Quotes of 2004 – september

Last updated on March 5th, 2018 at 01:41 pm

* “Where is he? Is he gone?”—star-struck Manhattan shoe store guy after collecting a load of shoes for Arnold Schwarzenegger. Arnie had already left

* “The angriest man at the convention turns out to be a Democrat: who’d have thunk. He’s brutal. He’s hammering Kerry like a blacksmith; if Kerry was a horseshoe he’d be thinner than aluminum foil.”—James Lileks on Zell Miller

* “Maybe that same person is still around, writing editorials.”—George W. Bush notes that a 1946 New York Times piece expressed doubts on post-WWII progress

* “More fascinating repressed psychodrama it would be harder to imagine … there was none of the warmth and giddiness one saw with the Kerry and Edwards clans. His hugs of his father and mother were equally perfunctory. Everyone looked ill at ease.”—James Wolcott rates the Bush clan’s hugging skills

* “I root for hurricanes. When, courtesy of the Weather Channel, I see one forming in the ocean off the coast of Africa, I find myself longing for it to become big and strong–Mother Nature’s fist of fury, Gaia’s stern rebuke. Considering the havoc mankind has wreaked upon nature with deforesting, stripmining, and the destruction of animal habitat, it only seems fair that nature get some of its own back and teach us that there are forces greater than our own.”—Wolcott again. More fascinating repressed psychopathy it would be harder to imagine

* “Today, by some margin, George W Bush is the most despised figure in America.”—only because the London Sunday Observer’s Robert McCrum isn’t as well-known

* “By God, I did not shoot.”—the New York Times alters the line as spoken by a Beslan terrorist: “By Allah, I did not shoot”

* “He looks scary.”—a year six student offers his opinion on Mark Latham to Peter Garrett. Garrett’s reply: “I think he’s a terrific leader and he cares a lot about education”

* “I live in Hong Kong and I’ve already had several Indonesian friends on the phone to apologise. One was crying, asking why people would target Australia. Australia, she said, why Australia?! This is madness! She is, by the way, a human rights activist in Aceh and knows more than a little about atrocities, bomb blasts and death. I’m also getting text messages from Indonesia that express complete and utter disbelief.”—reader Hanyu, following the terrorist attack on Australia’s embassy in Jakarta

* “This is not a nation that is going to intimidated by acts of terrorism.”—Prime Minister John Howard

* “The terrorists responsible for this attack are evil and barbaric and must be dealt with as harshly as possible.”—Labor leader Mark Latham

* “Who will benefit more from the terror attack?”—quickly-abandoned poll question at the Sydney Morning Herald’s site

* “We’re beyond angry. I want to kill those who did this.”—Jakarta housewife Ibu Martono

* “Later today the Boston Globe, the A.P. and Dan Rather all present new and damning information about how George W. Bush got moved to the front of the line to get in the Texas Air National Guard, and how he then went AWOL. I am putting every ounce of trust I have in my fellow Americans that a majority of them get this, get the injustice of it all, and get the sad, sick twisted irony of how it relates very, very much to our precious Election 2004.”—Michael Moore was so looking foward to Bush getting nailed on 60 Minutes II

* “Tomorrow morning, dinosaur media across the country will be headlining the 60 Minutes ‘scoop’ as a blow to the Bush campaign.”—Powerline, one of the prime Rathergate blogs, makes an accurate call

* “Now it’s Bush’s turn to squirm.”—headline in The Guardian

* “Evidence of the president’s fudged war record emerged in time to undermine the Republicans’ triumphal march”—Sid Blumenthal in The Guardian

* “George W. Bush’s cover story on his National Guard service is rapidly unraveling.”—Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe

* “These documents represent what Killian not only was putting in memoranda, but was telling other people. Journalistically, we’ve gone several extra miles.”—a CBS News official

* “Why dismiss what Jemaah Islamiah says? What they say is rational.”—Meg Lees staffer Gary Sauer-Thompson

* “If we are at some kind of war, then we should negotiate. He (Mr Downer) should speak to the head of JI and ask him: ‘Why? What’s the problem?’”—Brian Deegan, whose son Joshua died in the 2002 Bali bombings

* “It is a certain fact that not all Muslims are terrorists, but it is equally certain, and exceptionally painful, that almost all terrorists are Muslims.”—Abdel Rahman al-Rashed in The Arab News

* “The media is buzzing with the possibility that the Killian memos broadcast on 60 Minutes are forgeries. The truth hangs on whether any commonly-used typewriters in the 60’s-70’s had proportional spacing. If you HAVE a typewriter like that, please type out a replica of Killian’s first memo and see if your typewriter matches his.”—a poster at Democrats.com seeks a magical typewriter to get Dan Rather off the hook

* “I know that this story is true.”—Dan Rather

* “I worked for IBM from 1967 to 2003 in Field Engineering—we maintained Computers and their associated input/output devices. Modified Selectric typewriters were used by operators to enter commands and respond to system messages and Selectrics were also used on communication terminals. These typewriters were never intended to have pretty fonts and typesetting qualities. Office Products Division worked on office machines—typewriters (typebar and Selectrics) and dictation equipment. There was a Selectric model called a Composer. It was used to prepare text for photo typesetting, it had all the bells and whistles: proportional spacing, justified right margin etc—very expensive machine for its time. Regular Selectrics were mechanically complex, but the Composer was orders of magnitude fiendishly complex ( I am thankful I didn’t have to work on that monster.) LGF, et al. has it right—those ‘documents’ are a fraud.”—former IBM engineer Bill Rouse

* “I can unequivocally say that no one involved here at the Democratic National Committee had anything at all to do with any of those documents. If I were an aspiring young journalist, I think I would ask Karl Rove that question.”—Terry McAuliffe, rapidly unraveling

* “Until someone shows me definitive proof that they are not [authentic], I don’t see any reason to carry on a conversation with the professional rumor mill.”—Dan Rather

* “Okay, I’m no Howard Kurtz or anything, but I’ve seen one or two episodes of Law & Order in my day, and … isn’t the burden of proof on the accuser? It is? Okay. And isn’t this crewcutted septuagenarian fadebrain the one who made the really big serious accusation? He is? Check. So … isn’t he sort of, you know, under the obligation to verify his claims? And not in a position to sit back and demand that everybody else prove to his satisfaction that it’s not clearly bullshit? Is it out of line for me to ask this stuff? Sorry. Sorry. But I mean, if these memos were scribbled in burnt sienna crayon on the back of a Denny’s placemat and somebody had the unmitigated gall to say something about it, would that be part of the ‘professional rumor mill’? I’m just asking here, no big deal.”—Jim Treacher

* “The breathless debate over typewriter fonts last week shifted the debate away from Bush’s questionable record.”—Time magazine’s Amanda Ripley

* “To have Negroes occupying us is a particular humiliation. Sometimes we aborted a mission because there were no Negroes.”—Abu Mujahed, one of Michael Moore’s brave Iraqi minutemen

* “The winning energy is not on Howard. It is on Mark Latham.”—energy-detection specialist Robert Bosler in the Sydney Morning Herald

* “Document expert.”—CBS description of Bill Glennon, who’d come to the network’s defence. A more accurate title: typewriter repairman

* “Within 24 hours the documents were being challenged – raising suspicions that CBS had fallen victim to a hoax by Bush supporters to discredit critics of the President’s military record.”—the Independent explains Rathergate to its Bush-hating audience

* “I don’t know.”—a young DNC canvasser, after James Lileks asked why he should vote for John Kerry

* “If the documents are not what we were led to believe, I’d like to break that story.”—Dan Rather

* “I was just back in my office banging my head on the jukebox. This is my candidate, and … I don’t know what he’s talking about.”—Don Imus, following an interview with John Kerry

* “The fear I have is: How do you know who’s doing the Web logs? And what happens when this stuff gets into the mainstream, and it eventually turns out that the ‘60 Minutes’ documents were perfectly legitimate?”—Emerson College professor Jeffrey Seglin

* “Three full days after the CBS Rathergate fraud regarding Bush’s military records was revealed, two days after it was confirmed, and one day after CBS itself had started to hedge and fudge just a little bit (’Yeah, well you know, we stand by the story, but we might have been fooled, too’), Andrew Jaspan’s paper repeated in explicit detail every single, discredited charge and dismantled piece of evidence that CBS had broadcast.”—Professor Bunyip notes the Melbourne Age’s remarkable slowness

* “The political impact of Michael Moore’s movie Fahrenheit 9-11 on this year’s presidential election appears to be overestimated.”—McLaughlinOnline

* “Lately I’m thinking Mark Latham will win … I’m not exactly sure why I think Latham will win. The polls certainly don’t support me.”—me, getting it wrong

* “I have never been more confident of a story in my life.”—Dan Rather

* “Australia has kept faith with the US and we are endangering the Australians now by this wanton disregard for international law and multilateral channels.”—Diana Kerry, sister of John, helps “restore America’s respect and leadership”

* “I’ve been shooting people, didn’t you know?”—Ayad Allawi confirms those terrible rumours spread by Sydney Morning Herald writer Paul McGeough

* “Based on what we now know, CBS News cannot prove that the documents are authentic, which is the only acceptable journalistic standard to justify using them in the report. We should not have used them. That was a mistake, which we deeply regret.”—CBS News President Andrew Heyward

* “There are these bizarre moments that make you shudder.”—a Kerry advisor on Teresa Heinz Kerry, who’d earlier described herself as “African-American” to black audiences, called opponents of her husband’s healthcare plan “idiots”, and told a television interviewer that her detractors were “scumbags”

* “It looks like he got into some TBT with the solution a few percentage points too strong.”—an online fake-tanning expert judges John Kerry’s new orange look