The Best Notable Quotables of 2009

[thundley4]

The 22nd Annual Awards for the Year's Worst Reporting

Welcome to the Media Research Center’s annual awards issue, a compilation of the most outrageous and/or humorous news media quotes from 2009 (December 2008 through November 2009).

To determine this year’s winners, a panel of 48 radio talk show hosts, magazine editors, columnists, editorial writers, and media observers each selected their choices for the first, second and third best quote from a slate of five to eight quotes in each category. First place selections were awarded three points, second place choices two points, with one point for the third place selections. Point totals are listed in the brackets at the end of the attribution for each quote. Each judge was also asked to choose a “Quote of the Year” denoting the most outrageous quote of 2009.

The MRC’s Michelle Humphrey, Karen Topper and Kristine Lawrence distributed and counted the ballots, then produced the numerous audio and video clips that accompany the Web-posted version. Rich Noyes and Brent Baker assembled this issue and Brad Ash posted the entire package on the MRC’s Web site: www.MRC.org.

Link

Winner

Melissa Lafsky

“Mary Jo wasn’t a right-wing talking point or a negative campaign slogan....We don’t know how much Kennedy was affected by her death, or what she’d have thought about arguably being a catalyst for the most successful Senate career in history....[One wonders what] Mary Jo Kopechne would have had to say about Ted’s death, and what she’d have thought of the life and career that are being (rightfully) heralded. Who knows — maybe she’d feel it was worth it.”
— Discover magazine deputy web editor Melissa Lafsky, who formerly worked on the New York Times’s Freakonomics blog, writing at the Huffington Post, August 27.

Runner-Up

Evan Thomas

“Reagan [at the 1984 D-Day commemoration] was all about America, and you talked about it. Obama is, ‘We are above that now. We’re not just parochial, we’re not just chauvinistic, we’re not just provincial. We stand for something.’ I mean, in a way, Obama’s standing above the country, above — above the world. He’s sort of God. He’s going to bring all different sides together.”
— Newsweek’s Evan Thomas to host Chris Matthews on MSNBC’s Hardball, June 5.

[SSG Snuggle Bunny]

What's amazing is they don't even feel embarrassed.

[NHSparky]

What's amazing is they don't even feel embarrassed.

Those whom the gods would destroy, they first make proud.

[Baruch Menachem]

The Evan Thomas remark is probably the reason Newsweek has lost 70% of its circulation over the last two years.  Not the remark itself, but the attitude behind it.

[dandi]

....[One wonders what] Mary Jo Kopechne would have had to say about Ted’s death, and what she’d have thought of the life and career that are being (rightfully) heralded. Who knows — maybe she’d feel it was worth it.

Too unbelievably stoopid to live....