For the past 20 years, the Media Research Center has been compiling its list of notable quotables. The quotes, from prominent members of the mainstream news media, provide a clear window into the leftist mindset that pervades most of America’s large news organizations. At the end of the year, the center (helped by a panel of judges) chooses the best examples. As usual, this year’s crop reveals the media’s perennial contempt for all things conservative. Actually, the winners more or less explain themselves. (The full set of winners and finalists can be found at the center’s Web site, mrc.org.) Happy New Year!
Dynamic Duo Award for Idolizing Bill and Hillary
“When I watched [former President Bill Clinton] at Mrs. King’s funeral, I just have never seen anything like it . . . There are times when he sounds like Jesus in the temple. I mean, amazing ability to transcend ethnicity – race, we call it, it’s really ethnicity – in this country and, and speak to us all in this amazingly primordial way.” – Chris Matthews, MSNBC’s “Hardball”
Damn Those Conservatives Award
“I’m just saying, if he did die, other people, more people, would live. That’s a fact.” – Bill Maher, HBO’s “Real Time,” discussing complaints by left-wing bloggers that an attempt to kill Vice President Dick Cheney in Afghanistan had failed
Great Goreacle Award
“Do you mind if I -? [holds up a ‘Gore 2008’ pin] . . . There you go. You can hold it. . . . Here, let’s see what it looks like. [holds pin to Gore’s lapel] . . . All right, all right. Save that in a freeze frame.” – Harry Smith, on CBS’ “Morning Show”
Good Morning Morons Award
“So I’m running in the park on Saturday, in shorts, thinking this [warm weather] is great, but are we all gonna die? You know? I can’t, I can’t figure this out.”
– Meredith Vieira, talking about global warming on NBC’s “Today”
Tin Foil Hat Award for Crazy Conspiracy Theories
“Is there such a thing as a man-made stroke? In other words, did someone do this to him? . . . I know what this [Republican] party is capable of.”
– Joy Behar, on ABC’s “The View,” discussing Democratic Sen. Tim Johnson’s illness
Perky Princess Award for Katie’s Cutesy Comments
“Do you worry at all that non-believers may feel excluded and diminshed at a time when we’re divided by so much?”– Katie Couric to “Nativity Story” director Catherine Hardwicke and screenwriter
Mike Rich about Hollywood films based on biblical themes
Barbra Streisand IQ Award for Celebrity Vacuity
“I just want to say something: 655,000 Iraqi civilians are dead. Who are the terrorists? . . . If you were in Iraq and the other country, the United States, the richest in the world, invaded your country and killed 655,000 of your citizens, what would you call us?”
– Rosie O’Donnell, on ABC’s “The View”
Media Hero Award
“He was not what I expected. He was very dignified. He was warm, friendly. He likes the US. It’s George Bush that he doesn’t like. He also was very personal. He talked about how hard his life was, that he wishes he could be in love, but [that] you can’t be when you’re heading a country.”
– Barbara Walters, on ABC’s “The View,” recounting her interview with Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez
Blue State Brigade Award
“So much of what you say just grabs people like me, because it sounds like Bobby Kennedy. It sounds like the ’60s at its absolute best.” – Chris Matthews to Sen. Barack Obama on a Democratic presidential candidates forum aired live on MSNBC
Channeling the Nut Roots Award
“It’s interesting. If you go back . . . the Nuremberg trials weren’t about the genocide, it was about waging an aggressive war. I love reading some of that language. It’s interesting.”– MSNBC’s Chris Matthews, in an exchange with left-wing filmmaker Michael Moore, on trying President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney for war crimes
Not Biased Enough Award
“As we saw in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, the plantation mentality that governs Washington turned the press corps into sitting ducks for the war party, for government, and for neoconservative propaganda and manipulation. . . . I can’t tell you again how many reporters have told me that it just never occurred to them that high government officials would manipulate intelligence in order to go to war. Hello?” – PBS’ Bill Moyers, in a speech to a conference on “media reform”
Quote of the Year
“As violence falls in Iraq, cemetery workers feel the pinch.”
– Headline over a McClatchy News Service story by Jay Price and Qasim Zein