Spanking voters for electing conservatives: “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. It’s clear that the anger controls the child and not the other way around. It’s the job of the parent to teach the child to control the anger and channel it in a positive way. 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.”
— In his daily ABC Radio commentary, November 14, 1994, after Republicans won control of Congress.
Those intolerant Republicans: “We begin tonight with what you could call zero tolerance....Today by the time Mr. Dole spoke by satellite to his party delegates, who were already gathered in San Diego, all notions of tolerance on the subject of abortion had disappeared from the party’s platform.”
— World News Tonight, August 6, 1996.
“The right to abortion has never been an overwhelming issue for women at election time. But this fight within the Republican Party has many women questioning how far this party will go to limit their rights.”
— World News Tonight, August 13, 1996.
Feminism helps us all (except maybe the unborn): “And, so we choose Betty Friedan because she had the ability and the sensitivity to articulate the needs of women, which means that she did us all a favor.”
— World News Tonight’s “Person of the Week,” February 19, 1988.
Marian Wright Edelman loves children: “[She’s] always on Congress’s back for coming up with too little money....From her point of view, as you hear, it is a matter of the whole country’s future. The children are fortunate to have such an advocate.”
— Making the head of the Children’s Defense Fund the “Person of the Week,” World News Tonight, March 29, 1991.
“Medical care was once for the privileged few. Today it is available to every Cuban and it is free. Some of Cuba’s health care is world class. In heart disease, for example, in brain surgery. Health and education are the revolution’s great success stories.”
— World News Tonight, April 3, 1989.
“Finally this evening, part history and part myth. It was 50 years ago this week that the People’s Republic of China came into being, Mao Tse-Tung its founding father. China’s going all out to celebrate the triumphs of the communist revolution and ignore its failures. And all the ceremony will also ignore the fact that China, today, is hardly a communist country.”
— World News Tonight, September 29, 1999.
"My (Canadian) mother was pretty anti-American. And so I was, in some respects, raised with Anti-Americanism in my blood, or in my mother's milk at least."
--Peter Jennings to David Letterman on The Late Show, September 6, 2002
Peter Jennings. May he rest in peace. And so may we.
