
Right-wing pundit Ann Coulter on The New York Times' decision to report on the Bush administration's warrantless domestic wiretapping program and a Treasury Department financial transaction tracking program: The Times had done "something that could have gotten them executed, certainly did get [Julius and Ethel] Rosenberg[] executed." [7/12/06]
Coulter responding to Hardball host Chris Matthews' question, "How do you know that [former President] Bill Clinton's gay?": "I don't know if he's gay. But [former Vice President] Al Gore -- total fag." [7/27/06]
Nationally syndicated radio host Michael Savage: "That's why the department store dummy named Wolf Blitzer, a Jew who was born in Israel, will do the astonishing act of being the type that would stick Jewish children into a gas chamber to stay alive another day. He's probably the most despicable man in the media next to Larry King, who takes a close runner-up by the hair of a nose. The two of them together look like the type that would have pushed Jewish children into the oven to stay alive one more day to entertain the Nazis." [8/7/06]
Coulter on Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA), an African-American: "Congresswoman Maxine Waters had parachuted into Connecticut earlier in the week to campaign against [Sen. Joseph I.] Lieberman because he once expressed reservations about affirmative action, without which she would not have a job that didn't involve wearing a paper hat. Waters also considers Joe 'soft' on the issue of the CIA inventing crack cocaine and AIDS to kill all the black people in America." [8/9/06]
Nationally syndicated radio host Rush Limbaugh, blaming America's "obesity crisis" on "the left," "liberal government," and "food stamps": "Because we are sympathetic, we are compassionate people, we have responded by letting our government literally feed these people to the point of obesity. At least here in America, didn't teach them how to fish, we gave them the fish. Didn't teach them how to butcher a -- slaughter a cow to get the butter, we gave them the butter. The real bloat here, as we know, is in -- is in government." [8/29/06]
Coulter on Sen. Lincoln Chafee (R-RI): "They Shot the Wrong Lincoln." [8/30/06]
Conservative pundit and former Republican presidential candidate Pat Buchanan: "Look, [Rep. Jim] Kolbe [R-AZ] is gay. He is an out-of-the-closet gay. [Rep. Mark] Foley [R-FL] was gay. The House clerk who was in charge of the pages [Jeff Trandahl] was gay. Foley's administrative assistant, Mr. [Kirk] Fordham, The New York Times tell us, was gay. You hear about a lot of others. What's going on here, Joe [Scarborough, MSNBC host], is basically these, this little mafia in there looked upon the pages, I guess, as their -- sort of their personal preserve. And it stinks to high heaven what was done. And it stinks to high heaven that it was not exposed and these types of people, thrown out by the Republican Party." [10/9/06]
CNN Headline News host Glenn Beck to Rep.-elect Keith Ellison (D-MN): "OK. No offense, and I know Muslims. I like Muslims. ... With that being said, you are a Democrat. You are saying, 'Let's cut and run.' And I have to tell you, I have been nervous about this interview with you, because what I feel like saying is, 'Sir, prove to me that you are not working with our enemies.' " [11/14/06]
Right-wing pundit Debbie Schlussel on Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL): So, even if he identifies strongly as a Christian ... is a man who Muslims think is a Muslim, who feels some sort of psychological need to prove himself to his absent Muslim father, and who is now moving in the direction of his father's heritage, a man we want as President when we are fighting the war of our lives against Islam? Where will his loyalties be?" [12/18/06]
Honorable mentions (also in chronological order):
Beck: "Cindy Sheehan. That's a pretty big prostitute there, you know what I mean?" [1/10/06]
Republican strategist Mary Matalin: "I mean, you know, I think these civil rights leaders are nothing more than racists. And they're keeping constituency, they're keeping their neighborhoods and their African-American brothers enslaved, if you will, by continuing to let them think that they're -- or forced to think that they're victims, that the whole system is against them." [2/8/06]
Pat Robertson, host of the Christian Broadcasting Network's The 700 Club: "But it does seem that with the current makeup of the court, they still don't have as many judges as would be needed to overturn Roe [v. Wade]. They need one more, and I dare say before the end of this year there will be another vacancy on the court." [3/7/06]
Albert Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and host of the daily Christian radio show The Albert Mohler Program: "Well, I would have to say as a Christian that I believe any belief system, any world view, whether it's Zen Buddhism or Hinduism or dialectical materialism for that matter, Marxism, that keeps persons captive and keeps them from coming to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, yes, is a demonstration of satanic power." [3/17/06]
Nationally syndicated radio host Neal Boortz on Rep. Cynthia McKinney's (D-GA) hairstyle: "She looks like a ghetto slut. ... It looks like an explosion in a Brillo pad factory. ... She looks like Tina Turner peeing on an electric fence. ... She looks like a shih tzu!" [3/31/06]
Boortz on McKinney's hairstyle (again): "I saw Cynthia McKinney's hairdo yesterday -- saw it on TV. I don't blame that cop for stopping her. It looked like a welfare drag queen was trying to sneak into the Longworth House Office Building. That hairdo is ghetto trash. I don't blame them for stopping her." [3/31/06]
Limbaugh discussing a videotape released by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the then-leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq: "t sounds just like the DNC [Democratic National Committee] is writing his scripts now." (4/26/06)
Beck: "Blowing up Iran. I say we nuke the bastards. In fact, it doesn't have to be Iran, it can be everywhere, anyplace that disagrees with me." [5/11/06]
Jonathan Hoenig, managing member of Capitalistpig Asset Management LLC, on Fox News' Your World with Neil Cavuto: "I think when it comes to Iran, the problem is we haven't been forceful enough. I mean if you -- frankly, if you want to see the Dow go up, let's get the bombers in the air and neutralize this Iranian threat." [6/5/06]
Fox host Geraldo Rivera: "I've known [Sen.] John Kerry [D-MA] for over 35 years. Unlike me, he is a combat veteran, so he gets some props. But in the last 35 years, I've seen a hell of a lot more combat than John Kerry. And for a smart man like that in a political ploy to set a date certain only aids and abets the enemy, and the Democrats are at their own self-destructive behavior once again." [6/22/06]
Savage: "I don't know why we don't use a bunker-buster bomb when he comes to the U.N. and just take [Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad] out with everyone in there." [7/21/06]
Boortz: "I want you to think for think for a moment of how incompetent and stupid and worthless, how -- that's right, I used those words -- how incompetent, how ignorant, how worthless is an adult that can't earn more than the minimum wage? You have to really, really, really be a pretty pathetic human being to not be able to earn more than the human wage. Uh -- human, the minimum wage." [8/3/06]
Syndicated columnist and Fox News host Cal Thomas on businessman Ned Lamont's victory in Connecticut's Democratic primary for the U.S. Senate: "It completes the capture of the Democratic Party by its Taliban wing. ... [T]hey have now morphed into Taliban Democrats because they are willing to 'kill' one of their own, if he does not conform to the narrow and rigid agenda of the party's kook fringe." [8/10/06]
Fox News host Sean Hannity, two months before the November midterm elections: "This is the moment to say that there are things in life worth fighting and dying for and one of 'em is making sure [Rep.] Nancy Pelosi [D-CA] doesn't become the [House] speaker." [8/29/06]
Beck: "The Middle East is being overrun by 10th-century barbarians. That's what I thought at 5 o'clock this morning, and I thought, 'Oh, geez, what -- what is this?' If they take over -- the barbarians storm the gate and take over the Middle East (this is what I'm thinking at 5 o'clock in the morning) -- we're going to have to nuke the whole place." [9/12/06]
Savage: "My fear is that if the Democrats win [in the November midterm elections], and I'm afraid that they might, you're going to see America melt down faster that you could ever imagine. It will happen overnight, and it could lead to the breakup of the United States of America, the way the Soviet Union broke up." [10/13/06]
Republican pollster Frank Luntz on Nancy Pelosi's appearance: "I always use the line for Nancy Pelosi, 'You get one shot at a facelift. If it doesn't work the first time, let it go.' " [10/31/06]
Limbaugh on the Middle East: "Fine, just blow the place up." [11/27/06]
Fox News host Bill O'Reilly (on his radio show): "Do I care if the Sunnis and Shiites kill each other in Iraq? No. I don't care. Let's get our people out of there. Let them kill each other. Maybe they'll all kill each other, and then we can have a decent country in Iraq." [12/5/06]
New York Post columnist Ralph Peters on Iraq Study Group co-chairman James Baker: "The difference is that [Pontius] Pilate just wanted to wash his hands of an annoyance, while Baker would wash his hands in the blood of our troops." [12/7/06]
Conservative syndicated radio host Michael Medved on the animated movie Happy Feet: The film contains "a whole subtext, as there so often is, about homosexuality." [12/11/06]
Fox captions
Additionally, although these are not examples of specific conservative commentators making outrageous comments, we would be remiss if we did not mention that Fox News made a regular practice of attacking Democrats or repeating Republican talking points in on-screen text during its coverage of political issues. Some examples:
"All-Out Civil War in Iraq: Could It Be a Good Thing?" [2/23/06]
"Attacking Capitalism: Have Dems Declared War on America?" [2/18/06]
"Dems Helping the Enemy?" [5/22/06]
"A Lamont Win, Bad News for Democracy in Mideast?"
"Have the Democrats Forgotten the Lessons of 9/11?"
"Is the Democratic Party Soft on Terror?" [8/8/06]
"The #1 President on Mideast Matters: George W Bush?" [8/14/06]
"Is the Liberal Media Helping to Fuel Terror?" [8/16/06]
THE BEST NOTABLE QUOTABLES OF 2006
The Nineteenth Annual Awards for the Year's Worst Reporting
Tin Foil Hat Award for Crazy Conspiracy Theories
Anchor Katie Couric: "Gas is the lowest it's been all year, a nationwide average of $2.23 a gallon. It hasn't been that low since last Christmas. But is this an election-year present from President Bush to fellow Republicans?"
Reporter Anthony Mason: "...Gas started going down just as the fall campaign started heating up. Coincidence? Some drivers don't think so."
Man in a car: "And I think it's basically a ploy to sort of get the American people to think, well, the economy is going good, let's vote Republican."
?- CBS Evening News, October 16. As Mason spoke, the camera zoomed in on the driver's bumper sticker, "GOP: Grand Oil Party." [72 points]
Runners-up:
ABC's Steve Osunsami: "In many black neighborhoods, they actually believe that white residents sent the barge that destroyed the levee and flooded their communities."
Unidentified black man, in HBO's film by Spike Lee: "They had a bomb. They bombed that sucker."
Osunsami: "To this day, the conspiracy theories are so widely held, director Spike Lee put them on film...."
Spike Lee, director: "As an African-American in this country, I don't put anything past the government."
?- ABC's World News with Charles Gibson, August 29. [69]
"The last time we got a tape from Osama bin Laden was right before the 2004 presidential election. Now here we are, four days away from hearings starting in Washington into the wiretapping of America's telephones without bothering to get a court order or a warrant, and up pops another tape from Osama bin Laden. Coincidence? Who knows."
?- CNN's Jack Cafferty during the 4pm EST hour of The Situation Room, January 19. [59]
"Late in the same week that an NSA whistleblower suggests the illicit tapping of American phones is thousands of times larger and thousands of times less focused than the President claims, suddenly we have FBI sources linking stories about Middle Easterners trying to buy vast quantities of untraceable, disposable American cell phones from K-Marts and Target stores. Which, if true, makes the wiretapping look like a good idea and its leakers look like they've already helped terrorists outsmart the eavesdropping. Boy, you can't buy timing like that. I mean it. I'm asking seriously, you can't buy timing like that, right?...We'll never know for sure if that is or is not just an amazing coincidence that it falls right after the whole NSA whistleblower issue comes up but, as we had pointed out here before, the administration sure gets a lot of these breaks."
?- MSNBC's Keith Olbermann to Time reporter Mike Allen on the January 13 Countdown. [39]
Blue State Brigade Award for Campaign Reporting
"Vote Democratic, Earn More."
?- Headline in the May 1 U.S. News & World Report's table of contents, pointing to a story about a campaign to increase the minimum wage. [59 points]
Runners-up:
"There's nothing this administration won't do under the guise of battling terrorism....The only way the American people can stop Bush's imperial expansion of power short is to turn out in massive numbers to take back one or the other body of Congress from Republican control."
?- Eleanor Clift in her weekly "Capitol Letter" column posted on the Newsweek Web site, April 7. [56]
"This word, ?'values,' ?'values voters,' which is just driving me nuts. This idea that somehow certain people have a monopoly on values, and that, you know, if you are not with them on these issues, that you somehow [mock tone of horror] ?'don't share our values,' and you're not just wrong, but you're somehow morally inferior if you're on the other side. And I hope that this election is going to mark the demise of the ?'values voters,' this idea that somehow people who feel so strongly about, you know, these so-called traditional values, that they don't determine the election the way they were seen to have the last time around, and the indications are that they do have less clout this time out."
?- Newsweek Senior Editor Jonathan Alter on MSNBC's Imus in the Morning, October 16. [54]
Hotline's Chuck Todd: "Our line here is about 25 or 30 House seats [for the Democrats]. If it gets over 25 or 30 House seats, you're going to see six Senate seats...."
MSNBC's Chris Matthews: "Well, that'll be fantastic news. It'll be huge news, I should say, because if that happens, then we have a government run by the Democrats, and an executive branch run by the Republicans, President George W. Bush, having to actually negotiate every aspect of national policy, including the war in Iraq."
?- Exchange at about 7:36pm EST during MSNBC's election night coverage, November 7. [53]
Madness of King George Award for Bush Bashing
Anchor Wolf Blitzer: "Let's get some words of wisdom from Jack Cafferty. He's in New York right now. Jack?"
CNN's Jack Cafferty: "I don't know about wisdom, but you'll get a little outrage. We better all hope nothing happens to Arlen Specter, the Republican head of the Senate Judiciary Committee, because he might be all that's standing between us and a full-blown dictatorship in this country....Does it concern you that your phone company may be voluntarily providing your phone records to the government without your knowledge or your permission? If it doesn't, it sure as hell ought to...."
Blitzer: "Words of wisdom, as I said, Jack, outraged, as you clearly are. Thanks very much."
?- CNN's The Situation Room, May 11. [77 points]
Runners-up:
"We now face what our ancestors faced at other times of exaggerated crisis and melodramatic fear-mongering: A government more dangerous to our liberty than is the enemy it claims to protect us from....We have never before codified the poisoning of habeas corpus, that wellspring of protection from which all essential liberties flow. You, sir, have now befouled that spring. You, sir, have now given us chaos and called it order. You, sir, have now imposed subjugation and called it freedom....These things you have done, Mr. Bush ?- they would constitute the beginning of the end of America."
?- Keith Olbermann in a "Special Comment" on the setting up of military trials for terrorists held at Guantanamo Bay, MSNBC's Countdown, October 18. [71]
"[Russia's Vladimir Putin is] the only one of those leaders who goes in there [the G8 summit] with a commanding popularity among his own people, because he is perceived to be an effective dictator. What we have in this country is a dictator who's ineffective."
?- Newsweek contributing editor Eleanor Clift on The McLaughlin Group, July 15. [59]
"The polite phrase for how so many of us were duped into supporting a war on the false premise that it had something to do with 9/11 is ?'lying by implication.' The impolite phrase is ?'impeachable offense.'...When those who dissent are told time and time again ?- as we will be, if not tonight by the President, then tomorrow by his portable public chorus ?- that he is preserving our freedom, but that if we use any of that freedom, we are somehow un-American; when we are scolded, that if we merely question, we have ?'forgotten the lessons of 9/11;' look into this empty space behind me and the bipartisanship upon which this administration also did not build, and tell me this: Who has left this hole in the ground? We have not forgotten, Mr. President. You have. May this country forgive you."
?- MSNBC's Keith Olbermann on September 11, ending his Countdown with a commentary delivered from the site of the World Trade Center. [34]
Bring Back the Iron Curtain Award
"When outsiders think of Cuba, it's often the lack of political freedoms and economic power that comes to mind. Cubans who have chosen to stay on the island, however, are quick to point out the positives: safe streets, a rich and accessible cultural life, a leisurely lifestyle to enjoy with family and friends....For all its flaws, life in Castro's Cuba has its comforts, and unknown alternatives are not automatically more attractive....Many foreigners consider it propaganda when Castro's government enumerates its accomplishments, but many Cubans take pride in their free education system, high literacy rates and top-notch doctors. Ardent Castro supporters say life in the United States, in contrast, seems selfish, superficial, and ?- despite its riches ?- ultimately unsatisfying."
?- Associated Press writer Vanessa Arrington in an August 4 dispatch, "Some Cubans enjoy comforts of communism." [83 points]
Runners-up:
Diane Sawyer: "It is a world away from the unruly individualism of any American school....Ask them about their country, and they can't say enough."
North Korean girl, in English: "We are the happiest children in the world."
Sawyer to class: "What do you know about America?"
Sawyer voiceover: "We show them an American magazine. They tell us, they know nothing about American movies, American movie stars....and then, it becomes clear that they have seen some movies from a strange place...."
Sawyer to class: "You know The Sound of Music?"
Voices: "Yes."
Sawyer, singing with the class: "Do, a deer, a female deer. Re, a drop of golden sun...."
Charles Gibson: "A fascinating glimpse of North Korea."
?- Sawyer reporting from North Korea for ABC's World News with Charles Gibson, October 19. [73]
"Mikhail Gorbachev is generally regarded as the man who broke down the ?'Iron Curtain' that separated the communist world from the West and thawed the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union."
?- ABC's Claire Shipman beginning a report summarizing Gorbachev's criticisms of current U.S. foreign policy, posted on ABCNews.com July 12. [53]
"Until the beginning of the reform period in the early 1980s, China's socialized medical system, with ?'barefoot doctors' at its core, worked public health wonders....Since then, in one of the great policy reversals of modern times, China has dissolved its rural communes, privatized vast swaths of the economy and shifted public health resources away from rural areas and toward the cities."
?- New York Times reporter Howard French, January 14. According to a new biography of Mao, the communist dictator who ruled China from 1949 to 1976 "was responsible for well over 70 million deaths in peacetime, more than any other twentieth-century leader." [52]
Slam Uncle Sam Award
"Our government had turned its energy and attention away from upholding the rule of law and toward creating law-free zones at Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib, Haditha, and other places around the world. And let's not forget the sustained assault on women's reproductive freedom and the hijacking of public policy by religious fundamentalism."
?- New York Times legal reporter Linda Greenhouse in a June 9 speech at Harvard's Radcliffe Institute. [61 points]
Runners-up:
"Some people who hated Americans set out to kill a lot of us and they succeeded [on 9/11]. Americans are puzzled over why so many people in the world hate us....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. [44]
"I'd like to put this personally, if I can. You're a grandfather. I'm a father. When we look at those girls and we think that the country we're about to pass to them is a country where the Vice President can't say whether or not we have secret prisons around the world, whether water-boarding and mock executions is consistent with our values, and a country where the government is surveilling Americans without the warrant of a court ?- is that the country we want to pass on to them?"
?- Co-anchor Terry Moran to Vice President Dick Cheney in an interview shown on ABC's Nightline, December 19, 2005. [22]
Damn Those Conservatives Award
"It [Dean's book, Conservatives Without Conscience] deals with psychological principles that are frightening and that may have faced other nations at other times in ?- Germany and Italy in the '30s coming to mind in particular. How does it apply now? And to what degree should it scare us?...This whole edifice requires an enemy ?- communism, al-Qaeda, Democrats, me, whoever ?- for the Two-Minute Hate....Are you actually saying here they [conservative Republicans] would set up, encourage, terrorism from other countries to set them up as a bogeyman to have again that group to hate here, that group to more importantly be afraid of here?...This all seems to require not merely venality or immorality, but a kind of amorality where morals don't enter into it at all....You've been at one of the central moments of history in the 20th century. What kind of danger ?- are we facing a legitimate threat to the concept of democracy in this country?"
?- MSNBC's Keith Olbermann to ex-Nixon White House lawyer John Dean, who claimed in his book that modern conservatives are moving the Republican Party toward "authoritarianism," July 10 Countdown. [73 points]
Runners-up:
"Leave it to the right wing to cross the preposterous line just when you think it reached that point long ago. The Media Research Center, an outfit dedicated to proving that every story in the newspapers or on TV is slanted left, every year hands out its DisHonors Award....For this gang to come along with its award is laughable. You could fill a Bible with the mistakes they make in their accusations against the press. They can dish it out but can't take it."
?- Former Boston Globe reporter John Mashek in an April 6 posting on the U.S. News & World Report Web site. [56]
"I don't think what happened in West Virginia is totally divorced from the K Street project. It was all about deregulation. Tom DeLay fervently and sincerely believes that every regulation ?- the regulations that have removed 99 percent of lead from the air, the regulations that have saved the Great Lakes ?- they are a burden and an onerous intrusion upon American business, and I think that what you've seen is Tom DeLay's America in action."
?- Columnist and PBS NewsHour panelist Mark Shields, referring to the deaths of 12 West Virginia coal miners, on Inside Washington, January 6. Investigators believe the mine explosion was caused by lightning. [55]
Terrorists Have Rights Too Award for Condemning "Domestic Spying"
"NSA bombshell: A new report that the government is secretly tracking your phone calls, seeking information on every call made in the U.S. The war on terror vs. your privacy."
?- ABC's Diane Sawyer opening the May 11 Good Morning America. Later, ABC's on-screen graphic warned: "Big Brother: Why is NSA Tracking Your Calls?" [71 points]
Runners-up:
"There are laws on the books against what the administration is doing, and it's about time somebody said it out loud. This federal district judge ruled today President Bush is breaking the law by spying on people in this country without a warrant....It means President Bush violated his oath of office, among other things, when he swore to uphold the Constitution of the United States. It means he's been lying to us about the program since it started, when he's been telling us there's nothing illegal about what he's doing. A court has ruled it is illegal....I hope it means the arrogant inner circle at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue may finally have to start answering to the people who own that address ?- that would be us ?- about how they conduct our country's affairs."
?- CNN's Jack Cafferty on the August 17 Situation Room, after a Carter-appointed judge ruled that the surveillance of suspected terrorists was unconstitutional. [70]
"[The leak] is a victory for the American people....Remember the great American saying, ?'Disobedience to tyranny is obedience to God.' In this case, it was something that clearly, I think, most Americans would agree is not what we want to do, secret prisons....Exposing something like that does not hurt us. It helps us."
?- ABC's Sam Donaldson on This Week, April 23, discussing the firing of a CIA employee for leaking. [48]
Drowning Polar Bear Award for Promoting Gore's Inconvenient "Truth"
Katie Couric: "In this movie, at different turns you're funny, vulnerable, disarming, self-effacing, and someone said after watching it, quote, ?'If only he was like this before, maybe things would've turned out differently in 2000.'"
Al Gore: "Well, I benefit from low expectations...."
Couric: "What do you see happening in say 15 to 20 years or even 50 years if nothing changes?"
Gore: "...Sea-level increases of 20 feet or more worldwide. Of course, Florida and Louisiana and Texas are particularly vulnerable. The San Francisco Bay area, Manila. And we have seen the impact of a couple hundred thousand refugees from an environmental crisis. [Footage of Hurricane Katrina] Imagine 100 million or 200 million."
Couric: "Even Manhattan would be in deep water, right?"
Gore: "Yes, in fact the World Trade Center Memorial site would be underwater....Unfortunately, Mother Nature is weighing in very powerfully and very loudly."
?- NBC's Today, May 24. [109 points]
Runners-up:
"No one can say exactly what it looks like when a planet takes ill, but it probably looks a lot like Earth....Suddenly and unexpectedly, the crisis is upon us....Something has gone grievously wrong. That something is global warming....It's undeniable that the White House's environmental record ?- from the abandonment of Kyoto to the President's broken campaign pledge to control carbon output to the relaxation of emission standards ?- has been dismal."
?- Time's Jeffrey Kluger in the magazine's April 3 global warming cover story: "Be Worried. Be Very Worried." [62]
"Since his still-controversial loss to George Bush in the 2000 election, [former Vice President Al] Gore has recast himself as a road warrior for the environment. Traveling from town to town, country to country with a message of warning, a message that's now been made into a movie.... Out of the shadows of yesterday's news, Al Gore has suddenly emerged as the comeback kid...."
"I'm watching you in this film, you look so comfortable in your own skin. You look like Al Gore in full, as it were.... The box office receipts would indicate that it's an action movie ?- you did better per screening than almost anything that's come out this week."
?- Co-host Harry Smith introducing his interview with Al Gore and some of his comments to Gore on CBS's Early Show, May 31. [46]
"He's [Gore is] campaigning to awaken the political leadership to the threat of global warming, but it's a campaign that can easily turn into a campaign for himself if he sees an opening. And he's following the Nixonian play book, the Nixonian in a very good way. Just as Richard Nixon was edged out of the presidency very narrowly in 1960 and then came back after eight years to win....There's some regret, even among the media, that Al Gore was mocked and ridiculed in 2000, and he didn't deserve it. And we're ready for a serious politician."
?- Newsweek contributing editor Eleanor Clift on the May 27 McLaughlin Group. [29]
Pain at the Pump Award for Bashing "Big Oil"
Correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi: "They're used to living on fixed incomes, but now skyrocketing gas prices are forcing seniors to make difficult choices. Some are cutting back on medicine, others say they're eating less. [To retiree Delbert Osborne] What do you think when you fill up your car with gasoline now?"
Delbert Osborne: "I think, ?'Have I got enough money to pay for all this and still get a loaf of bread?'"
Alfonsi: "Fortunately, 91-year-old Delbert Osborne doesn't drive that much anymore. He relies on Meals on Wheels, a group that's also in a squeeze. Volunteer drivers, most who are retirees on fixed incomes, are dropping out every day."
Volunteer: "Do they eat or do they help someone else? You know, that's a hard decision for them to make."
?- CBS Evening News, May 1. [79 points]
Runners-up:
"Arlen Specter says Congress should consider taxing the windfall profits being reaped by the oil companies, which I think is a no-brainer. These guys aren't entrepreneurs ?- they are pirates."
?- Geraldo Rivera on Fox's Geraldo at Large, April 24. [75]
Charles Gibson: "Today, ExxonMobil reported a profit number so big, it was staggering, even by oil company standards. ABC's Betsy Stark takes a look at the numbers."
Reporter Betsy Stark: "The earnings reported today are astounding....Look at it this way: In 30 seconds, the ExxonMobil corporation makes about what an average American family earns in an entire year."
?- ABC's World News with Charles Gibson, July 27. [67]
"The estimates are that the six large U.S. [oil] companies will have a total of $135 billion in profits for the year 2006. Don't consumers have a right to be angry?"
"The public looks at a total of $135 billion over the year, that's larger than the gross domestic product of Israel, and says isn't that an obscene amount?"
?- Co-host Charles Gibson to ConocoPhillips Chairman James Mulva on ABC's Good Morning America, May 8. [50]
Media Hero Award
"You can see it in the crowds. The thrill, the hope. How they surge toward him. You're looking at an American political phenomenon. In state after state, in the furious final days of this crucial campaign, Illinois Senator Barack Obama has been the Democrat's not-so-secret get-out-the-vote weapon. He inspires the party faithful, and many others, like no one else on the scene today...And the question you can sense on everyone's mind, as they listen so intently to him, is he the one? Is Barack Obama the man, the black man, who could lead the Democrats back to the White House and maybe even unite the country?...Everywhere he goes, people want him to run for President, especially in Iowa, cradle of presidential contenders. Around here, they're even naming babies after him."
?- Co-anchor Terry Moran profiling Obama on ABC's Nightline, November 6. [85 points]
Runners-up:
"Obama's personal appeal is made manifest when he steps down from the podium and is swarmed by well-wishers of all ages and hues....Obama seemed the political equivalent of a rainbow ?- a sudden preternatural event inspiring awe and ecstasy....There aren't very many people ?- ebony, ivory or other ?- who have Obama's distinctive portfolio of talents....Obama's candor is reminiscent of John McCain....He transcends the racial divide so effortlessly that it seems reasonable to expect that he can bridge all the other divisions ?- and answer all the impossible questions ?- plaguing American public life."
?- Time senior writer Joe Klein in an October 23 cover story headlined, "Why Barack Obama Could Be the Next President." [59]
"He's known as a liberal lion, and Massachusetts Senator Edward Kennedy has roared more than once during his more than 40 years in the Senate. Now Kennedy says America is on the wrong path, and in his new book America Back on Track, Kennedy details seven challenges facing this country....You talk about the things that need to be done, Senator, from ?'reclaiming our constitutional democracy, to protecting our national security, to guaranteeing health care for every American.' Noble, noble goals for sure. Are they do-able, and is there a national will to achieve these things, in your view?"
?- NBC's Katie Couric to Senator Ted Kennedy on Today, April 20. [50]
"You know you are the equivalent of a rock star in politics....Many people, afterwards [after Obama's 2004 Democratic convention speech], they weren't sure how to pronounce your name but they were moved by you. People were crying. You tapped into something. You touched people. What did you tap into that, that was missing?...If your party says to you, ?'We need you,' and, and there's already a drumbeat out there, will you respond?"
?- Some of co-host Meredith Vieira's questions to Senator Barack Obama on NBC's Today, October 19. [45]
Barbra Streisand Political IQ Award for Celebrity Vapidity
"No matter what the greatest tyrant in the world, the greatest terrorist in the world, George W. Bush says, we're here to tell you: Not hundreds, not thousands, but millions of the American people, millions support your revolution, support your ideas, and we are expressing our solidarity with you."
?- Singer/activist Harry Belafonte to Venezuela's left-wing President Hugo Chavez during a televised rally on January 8, in a clip shown the following day on FNC's Hannity & Colmes. [81 points]
Runners-up:
"When they say ?'the terrorists want the Democrats to win,' you say ?'are you insane? George Bush has been a terrorist's wet dream.'...When they say that actual combat veterans like John Kerry are ?'denigrating the troops,' you say ?'you're completely full of sh*t.'...If I was a troop, the support I would want back home would mainly come in the form of people pressuring Washington to get me out of this pointless nightmare. [applause] That's how I would feel supported....There's your talking point. Vote Republican and you vote to enable George Bush to keep ruling as an emperor ?- a retarded child emperor [laughter], but an emperor."
?- Bill Maher on his HBO program Real Time with Bill Maher November 3, offering his suggested "talking points" for Democratic candidates. [44]
"Failing to warn the citizens of a looming weapon of mass destruction ?- and that's what global warming is ?- in order to protect oil company profits, well, that fits for me the definition of treason."
?- HBO's Bill Maher on Real Time, March 24. [35]
Politics of Meaninglessness Award for the Silliest Analysis
"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. Like, try not to be incredulous when someone attempts to link these games to those of the ancient Greeks, who never heard of skating or skiing. So 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, Feb. 7. [72 points]
Runners-up:
"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....It will take a massive global effort to make things right, but the solutions are not a secret: control population, recycle, reduce consumption, develop green technologies."
?- NBC's Matt Lauer hosting Countdown to Doomsday, a two-hour June 14 Sci-Fi Channel special. [64]
Katie Couric: "A passionate student of history, Condi Rice believes turmoil often precedes periods of peace and stability. And she rejects the notion that the U.S. is a bully, imposing its values on the world."
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice: "What's wrong with assistance so that people can have their full and complete right to the very liberties and freedoms that we enjoy?"
Couric to Rice: "To quote my daughter, ?'Who made us the boss of them?'"
?- CBS's 60 Minutes, September 24. [55]
Good Morning Morons Award
"Some of the values, depending on your perspective... may be deemed wholesome, but in other ways, I think, people will see this community as eschewing diversity and promoting intolerance....Do you think the tenets of the community might result in de facto segregation as a result of some of the beliefs that are being espoused by the majority of the residents there?...You can understand how people would hear some of these things and be like, wow, this is really infringing on civil liberties and freedom of speech and right to privacy and all sorts of basic tenets that this country was founded on. Right?"
?- NBC's Katie Couric on the March 3 Today, questioning Domino's Pizza founder Tom Monaghan and real-estate developer Paul Marinelli, who are building a community based on Catholic values in Florida. [79 points]
Runners-up:
"You signed a $13 million book deal, which I understand is bigger than Bill Clinton, Alan Greenspan, and Pope John Paul II, so how do you square your wealth with the tenets of Christianity?...[The Bible] said, this is Matthew 19, verses 23 and 24, ?'Then Jesus said to his disciples, "I tell you the truth. It is hard for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of heaven. Again, I tell you it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God."'...It makes you wonder about your claim that wealth is a positive thing."
?- Katie Couric, who was set to make $15 million a year as the new anchor of the CBS Evening News, to TV minister Joel Osteen on NBC's Today, May 9. [75]
Co-host Meredith Vieira: "Everybody's calling you ?'the Genie,' and they want you to grant some wishes. If you had a genie, what wish would you want granted?...Where do you think he [Osama bin Laden] is? Everybody's wondering where the heck he is, where do you think he is?"
Former President Bill Clinton: "I think he's probably in, I have no intelligence, okay? I think he's probably-"
Vieira, interrupting: "You have lots of intelligence."
Clinton: "No, I mean government intelligence."
Vieira, laughing: "I know, I'm kidding."
?- NBC's Today, September 21. [57]
"Think global warming isn't real? Ask Manny the Mammoth, Diego the Tiger or Sid the Sloth....The herd's 88 happy minutes will melt away your out-of-theater cares while attesting that global warming is no snow job."
?- NBC movie critic Gene Shalit reviewing the cartoon movie Ice Age: The Meltdown, March 29 Today. [45]
Cranky Dinosaur Award for Trashing the New Media
"A past President, bullied and sandbagged by a monkey posing as a newscaster, finally lashed back....The nation's marketplace of ideas is being poisoned by a propaganda company so blatant that Tokyo Rose would've quit....As with all the other nefariousness and slime of this, our worst presidency since James Buchanan, he [President Bush] is having it done for him, by proxy. Thus, the sandbag effort by Fox News Friday afternoon."
?- Keith Olbermann referring to Bill Clinton's interview with Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace, MSNBC's Countdown, September 25. [90 points]
Runners-up:
"It didn't exactly represent a profile in courage for the Vice President to wander over there to the F-word network for a sit-down with Brit Hume. I mean, that's a little like Bonnie interviewing Clyde, ain't it?...I mean, running over there to the Fox network to, I mean, that's ?- talk about seeking a safe haven. He's not going to get any high hard ones from anybody at the F-word network. I think we know that."
?- Jack Cafferty during the 4pm EST hour of CNN's The Situation Room, February 15. [70]
Substitute host Kathleen Matthews: "Evan, nothing has lit up the telephones on talk radio more than this Dubai ports deal. Why did it resonate so much with the American people?"
Newsweek Assistant Managing Editor Evan Thomas: "Because it's something that simple idiots can understand [other panelists snicker]. I mean, it was an idiotic issue, and it is a classic for talk radio. You can get it on a bumper sticker. But I'm with the elites on this one. It was really, it was ridiculous. We need Dubai as an ally. On balance, it would be better that the deal went through, but it was an easy one to demagogue on talk radio."
?- Exchange on Inside Washington, March 10. [47]
"The kind of hateful speech that we have seen, on the floor of the United States Congress and in a lot of the blogosphere, is what seems to dominate. And I do think it goes back, in my own experience, to 1989 when the talk radio shows went crazy about the congressional pay raise which was supported by Common Cause and some other groups in Washington who felt there needed to be a higher-paid salary....The anti-Washington, anti-bureaucrat bias that was built into that debate was then taken up by cable talk hosts as well and that became the kind of really combative conversation that displaced reasoned discussions about controversial issues."
?- NBC reporter Andrea Mitchell appearing on PBS's Washington Week, July 7. [36]
State of Denial Award for Refusing to Acknowledge Liberal Bias
Ex-CBS anchor Dan Rather: "We had a lot, a lot, of corroboration of what we broadcast about President Bush's military record. It wasn't just the documents. But it's a very old technique used, that when those who don't like what you're reporting believe it can be hurtful, then they look for the weakest spot and attack it, which is fair enough. It's a diversionary technique."
CNN's Larry King: "You're saying that was a fair report, I mean that was ?- you believe that report to this day?"
Rather: "Do I believe the truth of the story? Absolutely."
?- Discussing Rather's 2004 60 Minutes story that relied on forged documents to challenge Bush's National Guard record, CNN's Larry King Live, July 12. [102 points]
Runners-up:
"I know that I've tried my best through my career to ask challenging questions to whomever I'm speaking, and whether it's a Republican or a Democrat, I try to raise important issues depending on their particular position.... Oftentimes people put their, they see you from their own individual prisms. And if you're not reflecting their point of view, or you're asking an antagonistic question of someone they might agree with in terms of policy, they see you as the enemy, and I think that's just a mistake....You have Fox, which espouses a particular point of view."
?- Incoming CBS Evening News anchor Katie Couric at the Aspen Ideas Festival on July 5, broadcast by C-SPAN on September 2. [70]
"[I am] biased ?- I have a very strong bias toward independent journalism....Some of what you describe as ?'baggage' comes from people who have the following view: Their view is, ?'You report the news the way I want it reported or I'm going to make you pay a price and hang a sign around your neck saying you're a bomb-toting Bolshevik.'"
?- Ex-CBS anchorman Dan Rather, as quoted by the Washington Post's Lisa de Moraes in a July 12 column. [56]
Recognizing the Obvious Award for Admitting There's Liberal Media Bias
Former Washington Post reporter Thomas Edsall: "I agree that the ?- whatever you want to call it, mainstream media ?- presents itself as unbiased when, in fact, there are built into it many biases and they are overwhelmingly to the left."
Host Hugh Hewitt: "Well, that's very candid....Given that number of reporters out there, is it ten to one Democrat to Republican? Twenty to one Democrat to Republican?"
Edsall: "It's probably in the range of 15 to 25:1 Democrat....There is a real difficulty on the part of the mainstream media being sympathetic, or empathetic, whatever the word would be, to the kind of thinking that goes into conservative approaches to issues. I think the religious right has been treated as sort of an alien world."
?- Exchange on Hugh Hewitt's syndicated radio show September 21, audio later posted at TownHall.com. [96 points]
Runners-up:
Radio host Hugh Hewitt: "And so everyone that you work with, or 95 percent of people you work with, are old liberals."
ABC News Political Director Mark Halperin: "I don't know if it's 95 percent, and unfortunately, they're not all old. There are a lot of young liberals here, too. But it certainly, there are enough in the old media, not just in ABC, but in old media generally, that it tilts the coverage quite frequently, in many issues, in a liberal direction, which is completely improper....It's an endemic problem. And again, it's the reason why for 40 years, conservatives have rightly felt that we did not give them a fair shake."
?- Exchange on The Hugh Hewitt Show, October 30. [91]
"If I were a conservative, I understand why I would feel suspicious that I was not going to get a fair break....The mindset at ABC, where you and I used to be colleagues at, at the other big news organizations, it's just too focused on being more favorable to Nancy Pelosi, say, than Newt Gingrich; being more down on the Republicans' chances than perhaps is warranted; singling out ?- you're seeing here a 60 Minutes piece about Nancy Pelosi. I don't remember Newt Gingrich getting a piece that favorable in 1994."
?- ABC Political Director Mark Halperin, co-author of The Way to Win, on FNC's The O'Reilly Factor, October 24. [82]
Quote of the Year
"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.
Runners-up:
Co-host Rosie O'Donnell: "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."
Co-host Elisabeth Hasselbeck: "But do you understand that, that the belief funding those attacks, okay, that is widespread. And if you take radical Islam and if you want to talk about what's going on there, you have to-"
O'Donnell, interrupting: "Wait just one second. Radical Christianity is just as threatening as radical Islam [loud applause] in a country like America where we have a separation of church and state. We're a democracy."
?- Exchange on ABC's The View, September 12.
"I don't support our troops....When you volunteer for the U.S. military, you pretty much know you're not going to be fending off invasions from Mexico and Canada. So you're willingly signing up to be a fighting tool of American imperialism, for better or worse....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 column.
Times Watch Quotes of Note 2006
The Worst Quotes of the Year from The New York Times
It's unanimous! Times Watch guest judges Stephen Spruiell, who runs National Review Online's Media Blog, and Times critic William McGowan, author of the upcoming book Gray Lady Down, both picked as his worst quote of the year one from New York Times Publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. (The quote also earned Quote of the Year honors from Times Watch's parent organization, the Media Research Center.) Spruiell says it was the "sheer arrogance" of Sulzberger's speech that put the paper's publisher over the top.
Enjoy the quotes.
Left-Wing Love-Fest on 43rd Street
"Our government had turned its energy and attention away from upholding the rule of law and toward creating law-free zones at Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib, Haditha, and other places around the world. And let's not forget the sustained assault on women's reproductive freedom and the hijacking of public policy by religious fundamentalism." -- Supreme Court reporter Linda Greenhouse talking at Harvard, June 9.
"Cecile Richards, the new and instantly embattled president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, would like those retro 'folks' -- her word -- intent on knocking her organization, and the entire abortion rights movement, off the map to know she takes after her maternal grandmother. That would be the tall, whip-thin woman who, nine-months pregnant and bedridden, took a timeout from home-birthing a future governor of Texas -- Ms. Richards's mother, Ann -- to wring the neck of the chicken her family was having for dinner. Plucky." -- From Robin Finn's March 10 "Public Lives" profile of Richards.
"The defendants called themselves 'grannies' because they are all old enough to be grandmothers, even if some of them are not, and because in their view, grandmothers are a core American value, as patriotic as mom and apple pie. Essentially, Judge Ross had found himself with grandmotherhood on trial in his courtroom....When it was over, the grannies seemed ready to do it again. 'The decision today says the First Amendment protects you to protest peacefully,' Mr. Siegel said, addressing his clients outside the courthouse after the verdict. 'So -- go do it!' And the grannies cheered." -- From Anemona Hartocollis' profile of 18 left-wing anti-war "grannies" arrested for blocking a military recruitment center in Times Square.
"The portrait [feminist Betty Friedman] painted was chilling. For a typical woman of the 1950's, even a college-educated one, life centered almost exclusively on chores and children. She cooked and baked and bandaged and chauffeured and laundered and sewed. She did the mopping and the marketing and took her husband's gray flannel suit to the cleaners. She was happy to keep his dinner warm till he came wearily home from downtown." -- From Margalit Fox's February 6 obituary for left-wing feminist Betty Friedan.
"The warnings of global warming that led former President George Bush to mock Mr. Gore as 'Ozone Man' in 1992 hardly seem far-fetched in these days of melting ice caps and toasty winters. Mr. Gore's tough condemnation of the war in Iraq, once derided by the White House as evidence of Mr. Gore's extremism, seems positively mainstream today." -- Chief political reporter Adam Nagourney, May 28.
"Critics also say that Latinos often wind up as cannon fodder on the casualty-prone front lines. African-Americans saw the same thing happen during the 1970's and 1980's, an accusation that still reverberates. Hispanics make up only 4.7 percent of the military's officer corps." -- Lizette Alvarez in a story on U.S. Army recruiting of Hispanics, February 9.
"Yesterday's court ruling against gay marriage was more than a legal rebuke, then -- it came as a shocking insult to gay rights groups. Leaders said they were stunned by both the rejection and the decision's language, which they saw as expressing more concern for the children of heterosexual couples than for the children of gay couples. They also took exception to the ruling's description of homosexuality as a preference rather than an orientation." -- From chief New York political reporter Patrick Healy's July 7 news analysis.
We Can't Bear Conservatives
"All manner of televised talkfests, including 'Today,' welcome [Ann] Coulter's pirate sensibilities back aboard whenever she has something to peddle, in part because seeing hate-speech pop out of a blonde who knows her way around a black cocktail dress makes for compelling viewing. Without the total package, Ms. Coulter would be just one more nut living in Mom's basement. You can accuse her of cynicism all you want, but the fact that she is one of the leading political writers of our age says something about the rest of us." -- Media reporter turned columnist David Carr, June 12.
"Representative F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. has no tolerance for illegal immigrants, either in his political life or personal life .A bipartisan irritant from a state nowhere near the Mexican border, he has outsize influence on the fate of the country's estimated 11 million illegal immigrants .He is commonly described as 'prickly,' 'cantankerous' and 'unpleasant' .One could dismiss him as something of a cartoon, except that Mr. Sensenbrenner has been a feared and vital character in some defining political dramas, like the Clinton impeachment, the passage of the USA Patriot Act and the current legislative donnybrook over immigration, an issue that he calls his toughest in nearly four decades of public life." -- From Mark Leibovich's July 11 profile of Republican Rep. Sensenbrenner of Wisconsin.
"They certainly should have done more. And that, in a way, is the most profound ethical transgression, that this, it seems to me, is a part of a larger pattern of the administration's habit of secrecy, of cover-ups. We see other example in Bob Woodward's book. You know, democracy relies on transparency and openness. And to undermine that is really an ethical transgression. It's a profound assault on civic virtue, on democracy itself."
-- Randy Cohen, author of the "The Ethicist" column for the Times, ostensibly commenting on the Rep. Mark Foley scandal, on CNN's "Anderson Cooper 360 Degrees," October 2.
"Mr. Cheney's favorability ratings might be in an underground bunker, somewhere beneath the president's (at 20 percent in the most recent New York Times poll). Critics deride him as a Prince of Darkness whose occasional odd episodes -- swearing at a United States senator, shooting a friend in a hunting accident and then barely acknowledging it publicly -- suggest a striking indifference to how he is perceived. Even admirers who laud his intellect and steadiness rarely mention anything about his electrifying rooms or people. But then there are people like these, at the Capitol Plaza Hotel Manor Conference Center in Topeka." -- Mark Leibovich, October 17.
"If you are sure you will be raptured into heaven, your clothes left behind with the nonbelievers, then this news should cheer you up. If you are rational, however, these may be some of the last few weeks or months in which to enjoy what is left of our beleaguered, dying republic and way of life." -- Former Times Middle East bureau chief Chris Hedges in an October 9 online column for Truthdig, on the aftermath of what he predicted would be an imminent attack by Bush on Iran that could happen "in as little as three weeks."
"As the scion of a politically influential family from Memphis, Mr. Ford was faced with overcoming the suspicions of rural whites skeptical about his race, his background and his city .The first issue came to the fore in a television advertisement featuring a winking, bare-shouldered white woman intoning, 'Harold, call me.' Produced by the Republican National Committee and eventually disavowed by Mr. Corker, the commercial played on Mr. Ford's reputation as a man about town but also spoke to -- or so critics charged -- age-old white Southern fears of miscegenation .The crowd in the room packed with Corker supporters told its own story: It was almost entirely white." -- Adam Nossiter on black Democrat Harold Ford Jr.'s defeat in the Tennessee Senate race, November 8.
"Ad Seen as Playing to Racial Fears." -- Online headline to an October 26 story by Robin Toner on RNC ads mocking Harold Ford Jr.
"Fox, by its mere existence, undercuts the argument that the public is starved for 'fair' news, and not just because Fox shills for the Republican Party and panders to the latest of America's periodic religious manias. The key to understanding Fox News is to grasp the anomalous fact that its consumers know its 'news' is made up .Fox Television showed us the future -- outright lies and paranoid opinions packaged as news under the oversight of Rupert [Murdoch], a flagrant pirate, and Roger Ailes, an unprincipled Nixon thug who had assumed a journalistic disguise in much the same way that the intergalactic insect in Men in Black shrugged into the borrowed skin of a hapless hillbilly." -- Times former Executive Editor Howell Raines, from his new autobiography on fly-fishing, "The One that Got Away."
Bush, Epitome of Evil
"I'm in my mid-40s and who grew up in poor countries like Morocco, you know, they will tell you that when they went to school in the mornings, they used to get milk, and they called it Kennedy milk because it was the Americans that sent them milk. And in 40 years, we have gone from Kennedy milk to the Bush administration rushing bombs to this part of the world. And it just erodes and erodes and erodes America's reputation." -- Reporter Neil MacFarquhar on the July 31 edition of Charlie Rose.
"In a climate of national debate in the United States about the overriding of certain civil liberties to fight terrorism, the movie looks back on a worst possible scenario in which such liberties were taken away. It raises an unspoken question: could it happen here?"
-- Movie critic Stephen Holden in a review of "Sophie Scholl," February 17.
"Everyone says that Karl Rove is a genius. Yeah, right. So are cigarette companies. They get you to buy cigarettes even though we know they cause cancer. That is the kind of genius Karl Rove is. He is not a man who has designed a strategy to reunite our country around an agenda of renewal for the 21st century -- to bring out the best in us. His 'genius' is taking some irrelevant aside by John Kerry and twisting it to bring out the worst in us, so you will ignore the mess that the Bush team has visited on this country." -- Columnist Thomas Friedman, November 3.
"I don't know how far action will follow rhetoric, but some days it sounds like the administration is declaring war at home on the values they profess to be promoting abroad." -- New York Times Executive Editor Bill Keller, in an email to left-wing investigative reporter Murray Waas, as reported April 26 on mediabistro.com.
"That sort of thing plays a little differently here. First, there is a sense of relief that characters on television are talking about the events openly and irreverently. Then there is the punch of confirmation that much of the rest of the world may indeed despise the United States for what the Bush administration calls the war on terror." -- Critic Anita Gates reviewing the BBC America detective series "Cracker: A New Terror," October 30.
"That said, it's still possible that the Republicans will hold on to both houses of Congress. The feeding frenzy over John Kerry's botched joke showed that many people in the news media are still willing to be played like a fiddle. And if you think the timing of the Saddam verdict was coincidental, I've got a terrorist plot against the Brooklyn Bridge to sell you." ---Columnist Paul Krugman, November 6.
"As he has in his previous speeches, Mr. Bush said he had made mistakes in Iraq and acknowledged in a more personal way than before the suffering he himself had caused."
-- White House reporter Elisabeth Bumiller on President Bush's address to the nation, December 19.
"George Clooney in 'Good Night, and Good Luck' made a well-crafted look at a time in American history when anything less than complete fealty to the republic was seen as treason, which sounds familiar to some moviegoers." -- From David Carr's Oscar predictions, March 3.
"For amusement's sake, it is possible to read 'Basic Instinct 2' as a metaphor for contemporary American-British political relations (a psychotic Yank lures a decent Brit into a web of deceit and murder), but this is a poor reward for two hours of drift and sludge." -- From Manohla Dargis' review of the movie "Basic Instinct 2," March 31.
Always Blame Israel
"Peace is much spoken of here. But at times, as I race along the narrow moral precipice, running between a military checkpoint and a suicide bombing, I think of the old Russian proverb: 'We shall struggle for peace so hard that not a tree will be left standing.'" --Jerusalem bureau chief Steven Erlanger, writing from Jerusalem for the Times' travel section on April 16.
"Once Again, Gazans Are Displaced by Israeli Occupiers." -- Headline over a story by Jerusalem bureau chief Steven Erlanger, July 12.
"The pattern has recurred time and again for several years: Palestinians fire rockets from northern Gaza that cause damage or casualties only occasionally, yet prompt a tough Israeli response, like the offensive now under way." -- Israel-based reporter Greg Myre, July 9.
"Now, with hundreds of Lebanese dead and Hezbollah holding out against the vaunted Israeli military for more than two weeks, the tide of public opinion across the Arab world is surging behind the organization, transforming the Shiite group's leader, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, into a folk hero and forcing a change in official statements." -- Neil MacFarquhar from Damascus on July 28.
"The situation is made all the more complicated by the nature of Hezbollah. It functions as a civil aid group as well as a militia, helping with schools and in hospitals, and in many cases providing essential public services at times in the years of the war when the government was simply not able. It has a savvy media operation, with a spokesman who takes groups of journalists on tours of the devastation in southern Beirut with a truck that blares Hezbollah fighting songs from rows of speakers." -- Sabrina Tavernise, July 25.
"The asymmetry in the reported death tolls is marked and growing: some 230 Lebanese dead, most of them civilians, to 25 Israeli dead, 13 of them civilians. In Gaza, one Israel soldier has died from his own army's fire, and 103 Palestinians have been killed, 70 percent of them militants. The cold figures, combined with Israeli air attacks on civilian infrastructure like power plants, electricity transformers, airports, bridges, highways and government buildings, have led to accusations by France and the European Union, echoed by some nongovernmental organizations, that Israel is guilty of 'disproportionate use of force' in the Gaza Strip and Lebanon and of 'collective punishment' of the civilian populations." -- From a July 19 story by Jerusalem bureau chief Steven Erlanger.
"But this town is also the gateway to Hezbollah country, where Hezbollah controls everything from local administration and schools to security. Hezbollah has its footprint everywhere here, from its signature yellow banners to portraits celebrating fallen martyrs." -- Hassan Fattah from Tyre, Lebanon on July 18.
"Now there is Sheik Nasrallah, a 46-year-old Lebanese militia chieftain hiding in a bunker, combining the scripted logic of a clergyman with the steely resolve of a general to completely rewrite the rules of the Arab-Israeli land feud....The name instantly reminds everyone of his personal credibility and commitment to the fight." -- Neil MacFarquhar on Hezbollah's leader, August 7.
Just Plain Goofy
"Breaking a Travel Stereotype -- Women, Minorities and Gays Make Business Trips, Too." -- Headline to Michael Luongo's May 23 Business story.
"Sami Antar also blew a large hole in his circle of family and friends, who did not see this coming." -- Steven Erlanger on a Palestinian suicide bomber, January 20.
"Careers that last as long and have been as distinguished as [singer Tony] Bennett's have something to tell us about collective cultural experience over decades. It has been said that Sinatra's journey from skinny, starry-eyed 'Frankie,' strewing hearts and flowers, to the imperious, volatile Chairman of the Board roughly parallels an American loss of innocence. As Sinatra entered his noir period in the mid-1950's, his romantic faith gave way to a soul-searching existentialism that yielded the most psychologically complex popular music ever recorded. Following a similar arc, the country grew from a nation of hungry dreamers fleeing the Depression and fighting 'the good war' into an arrogant empire drunk on power and angry at the failure of the American dream to bring utopia."
-- Critic-at-large Stephen Holden, August 2.
"Mao's image may also be considered China's first and only global brand. Even though China is a rising economic power, it still does not have a BMW or a Coca-Cola to sell to the rest of the world. But it does have Mao -- a kind of George Washington, James Dean and Che Guevara wrapped in one; a historic and pop figure who continues to be hip and fashionable, even when Communism and the Communist Party are not." -- From David Barboza's May 28 Week in Review story on mass murderer Mao Tse-Tung.
"Just hours before, Mr. Ahmadinejad took issue with the great Satan, too. But what a difference. Where Mr. Chávez was Khrushchevian, waving around books and stopping just short of shoe-banging, Mr. Ahmadinejad was flowery, almost Socratic in his description of behavior that only the devil would condone." -- Helene Cooper, September 21.
"I've been taking my daughter around the block lately, helping her unload Girl Scout cookies on obliging neighbors -- and wondering whether we're killing them. The problem is that most of those Girl Scout cookies have trans fatty acids. Those are the worst kind of fat, killing far more Americans than Al Qaeda manages to." -- From Nicholas Kristof's May 21 column.
Special Hypocrisy Section
"Greed was on display throughout 2005 as throngs of executives pocketed pay that was even greater than the previous year's. To hear them talk, they deserved the amounts because -- are you sitting down? -- they enhanced shareholder value. Never mind that many of their companies' stocks ended the year lower than where they began it."
-- Economics reporter/columnist Gretchen Morgenson, January 1.
vs.
"A year ago -- on Jan. 3, 2005 -- Times stock closed at 47.2. On Jan. 3, 2006, the stock was trading at a day's low of 26.16 .the real surprise to staffers was, instead, the generous holiday handouts on the paper's 14th floor. In addition to [Times chief executive Janet] Robinson's 74,000 shares of free Class A stock, publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. received 30,000 shares, worth a bit less than $800,000, plus stock options worth about $4.1 million." -- From the January 16 edition of the New York Observer.
Bias? What Bias?
"I bet you don't believe me, but it's the truth: Reporters are driven by digging out the news, not by pressing partisan opinions." -- Managing Editor Richard Berke in an online Q&A, September 12.
"It is a liberal editorial page and a liberal editorial board that reflects core values the paper has had for a long time. But I would challenge anyone, if you look at our news reports on those big issues of the day -- tax policy, foreign affairs -- to say it is a liberal newspaper. It is objectivity they strive hard to do." -- New York Times Editorial Page Editor Gail Collins, in an interview with Joe Strupp of Editor & Publisher, July 14.
And now
The New York Times Quote of the Year
"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 commencement address at the State University of New York at New Paltz.
C-SPAN has posted streaming Real video of the entire address.
The New York Times Quote of the Year
"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 commencement address at the State University of New York at New Paltz.
Coulter responding to Hardball host Chris Matthews' question, "How do you know that [former President] Bill Clinton's gay?": "I don't know if he's gay. But [former Vice President] Al Gore -- total fag." [7/27/06]
I've always admired the depth and the sincerity of your apprehension of the Christian message, tico.
Indeed.
And peace on earth. And goodwill towards men of the sort who are exempted from our various hatreds.
Edwards Launches White House Bid for ?'08, ?'12 and ?'16
by Scott Ott
(2006-12-28) ?- With just 23 months before the next presidential election, former Sen. John Edwards, D-NC, announced today that he would seek the Democrat nomination for president in 2008, 2012 and 2016, but refused to comment on his plans for 2020.
"Americans are looking for a candidate with experience running for president," said an unnamed campaign spokesman. "In 2018, when John Edwards is 65, he'll have spent 16 years seeking the office and have four campaigns under his belt. We think that will position him well for victory in 2020."
While the candidate sought to deflect questions about his longterm plans, the anonymous source said Mr. Edwards would file papers with the Federal Election Commission next week forming a 2020 presidential exploratory committee.
The Edwards ?'08-12-16 campaign timed today's announcement to coincide with this week's death of former President Gerald Ford, "another great, and handsome, man who was never elected to the White House."
In launching his campaign in front of a federally-funded trailer of a hurricane Katrina victim in New Orleans, Mr. Edwards recalled his 2004 stump speech in which he frequently said there are "two Americas."
"Since 2004, I have learned a lot," said Mr. Edwards. "I think history and geography have proved me right. If you look at the map, there are in fact two Americas ?- North America and South America."
The former vice presidential candidate quoted the Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag, saying America must overcome racial and socioeconomic prejudices to unite as "one nation, underprivileged, indivisible, with subsidy and justice for all."
For some "balance" on Bush.
<snip>
Because all the Bush supprt comments are psychotic and fiction.
