Year End Awards: The Best Notable Quotables of 2013 | Media Research Center

Year End Awards: The Best Notable Quotables of 2013 | Media Research Center

The Twenty-Sixth Annual Awards for the Year's Worst Reporting

The Ku Klux Con Job Award
for Smearing Conservatives with Phony Racism Charges

Winner

Chris Matthews (74 points)

“What does your study tell you about the nature of the racial piece here of the Tea Party?...Is it sort of a resumption of the Old South, of the way things were before the Civil War, for example? Is it like that old dreamy nostalgia you get in the old movies, Gone With the Wind? Is it that kind of America they want to bring back or what? When there were no gays, where blacks were slaves, Mexicans were in Mexico? I mean, is this what they want?”

— Chris Matthews to author Christopher Parker on MSNBC’s Hardball, March 20. [MP3 Audio]

Runners-Up

Chris Matthews (68 points)

“The problem is there are people in this country — maybe 10%, I don’t know what the number, maybe 20% on a bad day — who want this President to have an asterisk next to his name in the history books, that he really wasn’t President....They can’t stand the idea that he is President, and a piece of it is racism. Not that somebody in one racial group doesn’t like somebody in another racial group. So what? It is the sense that the white race must rule. That’s what racism is. And they can’t stand the idea that a man who is not white is President.”

— Chris Matthews appearing as a guest on MSNBC’s PoliticsNation, May 15. [MP3 Audio]

Cokie Roberts (45 points)

“You know, having grown up in the Deep South in the era of Jim Crow, the difference is dramatic. And the fact that Andy Young was Mayor of Atlanta and John Lewis is a member of Congress from Georgia, is a great testament to the fact that when you do something like pass a voting rights bill, that it makes a difference. Which is why, at the moment, what’s going on about voting rights is downright evil, because it is something that really needs to keep going forward, not backward.”

— ABC’s Cokie Roberts on This Week, August 25. [MP3 Audio]

Joy Reid (25 points)

“Didn’t we do this before? Wasn’t it called ‘indentured servitude,’ where you come, and you pay all this money out, his money out — you’re not a citizen, but you’re legally allowed to work on the farm? This sounds like indentured servitude, is what they want....It is also a very ugly, sort of, ethnic argument, that they don’t want to add more brown people to the population of the United States underlying this argument....This whole premise is so racially ugly.”

— MSNBC analyst Joy Reid, who is also managing editor of the NBC-owned TheGrio.com, on MSNBC’s Now with Alex Wagner, July 11, reacting to suggestions Republicans might accept legal status, but not citizenship, to illegal immigrants. [MP3 Audio]

Let Us Fluff Your Pillow Award
for Obsequious Obama Interviews

Winner

Barbara Walters (76 points)

“Mr. President, Mrs. Obama. There is a photograph of you [hugging] that went viral, became the most shared photograph in the history of Twitter. How do you keep the fire going?”

— Barbara Walters to the Obamas in an interview excerpt shown on ABC’s World News and Nightline, December 26, 2012. [MP3 Audio]

Runners-Up

Chris Cuomo (45 points)

“What is more daunting to you: The prospects of protecting the free world, or dealing with a teenager and a near teen? What gives you more pause for concern?”

— CNN New Day host Chris Cuomo to Obama, August 23. [MP3 Audio]

Gwen Ifill (42 points)

“I interviewed Taylor Branch, the civil rights historian, for part of our series on the March on Washington yesterday, and one of the things he said was that you are a victim of partisan racial gridlock. That’s the way he put it. And you talked a moment ago about that a little bit. I wonder whether you think that’s true and, if so, what, if anything, the first African-American President can do to break through that kind of motivated gridlock?”

— PBS’s Gwen Ifill to President Obama in an interview shown on NewsHour, August 28. [MP3 Audio]

Sam Stein (22 points)

The Huffington Post’s Sam Stein: “With Speaker Boehner so far unwilling to hold a vote on a clean CR, what assurances can you give to those affected by a shutdown who are concerned about an even longer impasse? And how worried are you personally that your preferred solution to this — a clear CR at sequestration levels — may do harm to the nation’s economy and your second term agenda?”
President Obama: “Well, I mean, Sam, you’re making an important point....”

— Exchange at the President’s October 8 press conference. [MP3 Audio]

 

 

The Move Along, Nothing to See Here Award
for Denying Obama’s Scandals

Winner

Ruth Marcus / David Gergen (55 points)

Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus: “This has been really — and I know people are going to call about Benghazi and other things, but this has been really a very — and the IRS — this has been a really relatively scandal-free administration, first term and second term.”...
CNN’s David Gergen: “I particularly agree that — with Ruth that this has been a scandal-free administration by and large, and we should appreciate that.”

— During a discussion on NPR’s The Diane Rehm Show, November 4. [MP3 Audio]

Runners-Up

Martin Bashir (52 points)

“The IRS is being used in exactly the same way as they tried to use the President’s birth certificate...Despite the complete lack of any evidence linking the President to the targeting of Tea Party groups, Republicans are using it as their latest weapon in the war against the black man in the White House....This afternoon, we welcome the latest phrase in the lexicon of Republican attacks on this President — the IRS. Three letters that sound so innocent, but we know what you mean.”

— MSNBC host Martin Bashir, June 5. [MP3 Audio]

Lawrence O’Donnell (42 points)

“I do not believe what the IRS was reported to have been doing is an outrage. I believe that the IRS agents in this case did nothing wrong. Let me say it again. You won’t hear it anywhere else. The IRS agents did nothing wrong. They were simply trying to enforce the law as the IRS has understood it since 1959.”

— Host Lawrence O’Donnell on MSNBC’s The Last Word, May 15. [MP3 Audio]

Morning Joe (28 points)

Time’s Joe Klein: “The talking points were accurate.”
MSNBC’s Mike Barnicle: “For two weeks?”
Klein: “They were absolutely accurate.”
Co-host Joe Scarborough: “Were they really?”
Klein: “They were. It was a spontaneous demonstration by extremists....”
New York’s Jon Heilemann: “The administration was asked for nine days, ‘Was it an act of terror?’ The administration, Jay Carney, the President, declined to call it an act of terror.”
Klein: “He called it an act of terror the day after.”
Heilemann: “He really did not.”
Co-host Joe Scarborough: “Oh, my God, Joe. Seriously?”

— MSNBC’s Morning Joe, November 26, 2012 discussion of Benghazi. [MP3 Audio]

 

 

MSNBC = Mean-Spirited, Nasty, Belligerent Chris Award

Winner

Chris Matthews (89 points)

“They are political terrorists, and like all terrorists, including those who use bombs, their number one goal — their only goal — is to blow things up. [Senators Ted] Cruz, [Rand] Paul and Mike Lee are on a mission to destroy, shut down the American government, destroy ObamaCare, drive the country into default, destroy the U.S. credit rating. Terrorists with one purpose: To bring down, not just this administration but, let’s face it, the American government.”

— Host Chris Matthews on MSNBC’s Hardball, July 31. [MP3 Audio]

Runners-Up

Chris Matthews (33 points)

“I want to say a word about this Ted Cruz guy. Not since Joe McCarthy have we seen a senator with such sinister self-assuredness. The Senator from Texas knows who and what he hates. He hates everything about President Obama. His goal is to exterminate the entire Obama record, reject everyone Obama nominates for office....Cruz wants to kill the Affordable Care Act, which was legitimately enacted into law. He wants to bring the American government to a halt, renege on the national debt in order to get it removed. This is how he wants to be known. This is a brand he wants to establish for himself, even if it tears the government apart.”

— Chris Matthews on MSNBC’s Hardball, September 23. [MP3 Audio]

Chris Matthews (32 points)

“Why do we have so many know-nothings in the Congress who deny not just mankind’s history, or the obvious evidence of climate change, but the fiscal arithmetic that stares us in the face? What makes them characters in some ghastly, real-life remake of the Planet of the Apes, where the bad guys fear nothing more than science and other evidence of human progress?...What do you call this, this dangerous zig-zagging toward the abyss, with a nervous John Boehner being driven first to the cliff, while the zealots of the right wing scream louder and louder that victory lies in catastrophe — Kool-Aid for everyone, and defeatists will be shot!”

— Chris Matthews opening MSNBC’s Hardball, October 7. [MP3 Audio]

Chris Matthews (28 points)

“Is Ted Cruz the Republican Freddy Krueger?...’Let Me Start’ tonight with this grotesquerie that now presents itself as the righteous right arm of the Republican Party, this frightening Freddy Krueger that threatens this country with relentless shutdowns and credit defaults....”

— Host Chris Matthews opening Hardball, October 29. [MP3 Audio]

 

The Gunning for the Second Amendment Award

Winner

Piers Morgan (90 points)

Gun Owners of America executive director Larry Pratt: “I honestly don’t understand why you would rather have people be victims of a crime than be able to defend themselves. It’s incomprehensible.”
CNN host Piers Morgan: “You’re an unbelievably stupid man, aren’t you?...You have absolutely no coherent argument whatsoever....You don’t give a damn, do you, about the gun murder rate in America?...I know why sales of these weapons have been soaring in the last few days. It’s down to idiots like you. Mr. Pratt.... You are a dangerous man espousing dangerous nonsense. And you shame your country.”

— From the imported British host’s anti-gun tirade on CNN’s Piers Morgan Tonight, December 18, 2012. [MP3 Audio]

Runners-Up

Tom Brokaw (42 points)

“It reminds me a lot of what happened in the South in the 1960s during the civil rights movement. Good people stayed in their houses and didn’t speak up when there was carnage in the streets and the total violation of the fundamental rights of African-Americans as they marched in Selma, and they let Bull Connor and the redneck elements of the South and the Klan take over their culture in effect and become the face of it. And now a lot of people who I know who grew up during that time have deep regrets about not speaking out.”

— Ex-NBC Nightly News anchor Tom Brokaw on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, January 17, urging more restrictions on gun rights. [MP3 Audio]

Martin Bashir (36 points)

“As the gun lobby has armed its barricades since that horrific shooting at an elementary school in Newtown, one of the arguments that they continue to use against any kind of regulation is to unashamedly invoke the name of Adolf Hitler. Supporters of the NRA say that history proves tyrannical leaders begin by robbing law-abiding citizens of their firearms....Of course, for a nation hell bent on genocide, Hitler did not allow the Jews to possess firearms, but virtually everyone else was free to do so. Which I guess turns this story on its head. Because if anyone deserves to be equated with Hitler on the issue of firearms, then it’s not the President, it’s the NRA.”

— Host Martin Bashir on MSNBC’s Martin Bashir January 14. [MP3 Audio]

Bob Schieffer (25 points)

“Surely, finding Osama bin Laden; surely passing civil rights legislation, as Lyndon Johnson was able to do; and before that, surely, defeating the Nazis, was a much more formidable task than taking on the gun lobby. This is a turning point in this country....Unless we figure out a way to make sure that something like Newtown never happens again, we’re not the country that we once were.”

— CBS’s Bob Schieffer during live coverage of Obama’s gun control speech, January 16. [MP3 Audio]

 

 

The Obamagasm Award

Winner

(51 points)

“The Second Coming. America Expects. Can He Deliver?”

— Headline for Newsweek’s “Inauguration 2013” cover, January 18.

Runners-Up

Chris Matthews (41 points)

“Is Barack Obama going for it? Is he set on becoming one of the great presidents in history? I’m not talking about Mount Rushmore, but perhaps the level right below it. I’m talking, to use his word, ‘transformational.’... If he [Obama] were hearing us talking about him, maybe, mounting Mount Rushmore, getting up there with the great presidents, secretly, not what he would say to other people, what would he be thinking — ‘that’s exactly what I’m doing’?”

— MSNBC host Chris Matthews on Hardball, February 18. [MP3 Audio]

Bob Schieffer (39 points)

“This was a speech that had some music to it, as they used to say. He coined a few phrases in there, talked about the ‘unfinished task before us,’ sort of reminiscent of what Lincoln said in the Gettysburg Address.”

— Face the Nation host Bob Schieffer during CBS’s post-State of the Union coverage, February 12. [MP3 Audio]

Lionel Barber (36 points)

Financial Times editor Lionel Barber: “If we see 3.5 percent growth [in] 2014-15, no conflict with Iran, President Obama will go down as one of the top American presidents.”
Host Charlie Rose: “Really?”
Barber: “I believe so.... Solid economic legacy, growing the economy, no war abroad. He will have brought the troops home. I’m writing a biography already.”

— Exchange on PBS’s Charlie Rose, May 1. [MP3 Audio]

 

 

Damn Those Conservatives Award

Winner

Martin Bashir (76 points)

“One of the most comprehensive first-person accounts of slavery comes from the personal diary of a man called Thomas Thistlewood, who kept copious notes for 39 years....In 1756, he records that ‘a slave named Darby catched eating canes; had him well flogged and pickled, then made Hector, another slave, s-h-i-t in his mouth.’ This became known as ‘Darby’s Dose,’ a punishment invented by Thistlewood that spoke only of the slave owners’ savagery and inhumanity....When Mrs. Palin invoked slavery, she doesn’t just prove her rank ignorance. She confirms that if anyone truly qualified for a dose of discipline from Thomas Thistlewood, then she would be the outstanding candidate.”

— MSNBC host Martin Bashir on November 15, reacting to Sarah Palin’s comparison of excessive debt to slavery. Bashir apologized the following Monday, but MSNBC permitted him to stay on the air that entire week. After an extended Thanksgiving “vacation,” he quit on December 4. [MP3 Audio]

Runners-Up

Michael Eric Dyson (65 points)

“Clarence Thomas’s actions here today, though consistent, though tragic to me, are even more so in light of the bulk of decisions he’s rendered in the name of a judicial vote on the Supreme Court: A symbolic Jew has invited a metaphoric Hitler to commit holocaust and genocide upon his own people.”

— Georgetown professor and MSNBC analyst Michael Eric Dyson on MSNBC’s Martin Bashir, June 25, talking about the Supreme Court ruling on the Voting Rights Act. [MP3 Audio]

Richard Wolffe (29 points)

“She most certainly punished communities. She punished branches of government. She punished industries, she took a brutal, brutal look at what industries were working and just said, ‘We’re going to close it down.’...Margaret Thatcher, no question, she stood up to communism. As I said before though, she had an attitude to her domestic enemies that, frankly, was the antithesis of freedom.”

— MSNBC.com editor and ex-Newsweek correspondent Richard Wolffe on Now with Alex Wagner, April 8, a few hours after news of Thatcher’s death was announced. [MP3 Audio]

(24 points)

“With his outrageous and horrible comments, he’s really more of a benefit to the Democratic Party....He is offensive in every way you can be offensive. He is racism in the big sense in terms of whole classes of people. There’s sexism in the big sense, and then there’s the direct personal attacks, which are also unbelievable.”

— MSNBC’s Krystal Ball on PoliticsNation, August 1, talking about the 25th anniversary of The Rush Limbaugh Show. [MP3 Audio]

 

 

The Tea Party Terrorists Award

Winner

Charles Pierce (62 points)

“We have elected an ungovernable collection of snake-handlers, Bible-bangers, ignorami, bagmen and outright frauds, a collection so ungovernable that it insists the nation be ungovernable, too....We have elected a national legislature in which the true power resides in a cabal of vandals, a nihilistic brigade....We looked at our great legacy of self-government and we handed ourselves over to the reign of morons.”

— Ex-Boston Globe Magazine writer Charles Pierce in a post on Esquire.com’s “The Politics Blog,” October 1.

Runners-Up

Colbert I. King (46 points)

“The New Confederacy, as churlish toward President Obama as the Old Confederacy was to Lincoln, has accomplished what its predecessor could not: It has shut down the federal government, and without even firing a weapon or taking 620,000 lives, as did the Old Confederacy’s instigated Civil War....But don’t go looking for a group by the name of New Confederacy. They earned that handle from me because of their visceral animosity toward the federal government and their aversion to compassion for those unlike themselves. They respond, however, to the label ‘tea party.’ By thought, word and deed, they must be making Jefferson Davis proud today.”

— Washington Post columnist Colbert I. King in an October 5 piece headlined, “The rise of the New Confederacy.”

Jonathan Alter / Joy Reid (42 points)

MSNBC political analyst Jonathan Alter: “It’s like negotiating with terrorists....”
Host Alex Wagner: “Hostage takers, sure.”
Alter: “...They [Republicans] must understand that they will pay a price with patriotic Americans who understand that shutting down the government, which is what the Republicans are talking about, is an unpatriotic act....They have to feel the heat over and over again that they are acting against the best interests of the United States. That’s not happening, yet.”
MSNBC contributor Joy Reid: “To put it another way, when somebody is threatening to bomb the stadium, you don’t go out and make a speech about how you’re willing to dismantle the stadium in order to appease them.”

— Panel discussion on MSNBC’s Now with Alex Wagner, July 25. [MP3 Audio]

Paul Krugman (41 points)

“Something terrible has happened to the soul of the Republican Party. We’ve gone beyond bad economic doctrine. We’ve even gone beyond selfishness and special interests. At this point we’re talking about a state of mind that takes positive glee in inflicting further suffering on the already miserable.... Somehow, one of our nation’s two great parties has become infected by an almost pathological mean-spiritedness, a contempt for what CNBC’s Rick Santelli, in the famous rant that launched the Tea Party, called ‘losers.’ If you’re an American, and you’re down on your luck, these people don’t want to help; they want to give you an extra kick. I don’t fully understand it, but it’s a terrible thing to behold.”

— New York Times columnist Paul Krugman July 15, after the defeat of a 10-year, $940 billion farm bill. 

 

 

The Pantsuit Patrol Award
for Boosting Hillary Clinton

Winner

Tina Brown (68 points)

“The idea of losing Hillary has seemed especially unbearable at this political moment. It’s as if she has become, literally, the ship of state. She stands for maturity, tenacity, and self-discipline at a time when everyone else in Washington seems to be, in more senses than one, going off a cliff — a parade of bickering, blustering, small-balled hacks bollixing up the nation’s business. She’s a caring executive too, and that takes its own emotional toll. What a disgrace that John Bolton and his goaty Republican ilk accused Her Magnificence of inventing a concussion to get out of testifying at the Benghazi hearings. Bolton is not fit to wipe her floor with his mustache.”

— Newsweek/Daily Beast editor Tina Brown in a January 2 Web article.

Runners-Up

Chris Matthews (45 points)

Salon’s Joan Walsh: “I think if she [Hillary Clinton] runs again, she really can’t run as that front-runner. It cannot be that inevitability campaign that she ran in 2007, and she knows that. She’s got to be about the future.”
Host Chris Matthews: “If you’re watching, Madam Secretary, all three of us have brilliant ideas. All of us have great ideas. And I especially put myself in that group with Joan and David [Corn]. We know how to do this, we’ll get you in there.”

— MSNBC’s Hardball, February 25. [MP3 Audio]

Ronan Farrow (35 points)

“They’re nimble politicians. Also I think that they represent a style of honesty that the public craves right now.”

— Newly-hired MSNBC host Ronan Farrow talking about Bill and Hillary Clinton on The Cycle, October 29. [MP3 Audio]

Diane Sawyer (33 points)

“Last stand. Secretary Hillary Clinton, filled with fiery emotion in her last appearance before Congress....The indignation. And then, the tears in her eyes....It was a valedictory that showed her indignation and emotion as she ends this tenure on the public stage.”

— Anchor Diane Sawyer opening ABC’s World News on January 23 with a story on Clinton’s Benghazi testimony. [MP3 Audio]

 

 

The Kamikaze Award
for Disparaging Conservatives During the Shutdown

Winner

Roger Simon (48 points)

“Question: If Ted Cruz and John Boehner were both on a sinking ship, who would be saved? Answer: America.”

— Politico’s chief political columnist Roger Simon in an October 14 column.

Runners-Up

Thomas Roberts (46 points)

“Congresswoman, let me ask you though, when it comes to ObamaCare, do you hate ObamaCare more than you love your country?...Because you’ve taken the government hostage through a shutdown, and all the American people — you’re walking them to a cliff, the economy, and you’re going to push them over one-by-one, based on the fact that you don’t like the ACA. That’s all it is. You don’t like the Affordable Care Act.”

— Anchor Thomas Roberts scolding Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) on MSNBC Live, October 15. [MP3 Audio]

Tina Brown (39 points)

“The story of this political crisis is really, you know, the culpability not just of the Republican crazies, but of the Republican non-crazies. I mean, how did we get to the point where Mitch McConnell is Rand Paul’s bitch?... Where’s the heroism in your own party? I mean, why aren’t the moderate Republicans, you know, fighting back? We’re always saying why don’t, you know, the moderate Muslims fight jihad, but, you know, this is jihad.”

— The Daily Beast editor-in-chief Tina Brown interviewing Senator John McCain on October 10 for her Web site’s annual “Hero Summit,” a clip of which was shown later that day on MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell Reports. [MP3 Audio]

Martin Bashir (38 points)

“But RNC chair Reince Priebus did arrive with urgent word that the Republican National Committee will pay to keep the World War II Memorial open for a month....He notably did not announce that he will pay for children with cancer to get access to clinical trials that they’re now being denied. But I guess Mr. Priebus prefers war memorials to living children.”

— MSNBC’s Martin Bashir, October 2, two hours after Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid refused to support a House Republican bill to fund children’s cancer research, scoffing: “Why would I want to do that?” [MP3 Audio]

 

 

Let Them Eat Dog Food Award
for Freaking Out Over the Sequester’s Puny Cuts

Winner

Ed Schultz (64 points)

“Now you’ve got a budget of three and a half trillion dollars in this fiscal year. This will take $85 billion out of it. That’s damn near a third....You can’t take 30, you can’t take 30 percent of operational money out and expect to have the same product. You can’t do it! It’s impossible!”

— Radio host and MSNBC anchor Ed Schultz on his February 25 radio show. In fact, $85 billion is a puny 2 percent of the $3.5 trillion annual federal budget, not 30 percent. [MP3 Audio]

Runners-Up

Josh Elliott (59 points)

“Deadline day. Hours, now, until massive government cuts go into effect that could impact every American: jobs vaporizing, flights delayed, even criminals walking free.”

— Fill-in co-host Josh Elliott at the top of ABC’s Good Morning America, March 1. [MP3 Audio]

David Kerley (37 points)

“It sounds like a disaster movie: Childcare canceled for tens of thousands of kids, long airport security lines, flight delays with a shortage of controllers, and military cuts that will leave us ‘second rate,’ according to the Defense Secretary.”

— ABC’s David Kerley on World News, February 24. [MP3 Audio]

Rachel Maddow / Savannah Guthrie (34 points)

MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow: “In Prohibition, the government came up with the brilliant idea that to stop people from drinking, they would put poison in industrial alcohol. They didn’t do anything to stop the underlying problem of people wanting to drink, and so what they did was poison a lot of people. This [the sequester] is the same kind of thing. It’s supposed to be aversion therapy. It’s supposed to be so awful we won’t do it. But we’ve gone and done it anyway. It’s self-imposed crisis.”
Co-host Savannah Guthrie: “And part of the effect though is this poison, to borrow your metaphor, it’s not a poison that kills you overnight. Apparently it’s a slow, rolling poison.”

— Exchange on NBC’s Today, March 5. [MP3 Audio]

 

 

The Obama’s Orderlies Award
for Championing ObamaCare

Winner

Ed Schultz (60 points)

“This is the Web site folks, HealthCare.gov. If you go to this Web site, you will find out how easy it is to read, how easy it is to navigate all the information, all the basic questions, and all the direction you need to take to get involved, to get health care. This is a great guide, if I may say, for any of you out there who feel so confused by all of these right-wing commercials that are just permeating through your television screen.”

— Host Ed Schultz on MSNBC’s The Ed Show, September 30. [MP3 Audio]

Runners-Up

Krystal Ball (52 points)

“The GOP is saying to young people, ‘We would like to have the government stick an unnecessary transvaginal probe in you if you want an abortion, but when it comes to health insurance, don’t take any government help. Don’t go to the state or federal government-operated insurance exchanges to buy private insurance. Stay away. Stay uninsured. Skip that pap smear. Skip that tetanus shot. Skip that prenatal care. Skip that cholesterol test. And if you die an agonizing and unnecessary death, one that could have been prevented by the health insurance reform that bears the President’s name, at least you know your death will have not been in vain. You will have died to serve the noble and patriotic cause not of conservatism, but of hurting this President and denying him a victory.’...That is not conservative. It is a national disgrace.”

— Co-host Krystal Ball on MSNBC’s The Cycle, September 24. [MP3 Audio]

Jim Avila (34 points)

Correspondent Jim Avila: “Why is this happening? Because insurance companies, which offered cheap insurance like Julie’s, left out basics now required by ObamaCare, like hospital coverage, maternity, mental health or prescription drugs and are now forced to cancel those plans and replace them....Julie tells us that she doesn’t have hospital care on this cheap insurance plan. Is that dangerous?”
Consumers Union’s Lynn Quincy: “Absolutely. That’s an enormous hole in her coverage.”

— Talking about millions of insurance cancellations, ABC’s World News, October 29. [MP3 Audio]

Bob Schieffer (32 points)

CBS’s Bob Schieffer: “They’re going to pass this [measure to defund ObamaCare] in the House, I would assume, and it’s going to go nowhere in the Senate. When the Wall Street Journal compares them to, you know, those Japanese suicide pilots in World War II, I wonder if it isn’t — I think that’s apt. But even more apt, you remember — way on into the 1950s when they’d go into the jungles of the Philippines and they’d find these Japanese soldiers that thought World War II was still going on?”
Co-host Gayle King: “Good analogy.”
Schieffer: “I mean, you know, the war over ObamaCare is over. You know?...I think in the long run this is going to hurt the Republicans.”

— CBS This Morning, September 20. [MP3 Audio]

 

 

The Twisted Tweets Award

Winner

Cher (71 points)

“Go to dictionary,& look up he ‘C’Word,....next 2 the definition...you’ll see a Pic of Sarah PALIN ! NO...WAIT ...SHES UNDER DUMB C WORD”

— Singer/actress Cher in a November 15 posting to Twitter.

Runners-Up

Piers Morgan (50 points)

“An idea @Dloesch @benfergusonshow > you guys stand at the end of a range and I’ll get 100 blind people to fire away at targets around you.”

— September 12 tweet from CNN’s Piers Morgan directed at conservative radio hosts Ben Ferguson and Dana Loesch.

Cynthia Tucker (45 points)

“I knew some whites would have difficulty w/ a browner America but didn’t know they’d wanna destroy the country over it”

— Atlanta Journal-Constitution columnist and longtime editorial page editor Cynthia Tucker in an October 15 tweet.

Carol Costello (21 points)

“Hey kids! Rush Limbaugh wrote a book that’s just for you....Um. Oh. Seriously?

” “I’m a little sick now.”

— Pair of tweets posted by CNN anchor Carol Costello, September 5, reacting to a Huffington Post story about Limbaugh’s new book, Rush Revere and the Brave Pilgrims. 

 

 

The Audacity of Dopes Award
for the Wackiest Analysis of the Year

Winner

Melissa Harris-Perry (53 points)

“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.”

— MSNBC weekend host Melissa Harris-Perry in an early April “Lean Forward” spot. [MP3 Audio]

Runners-Up

Thomas Friedman (42 points)

“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.”

— New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, April 21.

Bob Herbert (29 points)

“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.”

— Former NBC reporter and New York Times columnist Bob Herbert on MSNBC’s Melissa Harris-Perry, April 27. [MP3 Audio]

Nancy Snyderman (27 points)

“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 — I don’t.”

— NBC chief medical editor Nancy Snyderman talking about Christmas during a “Today’s Professionals” panel segment on Today, December 11, 2012. [MP3 Audio]

Deborah Feyerick (27 points)

“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?”

— CNN Newsroom anchor Deborah Feyerick to Bill Nye “the science guy,” February 9. [MP3 Audio]

 

 

The Barbra Streisand Political IQ Award
for Celebrity Vapidity

Winner

Oliver Stone (45 points)

“What is Reagan’s real legacy?...He deregulated industries, eroded environmental standards, defiantly ripping down the solar panels that Jimmy Carter had put on the White House roof, weakened the middle class, busted unions, heightened the racial divides, widened the gap between rich and poor....As far as Reagan’s much-vaunted role in winning the Cold War, the lion’s share of credit goes to Mikhail Gorbachev — a true visionary and, it turns out, the real democrat.”

— Oliver Stone narrating the December 31, 2012 installment of Showtime’s ten-part Oliver Stone’s Untold History of the United States. [MP3 Audio]

Runners-Up

Michael Moore (43 points)

“Stop saying, ‘I support the troops.’ I don’t. I used to....But at some point all individuals must answer for their actions, and now that we know our military leaders do things that have nothing to do with defending our lives, why would anyone sign up for this rogue organization?”

— Left-wing filmmaker Michael Moore announcing his New Year’s resolutions in a December 31, 2012 article published by the Huffington Post.

Bill Maher (39 points)

“George Bush, over the Memorial Day weekend, held the Wounded Warrior 100K [bike ride], which was a kind of a celebration for wounded warriors who came back from Iraq, and I guess they walked or ran or something on their prosthetic limbs. And I found this to be nauseating. I mean, first he sends them off to war to get their limbs blown off, and then he has them over for a barbecue. This is like the Cleveland guy having a pizza party for those girls he had in his basement.”

— HBO’s Bill Maher on Real Time, May 31. [MP3 Audio]

Bill Maher (37 points)

“This has become a kind of conventional wisdom — that the Republican Party has gone so far right, Reagan himself wouldn’t fit in....Ronald Reagan was an anti-government, union-busting, race-baiting, anti-abortion, anti-gay, anti-intellectual, who cut rich people’s taxes in half, had an incurable case for the military-industrial complex, and said Medicare was socialism that would destroy our freedom. Sounds to me like he would fit in just fine....Both sides really should stop pretending he was something other than the man most responsible for our decline.”

— Bill Maher on HBO’s Real Time, June 7. [MP3 Audio]

Rob Reiner (32 points)

“Obama right now, where Obama is, is right around where Reagan was, right around where Nixon was. He’s no more left than those Republicans....Obama’s right around where Bob Dole is. They’re very similar, you know? There’s not much of a difference there.”

— Actor/activist Rob Reiner on the online “Overtime” after HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher, November 1. [MP3 Audio]

 

 

Quote of the Year

Winner

Martin Bashir

“One of the most comprehensive first-person accounts of slavery comes from the personal diary of a man called Thomas Thistlewood, who kept copious notes for 39 years....In 1756, he records that ‘a slave named Darby catched eating canes; had him well flogged and pickled, then made Hector, another slave, s-h-i-t in his mouth.’ This became known as ‘Darby’s Dose,’ a punishment invented by Thistlewood that spoke only of the slave owners’ savagery and inhumanity....When Mrs. Palin invoked slavery, she doesn’t just prove her rank ignorance. She confirms that if anyone truly qualified for a dose of discipline from Thomas Thistlewood, then she would be the outstanding candidate.”

— MSNBC host Martin Bashir on November 15, reacting to Sarah Palin’s comparison of excessive debt to slavery. Bashir apologized the following Monday, but MSNBC permitted him to stay on the air that entire week. After an extended Thanksgiving “vacation,” he quit on December 4. [MP3 Audio]

Runners-Up

Ed Schultz

“This is the Web site folks, HealthCare.gov. If you go to this Web site, you will find out how easy it is to read, how easy it is to navigate all the information, all the basic questions, and all the direction you need to take to get involved, to get health care. This is a great guide, if I may say, for any of you out there who feel so confused by all of these right-wing commercials that are just permeating through your television screen.”

— Host Ed Schultz on MSNBC’s The Ed Show, September 30. [MP3 Audio]

Thomas Friedman

“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.”

— New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, April 21.