2003 | Whoops & Squawks

"People ever'where is pretty much the same. They want to get up in the morning, get something to eat, go to work, come home, go to bed--and not worry about getting blowed up." --A citizen of Bagdad, Kentucky, interviewed on Fox News in a short feature about what local people thought now that "the other Baghdad," the one with the "h," is so much in the news lately. (March 27, 2003)

Dan, Dan, Dan. . .

“Mr. President, thank you very, very much. . .Mr. President, we appreciate more than we can say in a short time both (your) being on CBS This Morning and taking the extra time to do this. God bless you. Thank you very much. And tell Mrs. Clinton we respect her and we’re pulling for her. Thank you very much.” –Dan Rather, closing an interview of Bill Clinton he had just finished, on May 27, 1993.

“Mr. President, if we could be one one-hundredth as great as you and Hillary Rodham Clinton have been together in the White House, we’d take it right now and walk away winners.” --Dan Rather, responding to a remark by then President Bill Clinton that he (Clinton) thought the newly-announced CBS co-anchor team of Rather and Connie Chung “would be great together,” during an interview on May 27, 1993.

Mozart? Didn't He Play For The Fort Wayne Zollner Pistons In The 1940s?

"Every now and then a genius comes along. I'm sure this is what it was like when Mozart was 13. But Mozart didn't have a shoe deal." --Pat Williams, vice president of the Orlando Magic, commenting on the crowd of 15,123 which showed up in Orlando for the first summer league game of the already-legendary-at-age-18 Lebron James, who also has a $90 million contract to wear Nike shoes. (July 10, 2003)

"This time I think the Americans are serious. Bush is not like Clinton. I think this is the end." --Uday Hussein, in a quote attributed to him by the former director of Iraqi television, who told the London Sunday Telegraph these were the last words he heard Uday speak, shortly after the Iraq war began. (Reported in Ann Coulter's column in the August 4, 2003, issue of Human Events.)

"The Western world has lost its civic courage, both as a whole and separately, in each country, each government, each political party and of course in the United Nations." --Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, June 8, 1978, commencement speech at Harvard University.

"When a government starts an earnest fight against terrorism, public opinion immediately accuses it of violating the terrorists' rights." --Solzhenitsyn, June 8, 1978, Harvard.

"Rather than confess that mankind by its very nature is prone to be murderous, racist, and sexist--and that only liberal institutions of the West can rein in these innate proclivities--we instead demand instantaneous perfection of our own country and no other, both in the present and in the past." --Victor Davis Hanson, writing in his new book, Mexifornia, about California's difficulties in assimilating Mexican immigrants. (Quoted in a June 19, 2003, Wall Street Journal book review by Roger Clegg).

“(Conservatives) write their messages with crayons. We use fine-point quills.” –Quotation attributed to Mario Cuomo, legendary Democrat and former governor of New York State.

Mary's World

"Among people I know, nobody was for the war." --Mary McGrory, journalist, referring to her opposition, and that of all her friends, to the Spring, 2003 Unpleasantness in Iraq.

Crow, Ready To Eat, Served Hot And Steaming, For Matthews

"This invasion of Iraq, if it goes off, will join the Bay of Pigs, Vietnam, Desert One, Beirut, and Somalia, in the history of military catastrophe. What will set it apart, distinguishing it for all time, is the immense--and transparent--political stupidity." --Chris Matthews, San Francisco Chronicle, August 25, 2002, the quote lovingly resurrected from undeserved obscurity in the April 21, 2003, issue of The Weekly Standard.

"Going to war with the French is like going into battle with an accordion." --House Speaker Dennis Hastert (quoting "some talking head yesterday on TV"), quoted in the February 12, 2003 Chicago Tribune.

"Why not go to war just for oil? We need oil. What do Hollywood celebrities imagine fuels their private jets? How do they think their cocaine is delivered to them?" --Ann Coulter, quoted in the February 17, 2003 issue of Human Events.

"He has the demeanor of a basset hound with a secret sorrow." --George Will, on ABC's This Week program, while discussing Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan's humorless public image. (April 27, 2003)

"Great Britain's Lord Nelson claimed that all his successes could be credited to the fact that he always showed up 15 minutes early." --L.M. Boyd, syndicated columnist, writing in the July 3, 2003, edition of the Scorched Corners Peeper.

"The years between 50 and 70 are the hardest. You are always asked to do things, and yet you are not decrepit enough to turn them down." --T.S. Eliot

". . .globalization (is) a sort of infantilization of the entire human race. . .it has to do with the feeling that we were born to buy or sell." --Amos Oz, an Israeli writer, in an interview printed in the November, 2003, issue of Harper's magazine.

Unfinished Business

CBS Sports ran a program in 2003 called the "10 Greatest Coaches" in college basketball. I got to watch only sporadically. They ran them backwards, starting with Lute Olsen (Iowa and Arizona) at No. 10. Moving upward the list included Phog Allen of Kansas at No. 9; Georgetown's John Thompson (8); Pete Newell (California) at No. 7; Hank Iba (6); Kentucky's Adolph Rupp at No. 5; Bob Knight (Army, Indiana, Texas Tech) at No. 4--and about whom the CBS narrator inexplicably and inaccurately stated that " his standards are as high for his players as they are for himself." And then I never got to see another program. Presumably Dean Smith (North Carolina), Coach K at Duke, and Johnny Wooden (UCLA) would have been the remaining three. I'd pay money (a dollar or two) to have the complete list. (December 31, 2003)