It’s happened again! Collecting quotes for the Labor Day edition of MRC’s bi-weekly Notable Quotables, I found more outrageous liberal eruptions than could fit into the normal newsletter. So, just for NewsBusters readers, here are 12 worthy quotes that just couldn’t squeeze into the regular issue (although hopefully a couple of these gems will find their way into our upcoming September 20 edition):
Obama Opponents Pine for “Ethnic Purity”
“First of all, we have a mixed race President who has a middle name ‘Hussein.’ And a good part of the anxiety that’s going on in small-town white America isn’t just the plain old black and white stuff of the past. It’s the fact that South Asians are moving in and running the local motel or, you know, I don’t want to deal in those sorts of cliches, but there are a lot of Latinos about who are moving into these areas that their grandchildren are coming out as gay or intermarrying. The purity of, the ‘ethnic purity,’ to coin a phrase, that they grew up with no longer exists....”
— Time’s Joe Klein on the Chris Matthews Show, August 29.
It’s “Baffling” Stabbing Suspect Not Stereotypical American Bigot
“It is the knife attack that’s cut deep into a national debate over faith and fear...The suspect, 21-year-old Michael Enright, has a baffling profile. An honors film school student, he volunteers with a church group that promotes peace and understanding....Still, the attack, some Muslims are certain, was fueled by what they call fearmongering over the Islamic cultural center and mosque planned for this site near Ground Zero....There is one other note about that suspected stabber that muddies the water even further. That peace group he volunteered with, they actually support putting that Islamic center down here near Ground Zero where we are tonight.”
— ABC correspondent Jeremy Hubbard on World News, August 26.
Burden Should Be on Everybody but the Mosque Builder
“Some would say that it is really for Americans, for majority of Americans to be more sensitive to minority communities. It’s not really the obligation for the imam to, you know — he talked to members of the Jewish community, the JCC, the Jewish Community Centers were a model. And there’s a rabbi who has been helping. He talked to some members of the 9/11 families, not all clearly. Why is the burden on him?”
— NBC News correspondent Andrea Mitchell to former Pakistani ambassador Akbar Ahmed on MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell Reports, August 24.
“Some of these candidates who are very far to the right, the one — many of the ones who are backed by the Tea Party — are they going to be Kryptonite come November?”
“When it comes to Rick Scott, who ran as an ultraconservative against Bill McCollum, does he now have to run slightly to the center, if he wants to win in November?”
— CNN’s John Roberts filling in as anchor of Anderson Cooper 360, August 24.
Upset Democrats Can’t “Demonize” George W. Bush Again
“The problem for the Democrats is this, that the energizer bunny for the 2006, 2008 campaigns has disappeared because of George W. Bush’s being a circumspect and discreet former President it makes it very difficult for Democrats to demonize him again. He’s become a non-person.”
— Columnist Mark Shields on Inside Washington, August 27.
Only Liberal Women Are “Compassionate”
Host Chris Matthews: “Margaret, it looks like liberals are in trouble this year, progressives, if you will. That includes a lot of women.”...
Bloomberg’s Margaret Carlson: “There’s a certain kind of woman that’s gonna do okay. I mean you have the momma grizzlies but it’s the grizzly part of it, not the momma part that’s working....It’s the corporate titan bear — Carly Fiorina, Meg Whitman as you say. So that is the kind of woman. It is not the kind of — it’s not a compassionate women year.”
— MSNBC’s Hardball, August 30.
“Tonight, we start with the party of hate. The Republican Party in this country has been running on hate and division for the last 50 years. First, it was the southern strategy meant to discriminate against African-Americans in order to gain white southern votes....Then there’s the vitriolic fight against immigrants, undocumented ones and in Arizona just people who happen to look undocumented. And, of course, there’s the grand daddy of all prejudice, fear and hatred stoked up against Muslims in this country....What black person, gay guy or girl, immigrant or Muslim American in their right mind would vote for the Republican Party? They might as well hang a sign around their neck saying ‘I hate myself.’”
— Fill-in host Cenk Uygur on MSNBC’s The Ed Show, August 26.
“The Republican method for winning elections is hate. Hate somebody. Anybody will do. We have seen it this year with immigrants and now, Muslims....They do it to win and did it in 2004 and 2006 against gay Americans.... Think the GOP has run out of minority groups to target and smear? No. Next, John Boehner attacks those federal bureaucrats with fattened salaries and pensions. Federal bureaucrats, like John Boehner.”
— Keith Olbermann on MSNBC’s Countdown, August 26.
Times Prefers Their Editorial Line to Actual Laws
“The Justice Department decided last week not to bring charges against Tom DeLay, whose unethical conduct represented a modern low among Congressional leaders....Mr. DeLay, the Texas Republican who had been the House Majority Leader, crowed that he had been ‘found innocent.’ But many of Mr. DeLay’s actions remain legal only because lawmakers have chosen not to criminalize them.”
— From a New York Times editorial, August 22.
Host Sees Plot to “Harvest and Incarcerate” Young Black Men
“How much of that [the cycle of poverty] in your opinion is family-planning driven, how much of that is a function of systematic racism in our country and laws that are enforced to basically pick-up, harvest and incarcerate young black men — particularly in New York with the Rockefeller laws — and how much of it is a complete abandonment of education as a value system period in this country, unless you’re rich?...Because it, in my opinion, has been a default position to incarcerate black men as opposed to educate and integrate black men into our economy.”
— MSNBC’s Dylan Ratigan on the August 23 Dylan Ratigan Show, talking to a blogger promoting more “family planning” counseling for young African Americans.
“I have the greatest respect for those who disagree, but to me putting restraints on stem cell research is not far from those who refused to look through Galileo’s telescope because they believed their doctrines and tradition had already told them what they would see. Their beliefs, too, were deeply held, but where would the store of knowledge be had their view prevailed? As we again try to untangle the arguments over stem cells, let us also consider this: No civilization, no society, has survived if its people came to believe they knew enough and needed to know nothing more.”
— Bob Schieffer’s closing commentary on CBS’s Face the Nation, August 29.
Are We Being Unfair to You, Sir?
“It’s getting baked in a little bit in the media that [the] BP [oil spill] was President Obama’s Katrina. And it’s also getting baked in that the administration was slow off the mark. Is that unfair?”
— NBC’s Brian Williams to Obama in an interview shown on the August 29 Nightly News.
