"Mr. President, we love you. I want to hug you, I want to hug you, please do the right thing. This is nothing, this is nothing. Thomas Jefferson did not have
this in mind, I swear to God....I would give Ken Starr the Nobel Peace Prize were he to be man enough not to refer a sex lie to the House for impeachment."
— Geraldo Rivera urging Clinton not to cooperate, August 6, 1999 edition of Rivera Live on CNBC.
"The vocabulary has changed so that tax cuts now look like irresponsible spending and spending on investments and education and Medicare looks like
the responsible thing to do because if I get $100 back, I can’t go fix a school or clean a river, and people are more interested in these things than they
are in the tax cut, and the poll numbers, you know, don’t explain this. I mean the only thing that could explain this love of tax cuts is a lowered IQ."
-- Time’s Margaret Carlson, July 24, 1999 Capital Gang.
"Repealing the Second Amendment is no cause for the faint-hearted, but it remains the only way for liberals to trigger an honest debate on the future
of our bullet-plagued society. So what if anti-gun advocates have to devote the next 15 or 20 years to the struggle? The cause is worth the political pain.
Failing to take bold action condemns all of us to spend our lives cringing in terror every time we hear a car backfire."
-- USA Today columnist Walter Shapiro, Sept. 17, 1999.
"If you take that penny, for instance, out of the National Institutes of Health grants, that may be the penny that cures cancer. Are you willing to do that?"
-- ABC’s Sam Donaldson to House Majority Whip Tom DeLay on the proposed 1.4 percent across-the-board non-entitlement spending reduction, October 24, 1999 This Week.
"With the death of JFK Jr., there is now only one survivor of Camelot. That, of course, is Caroline Kennedy, the little girl who walked her father to
the Oval Office and rode a pony on the White House lawn. And now grown up with a family of her own, Caroline remains our only link to those golden years."
-- Today co-host Katie Couric, July 19, 1999
"We were talking about -- speaking for all women, if I may, Toni Morrison wrote in The New Yorker that Clinton was our first ‘black President,’ and I
think, in a way, Clinton may be our first ‘woman President.’ And I think that may be one of the reasons why women identify, because he does have
a lot of feminine qualities about him: The softness, the sensitivity, the vulnerability, that kind of thing."
-- The Washington Post’s Sally Quinn on CNN’s Larry King Live, March 10, 1999
"You may want to note that Cheney is referring to Clinton Gore, not Clinton and Gore, in effect making Clinton Al Gore’s first name: Clinton Gore."
-- Dan Rather during Dick Cheney’s acceptance speech after Cheney said "We’re all a little weary of the Clinton-Gore routine...it is time for them to go,"
August 2, 2000 CBS News Republican convention coverage.
"We begin by going right to the hotel that houses the winner of the Iowa poll tonight. Governor George W. Bush of Texas, and with him is his lovely
wife Laura. George is on the right. Laura is on the left."
-- Larry King hosting his CNN show, January 24, 2000
"But should you be using the national airwaves to promote your opinions?"
-- Diane Sawyer to Fox News Channel show host Bill O’Reilly, October 10, 2000 Good Morning America.
"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, 2001 on FNC’s Special Report with Brit Hume
Bill O’Reilly: "I want to ask you flat out, do you think President Clinton’s an honest man?"
Dan Rather: "Yes, I think he’s an honest man."
O’Reilly: "Do you, really?"
Rather: "I do."
O’Reilly: "Even though he lied to Jim Lehrer’s face about the Lewinsky case?"
Rather: "Who among us has not lied about something?"
O’Reilly: "Well, I didn’t lie to anybody’s face on national television. I don’t think you have, have you?"
Rather: "I don’t think I ever have. I hope I never have. But, look, it’s one thing-"
O’Reilly: "How can you say he’s an honest guy then?"
Rather: "Well, because I think he is. I think at core he’s an honest person. I know that you have a different view. I know that you consider it sort of
astonishing anybody would say so, but I think you can be an honest person and lie about any number of things."
– Exchange on Fox News Channel’s The O’Reilly Factor, May 15, 2001
You know, the U.S. is the only industrialized nation, I didn’t know this until today, that doesn’t spend federal money promoting tourism. Do you think it should?"
– Question from NBC’s Katie Couric to Maryland Governor Parris Glendening on the October 1, 2001 Today. Glendening, a liberal Democrat, said no.
"More trouble at the nation’s amusement parks, two dozen people injured. Why won’t Congress let the government regulate those parks?"
– ABC’s Elizabeth Vargas, previewing an upcoming story on the July 31, 2001 World News Tonight
Mark McEwen: “Up and down the East coast, it’s coming our way, but we will probably see just rain in the big cities.”
Bryant Gumbel: “We never get any snow.”
McEwen: “Do you think it’s global warming?”
Gumbel: “Yes, yes.”
McEwen: “Do you, Jane?”
Jane Clayson: “Yeah.”
McEwen: “We’re unanimous...it’s global warming.”
– Exchange on CBS’s Early Show, February 6, 2002
“Experts Agree: Al Qaeda Leader Is Dead or Alive.”
– On-screen graphic during a story about Osama bin Laden’s fate on CNN’s 2pm Live From...on Sept. 3, 2002
“Since the early 1970s, the number of state prisoners has increased 500 percent, growing each year in the 1990s even as crime fell.”
– New York Times reporter Fox Butterfield, Jan. 21, 2002
“The reason that the World Trade Center got hit is because there are a lot of people living in abject poverty out there who don’t have any hope for a
better life....I think they [the 19 hijackers] were brave at the very least.”
– AOL Time Warner Vice Chairman and CNN founder Ted Turner in February 11, 2002 remarks at Brown University, as reported by Gerald Carbone
in the February 12 Providence Journal. The next day, Turner issued a statement: “The attacks of Sept. 11 were despicable acts. I in no way meant to convey otherwise.”
