Brent Bozell explains this year's new twist: voting by table to pick the winners. Then Chris Plante presents "The Barbra Streisand Celebrity Dumb Ass Award" which, by audience vote completed via electronic device at each table, is won by Bill Maher and accepted in jest by David Webb.

Tony KushnerRunner-Up

"So you have people like these Tea Party people protesting government and then asked if they really want to give up their Social Security payments. And they don't seem to know that, that is actually part of what government is. There's a rejection of the sort of basic idea of human community behind the Reagan, behind Reagan-era ideology that is really frightening. And it leads us to terrible, terrible places. And now that we're facing challenges like climate change that absolutely demand a global collective response, an organized global collective response. We have no hope for survival as a species if we continue down the path of this kind of psychotic individualism."

— Lincoln screenwriter Tony Kushner on PBS's Charlie Rose, February 14, 2013.

Jamie FoxxRunner-Up

"How we doing? It's like church over here, it's like church in here. First of all, give an honor to god and our lord and savior Barack Obama!"

— Actor Jamie Foxx during the Soul Train Awards, November 25, 2012 on BET.

Bill MaherWinner

"This has become a kind of conventional wisdom — that the Republican Party has gone so far right, Reagan himself wouldn't fit in. But I'm here tonight to call bullshit on that. Ronald Reagan was an anti-government, union-busting, race-baiting, anti-abortion, anti-gay, anti-intellectual, who cut rich people's taxes in half, had an incurable case of the military-industrial complex, and said Medicare was socialism that would destroy our freedom....He was the original, official pitchman for bat shit. When they hold up signs that say ‘No Socialized Medicine,' where do you think they got it from? We got it from you dad, we got it from you." [Reagan audio: "If you don't do this and if I you don't do it, one of these days you and I are going to spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was once like in America when men were free."]...
"Both sides really should stop pretending he was something other than the man most responsible for our decline."

— Bill Maher on HBO's Real Time, June 7, 2013.

Chris Plante presents the "Dan Rather Memorial Award for the Stupidest Analysis" which, by audience vote completed via electronic device at each table, is won by Melissa Harris-Perry and accepted in jest by Mia Love.

Deborah FeyerickRunner-Up

"Talk about something else [besides snow] that's falling from the sky and that is an asteroid. What's coming our way? Is this an effect of, perhaps, of global warming or is this just some meteoric occasion?"

— CNN Newsroom anchor Deborah Feyerick to Bill Nye ‘the science guy,' February 9, 2013, during discussion about a blizzard.

Bob HerbertRunner-Up

"It's silly that there's a liberal bias in media. Obviously, there are liberal voices and there are conservative voices. But overwhelmingly, media in the United States — television, newspapers, and that sort of thing — the bias shifts towards the right. It's a center-right media in this country."

— Former NBC reporter and New York Times columnist Bob Herbert on MSNBC's Melissa Harris-Perry, April 27, 2013.

Melissa Harris-PerryWinner

"We have never invested as much in public education as we should have, because we've always had kind of a private notion of children. Your kid is yours, and totally your responsibility. We haven't had a very collective notion of these are our children. So, part of it is we have to break through our kind of private idea that kids belong to their parents, or kids belong to their families, and recognize that kids belong to whole communities. Once it's everybody's responsibility, and not just the household's, then we start making better investments."

— MSNBC weekend host Melissa Harris-Perry in a "Lean Forward" spot which began airing in early April, 2013.

Monica Crowley presents funny video clips from comedy and news shows.

Steve Hayes presents the "Puppy Love Award" which, by audience vote completed via electronic device at each table, is won by Chris Matthews and accepted in jest by Jim DeMint.

Piers MorganRunner-Up

"People see you putting on this event, they heard you at the convention make a barn-storming speech, an incredible speech....I was there. You electrified the place. And they all say, ‘Why do we have this goddamned 22nd Amendment? Why couldn't Bill Clinton just run again and be President for the next 30 years?'...We're trying to change the rules in Britain, actually, because if you can't be President again here, we'd quite like you to be Prime Minister in our country. Are you available if it comes to it, if I get this through?"

— CNN's Piers Morgan to Bill Clinton, September 25, 2012 Piers Morgan Tonight.

Diane SawyerRunner-Up

"Last stand. Secretary Hillary Clinton, filled with fiery emotion in her last appearance before Congress....The indignation. And then, the tears in her eyes. [Hillary Clinton: "I put my arms around the mothers and fathers and the wives left alone to raise their children."] ...It was a valedictory that showed her indignation and emotion as she ends this tenure on the public stage."

— Anchor Diane Sawyer opening ABC's World News, January 23, 2013.

Chris MatthewsWinner

"His [Barack Obama] whole life has been crystal clear, and clean as a whistle and transparent. We know his whole life, through all the great, excellent education he's had, the good pro bono work he's done throughout his life. He's never been a money-grubber. He's never done anything wrong in his life — legally, ethically, whatever. His family is picture-perfect. The way he's raised those daughters. Everything is clean as a whistle. And yet, they just refer to him as evil. They just refer to him as a liar. I've got to believe it's ethnic with these people. They just got a problem with this guy being President. Is there any other evidence to justify why they keep calling him a bad man?"

— Host Chris Matthews on MSNBC's Hardball, June 5, 2013.

Steve Hayes presents the "Damn Those Conservatives to Hell Award" which, by audience vote completed via electronic device at each table, is won by Jonathan Alter and accepted in jest by Senator Mike Lee.

Michael Eric DysonRunner-Up

"Clarence Thomas's actions here today, though consistent, though tragic to me, are even more so in light of the bulk of decisions he's rendered in the name of a judicial vote on the Supreme Court: A symbolic Jew has invited a metaphoric Hitler to commit holocaust and genocide upon his own people."

— Georgetown U professor and MSNBC analyst/fill-in host Michael Eric Dyson on MSNBC's Martin Bashir, June 25, 2013 talking about the Supreme Court's Voting Rights Act ruling.

Chris MatthewsRunner-Up

"The problem is there are people in this country — maybe ten percent, I don't know what the number, maybe twenty percent on a bad day — who want this President to have an asterisk next to his name in the history books, that he really wasn't President....They can't stand the idea that he's President, and a piece of it is racism....It's the sense that the white race must rule. That's what racism is. And they can't stand the idea that a man who's not white is President."

— Chris Matthews appearing as a guest on MSNBC's PoliticsNation, May 15, 2013.

Jonathan AlterWinner

"Repeal equals death. People will die in the United States if ObamaCare is repealed. That is not an exaggeration. That is not crying fire. It's a simple fact....[The Obama campaign should say] ‘No, we're not calling Mitt Romney a murderer. What we are saying is that if he's elected President, a lot of people will die.'"

— Ex-Newsweek senior editor Jonathan Alter on MSNBC's The Ed Show, August 9, 2012.

MRC President Brent Bozell asked the audience to show their derision, via jeers and noisemakers, of quotes from Melissa Harris-Perry, Chris Matthews and Jonathan Alter which each had won a news category earlier in the program. The audience decided Jonathan Alter had earned the Quote of the Year dishonor for his claim Mitt Romney's election would mean "a lot of people will die" because repeal of ObamaCare "equals death."

Jonathan AlterWinner

"Repeal equals death. People will die in the United States if ObamaCare is repealed. That is not an exaggeration. That is not crying fire. It's a simple fact....[The Obama campaign should say] ‘No, we're not calling Mitt Romney a murderer. What we are saying is that if he's elected President, a lot of people will die.'"

— Ex-Newsweek senior editor Jonathan Alter on MSNBC's The Ed Show, August 9, 2012.

Presentation

Brent Bozell opens the gala program. Then Cal Thomas, who earned the honor in 2011, introduces the 2013 honoree, Dr. Charles Krauthammer, who delivers remarks upon receiving the MRC's seventh annual "William F. Buckley Jr. Award for Media Excellence."

Text (pdf file) of introduction by Thomas and remarks from Krauthammer

A video montage, of the distinguished panel of 14 judges for the "DisHonors Awards," played during the MRC's annual gala. Beforehand, the judges narrowed the quotes to the three shown in each category.