The Media Research Center is a conservative organization that documents
what they perceive to be liberal bias in the nation's media. On December 9,
the organization presented their "Dishonor Awards for the Decade's Most
Outrageous Liberal Bias." The awards were carried on C-SPAN.
Though we're libertarians, we found their collection of remarks from our
"unbiased" national media figures alternately hilarious, weird and
appalling. Here are some samples:
"If we could be one-hundredth as great as you and Hillary Rodham Clinton
have been in the White House, we'd take it right now and walk away
winners...Thank you very much and tell Mrs. Clinton we respect her and
we're pulling for her."
-- Dan Rather at a May 27, 1993 CBS affiliates meeting, talking via
satellite to President Clinton about his (Rather's) new on-air partnership
with Connie Chung as co-anchor of the CBS Evening News.
* * *
"It's short of soap, so there are lice in the hospitals. It's short of
pantyhose, so women's legs go bare. It's short of snowsuits, so babies stay
home in the winter. Sometimes it's short of cigarettes so millions of
people stop smoking, involuntarily. It drives everybody crazy. The problem
isn't communism; nobody even talked about communism this week. The problem
is shortages."
-- NBC Nightly News commentator John Chancellor on the Soviet Union, Aug.
21, 1991.
* * *
"He [Ted Kaczynski] wasn't a hypocrite. He lived as he wrote. His
manifesto, and there are a lot of things in it that I would agree with and
a lot of other people would, that industrialization and pollution all are
terrible things, but he carried it to an extreme, and obviously murder is
something that is far beyond any political philosophy, but he had a bike.
He didn't have any plumbing, he didn't have any electricity."
-- Time Washington reporter Elaine Shannon talking about the Unabomber,
April 7, 1996 C-SPAN Sunday Journal.
* * *
"I think he [Senator Jesse Helms] ought to be worried about what's going on
in the Good Lord's mind, because if there is retributive justice, he'll get
AIDS from a transfusion, or one of his grandchildren will get it."
-- National Public Radio and ABC News reporter Nina Totenberg reacting to
Senator Jesse Helms' claim that the government spends too much on AIDS
research, July 8, 1995 Inside Washington.
* * *
"You know, I hope his wife feeds him lots of eggs and butter and he dies
early like many black men do, of heart disease. Well, that's how I feel. He
is an absolutely reprehensible person."
-- USA Today columnist and Pacifica Radio talk show host Julianne Malveaux
on Justice Clarence Thomas, November 4, 1994 PBS To the Contrary.
* * *
"Some thoughts on those angry voters. Ask parents of any two-year-old and
they can tell you about those temper tantrums: the stomping feet, the
rolling eyes, the screaming....Imagine a nation full of uncontrolled
two-year-old rage. The voters had a temper tantrum last week....Parenting
and governing don't have to be dirty words: the nation can't be run by an
angry two-year-old."
-- ABC's Peter Jennings in his radio commentary after the GOP won the
House, Nov. 14, 1994.
