The winning quotes in the MRC’s “Best Notable Quotables of 2001: The Fourteenth Annual Awards for the Year’s Worst Reporting,” a compilation of the most outrageous and/or humorous news media quotes from 2001 -- actually December 2000 through November 2001.
To determine this year’s winners, a panel of 41 radio talk show hosts, magazine editors, columnists, editorial writers and media observers each selected their choices for the first, second and third best quote from a slate of six to nine quotes in each category. First place selections were awarded three points, second place choices two points, with one point for the third place selections. Point totals, as determined by the MRC’s Kristina Sewell, are listed in the brackets at the end of the attribution for each quote.
A list of the judges, who were generous with their time, appears after the quotes listed below.
Without further delay, the winning quotes in 15 award categories as presented in the December 24 edition of Notable Quotables:
Swiss Press Corps Award for Remaining Neutral in War Coverage“The Pentagon as a legitimate target? I actually don’t have an opinion on that, and it’s important I not have an opinion on that as I sit here in my capacity right now....I can say the Pentagon got hit, I can say this is what their position is, this is what our position is, but for me to take a position this was right or wrong, I mean, that’s perhaps for me in my private life, perhaps it’s for me dealing with my loved ones, perhaps it’s for my minister at church. But 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 Oct. 23 shown four days later on C-SPAN. [83 points]
Media Hero Award
“What an exhilarating moment it must have been for her – the first First Lady in history to be elected to public office. There, for all the nay-sayers to see, was the woman who had finally come into her own, free at last to be smart, outspoken, independent, and provocative, all qualities she had been forced as First Lady, to ‘hide under a bushel.’ Still she was voted one of America’s most admired women. Just wait. You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.”
-- End of “On My Mind” ABCNews.com commentary by ABC anchor Carole Simpson, January 7. [82 points]
Pushing Bush to the Left Award
“Arsenic in the water. Starting up the Cold War. Make as much carbon dioxide as you like. Laugh about it. Bush has set himself up as a huge target. And the arsenic is going to be the equivalent of what your boss [Newt Gingrich] did with cutting school lunches.”
-- Newsweek’s Eleanor Clift, addressing Tony Blankley, on the McLaughlin Group, March 24. [52 points]
Poisoning the Planet Award for Portraying Bush as Destroyer of the Earth
“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 Capital Gang on CNN. [69 points]
Picking the Lockbox Award for Denouncing Bush’s Tax Cut
“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, Sept. 3 issue. [52 points]
Carve Clinton Into Mount Rushmore Award
“Throughout the eight years that he was in office, President Clinton warned us that the next great menace was international terrorism....He also brought unprecedented prosperity to our nation, and because of that, President [Bush] can use the surplus Mr. Clinton left behind to pay for many of the nation’s needs in this time of crisis....This lecture series is about the human spirit. To me and millions of others, President Clinton has always personified that. He is the man from Hope, and that is what he has given us, hope. We miss him. Thank you, Mr. President.”
-- Former UPI White House reporter Helen Thomas introducing Clinton at Oct. 9 Greater Washington Society of Association Executives lecture shown on C-SPAN. [80 points]
Good Morning Morons Award
Bryant Gumbel: “At the risk of starting an argument, are you a believer in global warming?”
Mark McEwen: “Absolutely.”
Jane Clayson: “Of course.”
Julie Chen: “Yeah.”
Gumbel: “So am I....And you wonder what it’s gonna take. I mean, is it gonna take some kind of a real catastrophe? I mean, does an iceberg have to come floating down the Hudson before somebody stands up and goes, ‘Oh, yeah’?”
-- Exchange during CBS Early Show’s co-op time at 7:25 am on April 18. [55 points]
Damn Those Conservatives Award
Bill Maher, host of ABC’s Politically Incorrect: “I do think, if it turns out that this beautiful young girl is gone, I think, and he [Condit] is responsible in some way, you have to look to Ken Starr for a little bit of guilt.”
Larry King: “Why?”
Maher: “Because, you know, Ken Starr made it so that you, in the old days, you had an affair with somebody, and you know, okay, you had an affair. The press didn’t report it. They didn’t make a political criminal case of it. Now, it’s almost like you have to get rid of them.”
-- Exchange on CNN’s Larry King Live, July 27. [52 points]
Selected Not Elected Award for Claiming Bush Is an Illegitimate President
“If Bush is elected and it’s proved on a hand count that Gore actually carried Florida (not to mention the popular vote), what will the country say? ‘Ooops’ isn’t going to cut it....However agreeable and successful he turns out to be, the new President is doomed to be seen by many Americans as a bastard.”
-- Jonathan Alter, Dec. 11, 2000 Newsweek. [55 points]
Department of Injustice Award for Denigrating John Ashcroft
“Well, you know, Attorney General is actually an important job. Why can’t they buy off the right wing with unimportant jobs? I mean, this is a sop, I assume, to buy off the wing nuts, but it’s like giving, I mean, the Attorney General counts, it matters.”
-- Newsweek Assistant Managing Editor Evan Thomas on Inside Washington, December 23, 2000. [55 points]
Politics of Meaninglessness Award for the Silliest Analysis
“What are you, a bunch of Jesus freaks? You ought to be working for Fox.”
-- CNN founder Ted Turner on Ash Wednesday to CNN employees with ash marks on their foreheads at Bernard Shaw’s retirement party, as reported March 6 on FNC’s Special Report with Brit Hume. [73 points]
Euro-Envy Award for Advocating More Government Spending
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. Two years ago, in an effort to create more jobs, the government imposed a shorter work week on large companies, forcing them to hire more workers....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.”
Avivah Wittenberg-Cox: “More Americans should be more aware that an economy as successful as the French one managed to be successful without giving up everything else in 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. [78 points]
Nobody Here But Us Apolitical Observers Award for Denying Liberal Bias
Newsweek’s Evan Thomas: “There is a perception, even among journalists, that the [New York] Times is going a little bit left, is getting more liberal, and that’s disquieting.”
Time magazine’s Jack White: “That’s a lot of hokum, with all due respect to Evan. There is no liberal bias in the press in the whole. In fact, if there is a bias, it’s on the other side. It’s hard to find a person really, truly, of the liberal persuasion who are making any important decisions in any important media institutions in this country now. I’ve looked for them, I consider myself one, I have very few birds of a like feather around.”
-- Exchange on the September 1 Inside Washington. [56 points]
Blame America First Award
“Am I angry? You bet I am. I am an American citizen, and my leaders have taken my money to fund mass murder. And now my friends have paid the price with their lives. Keep crying, Mr. Bush. Keep running to Omaha or wherever it is you go while others die, just as you ran during Vietnam while claiming to be ‘on duty’ in the Air National Guard. Nine boys from my high school died in that miserable war. And now you are asking for ‘unity’ so you can start another one? Do not insult me or my country like this! Yes, I, too, will be in church at noon today, on this national day of mourning. I will pray for you, and us, and the children of New York, and the children of this sad and ugly world.”
-- Message posted by left-wing filmmaker Michael Moore on his Web site, September 14. [54 points]
Glimpses of Patriotism Award
“For once, let’s have no ‘grief counselors’ standing by with banal consolations, as if the purpose, in the midst of all this, were merely to make everyone feel better as quickly as possible. We shouldn’t feel better. For once, let’s have no fatuous rhetoric about ‘healing.’ Healing is inappropriate now, and dangerous. There will be time later for the tears of sorrow. A day cannot live in infamy without the nourishment of rage. Let’s have rage....
“As the bodies are counted, into the thousands and thousands, hatred will not, I think, be a difficult emotion to summon. Is the medicine too strong? Call it, rather, a wholesome and intelligent enmity....Anyone who does not loathe the people who did these things, and the people who cheer them on, is too philosophical for decent company....The worst times, as we see, separate the civilized of the world from the uncivilized. This is the moment of clarity. Let the civilized toughen up, and let the uncivilized take their chances in the game they started.”
-- Lance Morrow in a special edition of Time published after the September 11 terrorist attacks. [67 points]
Now, the list of the judges who gave generously of their time to complete our extensive ballot and return it to us in under two weeks: 