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AWARDS CONTINUED...

Thursday, December 29, 2005

"OOPS, I SPOKE TO SOON" AWARD "After meeting with Louisiana officials last week, Reverend Jesse Jackson said, quote, 'Many black people feel that their race, their property conditions and their voting patterns have been a factor in the response.' He continued, quote, 'I'm not saying that myself.' Then I'll say it: If the majority of the hardest hit victims of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans were white people, they would not have gone for days without food and water, forcing many to steal for mere survival. Their bodies would not have been left to float in putrid water....We've repeatedly given tax cuts to the wealthiest and left our most vulnerable American citizens to basically fend for themselves....The President has put himself at risk by visiting the troops in Iraq, but didn't venture anywhere near the Superdome or the convention center, where thousands of victims, mostly black and poor, needed to see that he gave a damn." -- Contributor Nancy Giles on CBS's Sunday Morning, September 4. "THEN I GUESS MY USE OF 'THE WAR OF NORTHERN AGRESSION' WOULD REALLY BE OUT OF LINE" AWARD "When John G. Roberts Jr. prepared to ghostwrite an article for President Ronald Reagan a little over two decades ago, his pen took a Civil War re-enactment detour....The Indiana native scratched out the words 'Civil War' and replaced them with 'War Between the States.'...Sam McSeveney, a history professor emeritus at Vanderbilt University who specialized in the Civil War, said that Roberts's choice of words was significant. 'Many people who are sympathetic to the Confederate position are more comfortable with the idea of a "War Between the States,"' McSeveney explained. 'People opposed to the civil rights movement of the 1960s and 1970s would undoubtedly be more comfortable with the words he chose.'" -- Washington Post reporter Jo Becker, August 26. "AFTER ROGER, TOM AND TED, MIGHT I GET A TURN?" AWARD or "SUCKING UP TO COMMUNIST SYMPATHIZERS MAKES ME FEEL GOOD" AWARD Actress Jane Fonda: "From an historical point of view, they were defending their country. If we had been invaded and an invading force came into this country and divided us in half at the Mississippi River...we would understand why people were fighting....We should never have been there [in Vietnam]." Chris Matthews: "There were a lot of people, Jane, who....can't imagine slipping out of their American skin, their American soul and becoming so objective, as you just were a minute ago....How do you step out of being an American to make such an objective judgment?" -- Exchange on MSNBC's Hardball on April 15. Fonda was promoting her new book, My Life So Far. "OOOH! SO THAT'S THE WAY IT IS" AWARD "CBS News has a culture, has a history that for those of us who work here, is very real -- that we see it as a sort of magical mystical kingdom of journalistic knights -- and I know I can mentally hear people rolling their eyes, that's the way we feel." -- Ex-CBS News anchor Dan Rather on CNBC's Topic [A] with Tina Brown, May 22. "MOMENTARY ATTACK OF HONESTY" AWARD "The elephant in the newsroom is our narrowness. Too often, we wear liberalism on our sleeve and are intolerant of other lifestyles and opinions....We're not very subtle about it at this paper: If you work here, you must be one of us. You must be liberal, progressive, a Democrat. I've been in communal gatherings in The Post, watching election returns, and have been flabbergasted to see my colleagues cheer unabashedly for the Democrats." -- Washington Post "Book World" editor Marie Arana in a September 29 contribution to the Post's "daily in-house electronic critiques," as quoted by Post media reporter Howard Kurtz in an October 3 article.

posted by Jack Mercer @ 12/29/2005 09:12:00 AM

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