Notable Quotables - 05/13/2002

 

Pilots Scarier Than Terrorists

I dont feel safer. Airplanes is one of the few places I feel safe from guns. Having some pilot whos gone off his nut for some reason running around with a gun does not make me feel safe.
ABC This Week co-host Cokie Roberts, May 5.

 

Armey, the Milosevec of Texas

ABCs Terry Moran: The House Majority Leader, Mr. Armey, suggested on an appearance on Hardball that it would be preferable for Israel to keep the West Bank and for the Palestinian people there to be transferred, ethnically cleansed. What does the President think of this? He didnt use those words.
White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer: Yeah. Did the Majority Leader use those words?
Moran: He said that they should leave....Thats the way Milosevic said it, he never said ethnic cleansing either.
Exchange at the White House press briefing on May 2.

 

Pleading with the Loved Arafat

I walk the streets with you today and I know the Palestinian people love you. Now, even more than, even before when they still love you then, now they, now you can take control of all of this. Now you can keep the peace on this side. If you keep the peace on this side, then let the other side be the aggressor...
Just say, just say it for me: No more, no more, even if you love Palestine dont do this, dont do this suicide bombing, dont do this terrorism. Say that now, say that now!
Geraldo Rivera to Yasser Arafat on FNCs War Zone with Geraldo Rivera, May 4.

 

Tears for Teen Terrorists

Israeli soldiers killed seven Palestinians today in Gaza and the West Bank, but many on both sides are still stunned by the deaths Tuesday of three victims too young to die for any cause.
Dan Rather setting up an April 25 CBS Evening News story on 13 and 14-year-old Palestinians shot dead near Israeli homes while armed with knives and bombs.

There was a very significant funeral in Palestinian Gaza this week for three boys who were killed by the Israelis. The fact that they were so young the boys has been particularly disturbing to Israelis and Palestinians both.
ABCs Peter Jennings, April 25 World News Tonight.

 

Arafat as Bob Vila & Mr. Rogers

He emerged to the cheers of his people and then Yasser Arafat wanted to be everywhere. He met with school children, with old friends. This one couldnt hold back his tears. At a hospital he comforted the wounded, said prayers for those who had died. At one point he noticed a home damaged in the fighting. With television cameras rolling, Mr. Arafat was soon helping to repair the walls...
Gillian Findlay on ABCs World News Tonight, May 2.

After 103 days confined to his headquarters, today Yasser Arafat finally emerged into the sunlight. Blinking hard, looking frail, but a free man again. Seeing for the first time the damage to Palestinian government buildings, Arafat called the Israeli military a Nazi army and seemed moved in front of the hospital, praying for more than twenty corpses that were buried in the parking lot because Israeli troops had prevented proper burials. But the children made him smile even if this little girl burst into tears when Arafat kissed her...
Martin Fletcher on the May 2 NBC Nightly News.

 

Military Uniform = Deceit to CNN

CNN reporter Bob Franken: Journalists were kept in polite custody during the operation far from here. Military officials cited operational security, what they like to call OpSec. So reports of the transfer were provided only by the ones who were in charge of it.
Franken to Brigadier General Rick Baccus: How can we know that youre telling the truth?
Baccus: As you are well aware, the International Committee of the Red Cross is on station. They were informed of the move yesterday and they have access to the detainees as of today with no problems, so they could verify that.
Franken: May I follow up? The International Red Cross, as you know, does not report to the public, nor do you report whatever their deliberations are. How can the public know that youre telling the truth about the move?
Baccus: Well, as a commissioned officer in the armed forces, I can assure you that what Ive said is the truth.
Story on the move of detainees from Camp X-Ray to Camp Delta, April 29 NewsNight on CNN.

 

Harsh Hersh

We have an Attorney General that is, I dont know, how would you describe him, demented? We have an Attorney General who doesnt seem to understand the law.
New Yorkers Seymour Hersh to the Chicago Headliner Club, as quoted by Steve Rhodes in Chicago, May 2.

 

Barbara Walters Awed By Hillary

I went to a luncheon yesterday and Hillary Clinton was there. And I dont get to see Hillary Clinton very much and she was talking about the problems of New York and the problems of safety. She was simply terrific. She was so well informed, she speaks without any written material, you know. We do a lot of kidding around, but boy, I was impressed.
Barbara Walters on ABCs The View, May 7.

 

Bush Fundraising Like Clintons?

After spending a lot of time during the 2000 campaign blasting the Clinton-Gore administration for what he called its scandalous fundraising, President Bush has embraced the practice with relish. There was an official reason for this presidential trip and thus for taxpayers picking up most of the tab for the visit....
ABCs Terry Moran on World News Tonight, April 24.

 

German Shooting: Americas Fault

Daryn Kagan: As that reporter was telling us, from Berlin, this isnt over. Theyre not sure if just the one gunman or theres other gunmen out there and so the search and the situation at the school still goes on.
Leon Harris: Its incredible, incredible.
Kagan: Not the kind of thing we want to export from this country.
Exchange on CNN at about 10:25am EDT on April 26.

 

Global Warming? Never Mind

The recent collapse of an enormous, 12,000-year-old Antarctic ice shelf, coupled with the warmest winter on record, is adding fuel to the debate over global warming....Terry Joyce, a scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, studies the effects of global warming. He and other researchers are increasingly sounding a new alarm, a paradox, that global warming could produce an abrupt climate change and cooler temperatures, very soon.
Reporter Randall Pinkston, April 28 CBS Evening News.

 

Not So Compassionate

Newsweeks Eleanor Clift: Were pretty far to the right here. And Europe, I think most of the, the parties youre talking about are still on the fringe. Second of all, Le Pen-
John McLaughlin: This is a compassionate conservative President! What are you talking about?
Clift: Thats more talk than reality.
Exchange on the McLaughlin Group, April 27.

 

Probing Liberal Root Causes

Today [South Central Los Angeles dentist Bill] Faulkners office is back in that shopping center....But the root causes of the riot, he says, are still there....When it comes to the people, little has changed here in ten years. South Central still has a high unemployment rate and a high crime rate. Los Angeles remains deeply divided along racial lines with an enormous wealth gap between the rich and the poor.
ABCs Judy Muller on South Central Los Angeles ten years after the riots, April 29 World News Tonight.

 

Pushing to Repeal the Tax Cut

Is the real question that the Democrats dont want to vote on a budget where theyre going to have to take some money out of the Social Security Trust Fund in order to try to bring down the deficit?...Then why not repeal the tax cut?...Why not even call for repealing the tax cut?
Questions from ABCs Cokie Roberts to Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, April 28 This Week.

 

Media Bias Cop-Out

Anderson Cooper: On both sides of this issue [Middle East], people see this so clearly one way or the other, its really fascinating.
Paula Zahn: And it clearly colors their reaction to reporting and I think its, you know, very difficult for people to separate their own personal views from the way they interpret the news.
Jack Cafferty: The news media is only objective if they report something you agree with.
Zahn: Right.
Cafferty: Then theyre objective. Otherwise theyre biased if you dont agree, you know.
Zahn: So I think its very, what is the word, encouraging, when you sort of get an equal number of e-mails, one accusing you of the pro, one accusing you of the anti, because you know in the middle, youre straight down the middle.
Discussion on CNNs American Morning, April 24.

 

Maybe Hes Not So Brilliant

Bill Clinton is still considering offers to be a TV talk show host. Now, that certainly would give him the money and visibility he apparently craves, but he can forget about the respect and standing that he also desires. It would reinforce the charge of Clinton critics that hes not a serious political figure. It also wouldnt help Senator Clinton. Which raises the question, who does this brilliant man listen to, and how do such matters even get on his radar screen?
Outrage of the Week from Wall Street Journal Executive Washington Editor Al Hunt, May 4 CNN Capital Gang.