Wrapping up the Media Research Center’s “Best Notable Quotables of 2015,” it’s time to present the “Quote of the Year” for 2015, and the top runner-up, as selected by our panel of 39 expert judges, who were extremely generous with their time as they reviewed a large ballot of outrageous quotes.
Winning the dubious distinction of worst quote of the year, MSNBC’s Melissa Harris-Perry, who on October 24 challenged a guest when he blandly called the incoming Speaker of the House Paul Ryan a “hard worker.” Harris-Perry reacted as if she’d just heard someone shout an offensive racial epithet:
Alfonso Aguilar, Latino Partnership for Conservative Principles: “If there’s somebody who is a hard worker when he goes to Washington, it’s Paul Ryan....”
Host Melissa Harris-Perry: “I want us to be super careful when we use the language ‘hard worker,’ because I actually keep an image of folks working in cotton fields on my office wall, because it is a reminder about what hard work looks like. So, I feel you that he’s a hard worker, I do, but in the context of relative privilege.”
The runner-up: an Associated Press photo that was distributed on June 20 after a Ted Cruz event on behalf of gun rights. The photo was snapped just as Cruz was lined up with a picture of a gun on a wall, making it look as if the candidate had a weapon pointed right at his face:
Following the publication of this photo, MRC President Brent Bozell was one of many who blasted the Associated Press: “This is disgusting....They would never do this to Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama. Nor should they....The AP owes Senator Cruz, his wife Heidi, and his children an immediate and unqualified apology.”
That's all until next year. You can read all of the NewsBusters’ posts reviewing each of the 2015 categories here, or you can check out the entire package at www.MRC.org.
