Christmas is a time of good cheer.
And good cheer is what we had plenty of after we read through all of the pronouncements that were made during 2007.
We searched the globe (well, more than a few websites, anyway) for the most outrageous quotes of the past year--and we found some qualifying quotes: 27 of them, to be exact.
They came from everywhere: politicians, entertainers, students, contestants, news people and visitors from foreign countries.
The Human Events quotes were the winners in a contest in which HE judges picked from the Media Research Center's Best of the Notable Quotables for worst reporting.
[Note: The intent was to pick out the best one or two quotes from Human Events 20th Annual Awards for the Worst Reporting, but a 12-step program was needed before we could stop. The total ended at seven; it could have easily been all of them.]
Since we have a thing for round numbers, here's DBKP's "27 Most Outrageous Quotes from 2007".
“As violence falls in Iraq, cemetery workers feel the pinch”
-- Headline over a story by McClatchy News Service reporters Jay Price and Qasim Zein, October 16.
"You don't have money to fund the war or children. "But you're going to spend it to blow up innocent people if we can get enough kids to grow old enough for you to send to Iraq to get their heads blown off for the president's amusement."
--Pete Stark (D-CA), October. Stark, under intense pressure from Nancy Pelosi, later tearfully apologized.
"Don't Tase me, Bro!"
--Florida student Andrew Meyer, to security guards, as he was being dragged from a John Kerry speech.
"(I have) a wide stance when going to the bathroom."
--Senator Larry Craig (R-ID), explaining his legal defense. Craig was arrested after soliciting an undercover policeman in a men’s room.
"Larry Craig was just inducted into the Idaho Hall of Fame -- not the entire hall, just the men's room."
--Jay Leno, on Craig's new notoriety.
“Al Qaeda really hurt us, but not as much as Rupert Murdoch has hurt us, particularly in the case of Fox News. Fox News is worse than al Qaeda -- worse for our society. It’s as dangerous as the Ku Klux Klan ever was.”
-- MSNBC anchor Keith Olbermann in an interview with Playboy magazine, October issue.
"This is hate of the worst order. It's like the Ku Klux Klan. It's like the Nazi party. It's no different." [...] "These are people who are wishing people with whom they disagree, ill. That's who they are. That's what they do. That's all they do."
--Bill O'Reilly, on the Daily KOS.
"There's only three things he (Republican presidential candidate and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani) mentions in a sentence: a noun and a verb and 9/11."
--Presidential candidate Joe Biden, on fellow candidate Rudy Giuliani's style.
Human Events held the 20th Annual Awards for the Worst Reporting. Picking from among the worthy entries had to have caused some despair.
“Through every Abu Ghraib and Haditha, through every rape and murder, the American public has indulged those in uniform....We pay the soldiers a decent wage, take care of their families, provide them with housing and medical care and vast social support systems and ship obscene amenities into the war zone for them, we support them in every possible way, and their attitude is that we should in addition roll over and play dead, defer to the military and the generals and let them fight their war, and give up our rights and responsibilities to speak up because they are above society?...[T]he recent NBC report is just an ugly reminder of the price we pay for a mercenary -- oops sorry, volunteer -- force that thinks it is doing the dirty work.”
-- WashingtonPost.com military columnist William Arkin in a column reacting to a report by NBC reporter Richard Engel, January 30. (Arkin later apologized for using the word “mercenary.”)
Insurgents “are running out of people to kill,” and “There are fewer targets of opportunity.”
--David Obey (D-WI), November, on his theory of why deaths in Iraq had fallen.
"In Iran we don't have homosexuals like in your country."
--Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, on the Iranian gay rights agenda.
“I think a draft produces a better Army than the one we would have with all volunteers, because I think you get average Americans if you have a draft. And if it’s an all-volunteer Army, you get people who join up because of some problem in their own lives. They don’t have anything else to do, they don’t have a job, or they can’t find what they want to do, so they join the Army. And it doesn’t produce the best Army.”
-- CBS’s Andy Rooney, MSNBC’s “Imus in the Morning,” March 14.
"Sure, there's less violence, but that's because we've ethnically cleansed most of Baghdad."
--Jim Moran (D-VA), December, offering a competing theory to Obey's.
"That's some nappy-headed ho's there,"
--Don Imus, on the Rutger's basketball women's team.
"I think as far as the adverse impact on the nation around the world, this administration has been the worst in history."
--Hopeful former President Jimmy Carter, on GW Bush's performance.
"We've had a Congress that's spent money like John Edwards at a beauty shop."
--Mike Huckabee, after anti-poverty crusader Edwards billed his campaign for two $400 haircuts.
“As part of our ongoing series of reports on the environment, ‘America Goes Green,’ we take on the question that can make otherwise competent adults quake with fear. We’ve all been there. You come to the end of the checkout line and then comes that question: ‘Paper or plastic?’ For that one brief moment, we grocery buyers are made to feel like the fate of the planet hinges on our decision.”
-- NBC’s Brian Williams on the May 7 Nightly News. [47]
That decision would be easy for some who've seen Williams in action: go for the plastic.
He could breathe through the paper.
"I personally believe that U.S. Americans are unable to do so because some people out there in our nation don't have maps and I believe that our education like such as in South Africa and Iraq and everywhere like such as and I believe that they should our education over here in the U.S. should help the U.S. or should help South Africa and should help Iraq and the Asian countries so we will be able to build up our future for us."
--Laura Upton, South Carolina Miss Teenage America, when she was asked why one-fifth of Americans are unable to locate the U.S. on a map.
Upton later said she was nervous during the contest. That's completely understandable. DBKP sincerely hopes Ms. Upton is confident enough to look back one day and have a good giggle.
Meredith Vieira, of NBC, presumably wasn't nervous because she gets paid the big bucks. Unlike Upton, who was merely competing for scholarship money, Vieira is a highly-paid professional speaker.
“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.”
-- Co-host Meredith Vieira talking about global warming on NBC’s “Today,” January 8.
"Don't look like a gangbanger if you don't want to be picked up as a gang member."
--San Jose, CA councilmember Nancy Pyle, at a special City Council meeting on police issues in May
"Few things, however, approach the Republican venom being spilt over immigration, which polarizes the nation, makes solutions more difficult and feeds a climate of hate and recrimination."
--Writer James O. Goldsborough, commenting on how hateful those who differ from his views on illegal immigration are.
"I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy. I mean, that's a storybook, man."
--Presidential candidate Joe Biden, on fellow candidate Barack Obama's style.
"In case you missed it, a few days ago Senator Clinton tried to spend $1 million on the Woodstock concert museum. Now, ladies and gentlemen, I wasn't there. I'm sure it was a cultural and pharmaceutical event. I was tied up at the time."
--John McCain, referring to the years he spent as a P.O.W.
"The chances of my running for mayor against Chuck Reed are between zero and the chance that Larry Craig will get a job working security at the Minneapolis Airport."
--San Jose (CA) councilman Sam Liccardo, totally on a roll.
"The point was to inhale. That was the point."
--Barack Obama, when asked if he inhaled marijuana.
One more sign--other than falling ratings and circulation and rising numbers of lectures to bloggers--that the Mainstream Media might not be the respected, trusted news source that they had all hoped.
“You know, I wanted to sit on a jury once, and I was taken off the jury. And the judge said to me, ‘Can, you know, can you tell the truth and be fair?’ And I said, ‘That’s what journalists do.’ And everybody in the courtroom laughed. It was the most hurtful moment I think I’ve ever had.”
-- Co-host Diane Sawyer joking on ABC’s “Good Morning America,” following a report on how some people try to avoid serving on a jury, July 12.
Ta da!
compiled by Mondoreb
Sources:
* Say What?
* Which Candidate did what--when--and for how long?
* The 20th Annual Awards for Year's Worst Reporting
* Best of the Notable Quotables for 2007 Worst Reporting
* Outrageous Quotes Playoffs for 2007
* Jim Moran's 'Ethically Cleansed' Floor Comment Ignored by the Media
* Double Speak on Immigration
* 'Don't Tase Me, Bro' Tops 2007 Quotes of the Year
* The Year's Most Laughable Political Antics
DBKP.com - Bigger, Better!.
Death by 1000 Papercuts Front Page.
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