For the 25th consecutive year, the Media Research Center has recognized the absolute wackiest media quotes in our annual “Best Notable Quotables of 2013,” as selected by our panel of 42 expert judges.
The first time this prize was offered, in 1989, then-CNN pundit Linda Ellerbee won for comments delivered on the June 2, 1989 edition of PrimeNews: “‘These boat people,’ says the government of Hong Kong, ‘they all want to go to America.’ Well, I swear I don’t know why, do you?...Why would any Vietnamese come to America after what America did for Vietnam?”
This year’s winners and video highlights of the “Audacity of Dopes Award for the Wackiest Analysis of the Year” after the jump.
Taking the top slot this year: MSNBC’s Melissa Harris-Perry, for a Big Brother-esque “Lean Forward” promo that began airing on her network in early April:
“We have never invested as much in public education as we should have, because we’ve always had kind of a private notion of children....We haven’t had a very collective notion of these are our children....We have to break through our kind of private idea that kids belong to their parents, or kids belong to their families, and recognize that kids belong to whole communities.”
Next, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman on April 21 thought he had the perfect argument for his longstanding quest for a prosperity-suffocating tax on fossil fuels:
“Until we fully understand what turned two brothers who allegedly perpetrated the Boston Marathon bombings into murderers, it is hard to make any policy recommendation other than this: We need to redouble our efforts to make America stronger and healthier so it remains a vibrant counterexample to whatever bigoted ideology may have gripped these young men....And the best place to start is with a carbon tax.”
On April 27, former New York Times columnist and onetime NBC News reporter Bob Herbert announced on MSNBC April 27 that any media bias that existed favored conservatives:
“It’s silly that there’s a liberal bias in media. Obviously, there are liberal voices and there are conservative voices. But overwhelmingly, media in the United States -- television, newspapers, and that sort of thing -- the bias shifts towards the right. It’s a center-right media in this country.”
Back in December 2012, NBC's chief medical correspondent Nancy Snyderman announced on the Today show that she like everything about Christmas -- expect the religious part:
“I don’t like the religion part. I think religion is what mucks the whole thing up....I don’t like the religion part. I think that’s what makes the holidays so stressful.”
And in February, CNN Newsroom anchor Deborah Feyerick asked Bill Nye “the science guy” if an asteroid traveling near the earth could be blamed on global warming:
“You know, talk about something else that’s falling from the sky [besides snow], and that is an asteroid. What’s coming our way? Is this an effect of perhaps global warming, or is this just some meteoric occasion?”
Tomorrow, a perennial favoriate: “The Barbra Streisand Political IQ Award for Celebrity Vapidity.” The full report, with 15 categories plus the judges’ selection of Quote of the Year, is available at: www.MRC.org.
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