“”
“I was attacked, Dan was attacked, CBS was attacked 24 hours a day by people who hid behind screen names. I may be a flawed journalist, but I put my name on things.”
Mary Mapes, investigative reporter who can’t figure out bloggers’ names
“”
“Do I believe that [Judith] Miller can’t remember who told her ‘Valerie Flame’s’ name? A child wouldn’t believe it. The more clever of my two basset hounds would be suspicious.”
“”
“How did Judith Miller get to be the martyr in all this? It was, after all, Valerie Plame who got caught in the cross fire between a vindictive White House and an angry diplomat. Someone might spare a thought for her. And if you want journalistic martyrs — well, there are a whole bunch of them in Iraq and Afghanistan right now, risking their lives to tell the story of their wars. Those are the journalists I stand in awe of.”
“”
“If the dome and Convention Center had harbored large numbers of middle class white people, it would not have been a fertile ground for this kind of rumor-mongering.”
Jim Amoss, Times-Picayune Editor, explaining why the media published unverified rumors ... blame the black people
“”
“I have searched my mind for some justification for why I can’t be reporting in a calm and heavily defended American city and cannot find one. I don’t like being told when I can and cannot walk on the streets and take pictures.”
“”
“Excuse me, Senator, I’m sorry for interrupting. I haven’t heard that, because, for the last four days, I’ve been seeing dead bodies in the streets here in Mississippi.”
“”
“Clearly, there is no place in modern reporting for this kind of unregulated, unprotected access to readily available facts, let alone in capriciously using them to illustrate areas of concern. We apologise unreservedly, and will cooperate fully in helping Google change people’s perceptions of its role just as soon as it feels capable of communicating to us how it wishes that role to be seen.”
“”
“I couldn’t even finish the show, and as I write this it is playing in the background, and I hear someone screaming in agony. I wasn’t aware the show was filmed in front of a live studio audience.”
“”
“On the left, we’ve always talked about the need to have an echo chamber. We believe the right has a whole media network, from talk radio to Fox News to Matt Drudge. The left doesn’t have that because the left doesn’t play well with others.”
“”
“I love that Aaron Brown, the way he sucks the flavor out of every word, and I love the way he mulls. No one mulls the news like Aaron Brown.”
“”
“American TV — particularly the all-news cable guys — is constantly hyping things up with talk of the potential for further attacks, while the BBC was trying to calm things down and reassure viewers that things were under control. As a psychiatrist, I have no doubt about the harmful effects of the former vs. the helpful effects of what I saw happening on the BBC.”
“”
“This latest example of your bad programming is what we consider the final nail in the coffin of your transformation from the pirate radio of television to a greedy, corporate sludge of unwatchable dead air.”
“”
“I think that a break from being in production will give the next generation (har. har. har.) of Star Trek creators an opportunity to get some perspective on Star Trek, and let whatever the next thing is return to what made Star Trek so great: Captains who bang green chicks in mini-skirts.”
“”
“While Mr. Cruise says that Mr. Lauer and I do not ‘understand the history of psychiatry,’ I’m going to take a wild guess and say that Mr. Cruise has never suffered from postpartum depression.”
“”
“The fact that a professional worldwide newsgathering organization is devoting
any time to an unpublished amateur like me should be seen as the equivalent of waving a white flag.”
“”
“No one expected the democratization of media to be pretty, but the attendant lens abuse is enough to break this cinematographer’s heart.”
“”
“Even we at Fox News manage to get some lefties on the air occasionally, and often let them finish their sentences before we club them to death and feed the scraps to Karl Rove and Bill O’Reilly.”
“”
“I think the world changed when the news media, during a big event, would turn to a bystander and ask him what he thought. I remember watching a news report once after someone was killed, and they asked a six-year-old how she felt. Suddenly the voice of the irrelevant party has equal importance to the relevant party.”
“”
“Calling on the individual man or woman on the street to make conclusive judgments is beneath journalistic dignity. If polls involving hundreds of people carry a cautionary note indicating a margin of error of plus-or-minus five points, what kind of consumer warning should be glued to a reporter’s ad hoc poll of three or four respondents?”
“”
“We’re in the middle of an ideological war against people who want to destroy us, and what have the most powerful people on earth become? Whining media bashers.”
“”
“We’re not saying it absolutely happened but we can’t say that it absolutely didn’t happen either.”
“”
“[Nancy] Grace may be blonde, but she is about as perky as a roach bomb, coating every story she reports — if reports is the right word for her prejudicial presentations — with bile and fury.”
“”
“Eason Jordan has just been tire-necklaced by a bloodthirsty group of utopian, bible-thumping knuckledraggers that believe themselves to be bloggers but are really just a streetgang.”
“”
“The ‘persistence of memory’ capability provided by technology, omnipresent video, and the web will no longer allow major leaders, as well as the rest of us, to ever escape what we say or do. Like the Biblical concept of the eye that sees all, and the scroll that records all, we are entering an era of informational accountability.”
“”
“I had a publisher here once who said that you hunt where the ducks are flying. And the ducks seem to be flying online.”
“”
“You gave each guest the benefit of the doubt, and in this way you exemplified an American ideal: you’re nuts but you’re welcome here.”
“”
“A few minutes later, a knock came at Mr. Klein’s door, and in came Nancy Grace, the blond, big-eyed, all-nostrils legal analyst, in puffy fur boots with furball tassels and a fur vest, Tammy Faye Baker as Barbarella.”
“”
“In the last 90 days Wizbang has been mentioned by the AP, the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal. In every story — including the one that focused on how errors are corrected in the blogosphere — the big media outlet made significant errors of fact.”
“”
“The FOX News Channel and its commentators stand in the way of the secular agenda. Demonizing us sends a message to others who may challenge the secular cabal. Do it and we will slime you badly. So that’s what’s going on. Another vicious battle in the American culture war. Somewhere Jesus is weeping.”
“”
“Then there’s been the parade of talking-head lawyers behaving with all the aplomb of World Wrestling Entertainment performers. If attorneys have long been saddled with reputations as ambulance-chasing ghouls, the Peterson case has recast them as camera-hogging fools.”
“”
“That’s why nobody sticks up for Christmas except me. Did Peter Jennings stick up for Christmas last night? I don’t believe he did. How about Brian Williams, did he? Did Rather stick up for Christmas? How about Jim Lehrer — did he? Did Larry King — hello — I love Christmas — did he? No.”
“”
“If I were Michael Moore, I would much rather rail against George W. Bush, who is much less likely to have me killed, than van Gogh’s murderer and the threat to creative freedom he brings ... Can you conceive of a filmmaker being assassinated because of any other subject matter without seeing a resulting explosion of reaction from his fellow artists in America and around the world?”
“”
“Schadenfreude is a dish best served daily, and if America is rich enough to give around $7 million a year to not one but three different humans who have a job the Brits accurately call ‘newsreader,’ then certainly we have more than paid for the right to laugh like pitiless hyenas at the sight of the great Dan Rather slinking away from his enviable post in half-shame, like an armadillo leaving an ant nest after mistakenly pissing on it.”
“”
“Mr. Stewart’s Howard Beal (of “Network”) outburst stood out because he said what a lot of viewers feel helpless to correct: that news programs, particularly on cable, have become echo chambers for political attacks, amplifying the noise instead of parsing the misinformation.”
“”
“At times, it felt as though whole swathes of America had suffered an epidemic of Tourette syndrome.”
“”
“We’ve wandered a long way from safe ground in the news business. Sometimes I wonder if we can find our way back.”
“”
“This must have been what it was like for the Catholic Church when movable type was invented. Until then, the Church controlled who would be the scribes.”
“”
“If this story were hot fudge, I would smear it all over my body and then roll around in nougat.”
“”
“You couldn’t have a starker contrast between the multiple layers of check and balances [at
60 Minutes] and a guy sitting in his living room in his pajamas writing.”
“”
“Even though I am a well-recognized liberal on many issues confronting our society today, I find it ironic that many human rights advocates and outspoken members of my own entertainment community are often on the front lines to protest repression, for which I applaud them but they are usually the first ones to oppose any use of force to take care of these horrors that they catalogue repeatedly.”
“”
“I remember, before I got married, I used to say, ‘I’m never going to take my kids to a Disney film.’ And that’s the statement of an ignorant person who hasn’t had kids yet, because if you have kids, that’s one thing you’re going to do.”
“”
“I think we should focus a lot of time on the wife race, because, as you remember, we nearly lost World War II when Eleanor Roosevelt told the reporter from
The Hartford Times Courant to sit on it. So, these are issues that we really should be talking about. And Teresa Heinz Kerry, for what it’s worth, yesterday I saw kill a hobo with her bare hands.”
“”
“When I talk, you guys have something negative to say. When I don’t talk, you have something negative to say. I’d much rather not talk and spend time with my son. Have a good day.”
“”
“The rush to sling mud is gaining momentum, and
Fahrenheit 9/11 marks the polarization of yet another form of media. One medium after another has found it profitable to turn from information to entertainment, from nuance to table-thumping.”
“”
“I wish more journalists would confront stars with drug problems and ask them, ‘Don’t your fans think you’re an asshole for getting high?’”
“”
“Do I lift, do I drive, am I bagging groceries at a very busy supermarket? No. I sit with a little pencil and if I have an idea, I write it down. It’s light work. I can do that forever.”
Mel Brooks, on retirement
“”
“And so my education has taken me pretty much as far as it could. I started out as an ambitious young woman inspired by politics and the media. I’ve ended up disenchanted with both.”
“”
“Awareness of an impending alien attack on Earth was nil until
Independence Day opened, giving viewers a first-hand look at a frighteningly realistic account of an alien invasion. The film was largely responsible for the resurgence of Apple Inc. and its Powerbook line of notebook computers, which were shown to have a devastating effect on the alien invasion fleet.”
“”
“Stories, like plants, die if they are not tended. So do the reputations of newspapers.”
“”
“My sense is that there’s a big backlash building against the media for flogging the Abu Ghraib photos, but being so delicate with the Berg images. People sense that there’s an agenda afoot here”
“”
“I actually think that we’ve gone soft on punishment in this country.”
“”
“The Times’s image as a bastion of quality had become even more important as tabloid television, Britain’s declining newspaper values, and the unsourced ranting of Internet bloggers polluted the journalistic mainstream of the United States.”
“”
“We don’t communicate in full sentences anyway. We don’t need all those words. And it allows us to go faster.”
“”
“This morning, I will practice an extra twenty minutes of yogic dis-
cipline, after which the pain is banished to a cul-de-sac in a remote suburb
of my conscious mind.”
Agent Dale Cooper, Twin Peaks
“”
“Everyone has opinions, but for those opinions to be worth something, they have to be based on facts so that we can come up with an accepted version of reality. That’s how democracy works. Some of the media are entering an age where facts are based upon opinion. And reality? Well, that all depends on whom you get your news from.”
“”
“Diane, last night I dreamed I was eating a large, tasteless gumdrop, and awoke to discover I was chewing on one of my foam disposable earplugs. Perhaps I should consider moderating my nighttime coffee consumption”
Agent Dale Cooper, Twin Peaks
“”
“When New York’s WNBC fired him for lewdness, Stern railed that network brass had conspired against him. When the FCC pelted him with fines - a record $1.7 million in 1995 - he staged giant protest rallies around New York City. In 1987, he appeared in a prisoner’s outfit and shrieked, ‘Is it spelled FCC or KGB?’ [...] Stern has threatened to leave radio forever when his contract expires in two years. He should leave. There’s nothing more pathetic than a provocateur waving his arms and saying, ‘See -- everybody still hates me!’”
“”
“What I always remind people is, radio and television and - as it happens - newspapers and magazines too, are advertising media ... When you have commercialism involved you have the kind of fear that advertisers are very afraid of offending some potential customer. They don’t want to lose a sale. So they have this need to inspect and clean up and watch the content in order not to hurt their own sales. It’s based on success at the cash register.”
“”
“Any complaints about infringing on [Howard Stern’s] ‘free speech’ and the role of the marketplace can be taken up with John Rocker, Fuzzy Zoeller, Trent Lott and Marge Schott’s ghost.”
“”
“We wish the New York Time’s Elisabeth Bumiller was running for president, just so that we could vote against her. She just turned in what may be the worst debate performance since Nixon sweated through his makeup. It’s the journalism equivalent of the Dean Scream, and if there was any justice in the blogosphere, someone would Photoshop a picture to show her strangling a kitten. Or, at the very least, hounding a kitten to death with idiotic questions and arrogant assumptions.”
“”
“But check your own pants. They are from China. All pants are from China now, aren’t they?”
“”
“They call it the death watch. She’s taking those pictures to see if I’m going to have a heart attack while I’m talking to you. It’s nothing that I’m saying that’s particularly interesting. She’s heard it all a dozen times. She just wants to see if I go, ohhhh, ahhhh ... Then she’ll have something,”
“”
“I’m from a little place called England ... We used to run the world before you.”
“”
“You can all relax -- I fired my agents a couple of months ago. My physical trainer killed himself, and I would thank the people at Universal and Focus, except there are so many people trying to take credit for this, I wouldn’t know where to begin.”
“”
“If you choose to work in TV news, you have to have thick skin. This isn’t ‘The Mary Tyler Moore Show’ anymore. It’s more like ‘Survivor.’ You have to do all sorts of things you thought you’d never have to do, and the stakes are high. At the end of the day, we’re all judged on how much money we made for the company.”
“”
“You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well ... You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the ‘wet streets cause rain’ stories. Paper’s full of them. In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read.”
“”
“The human race is faced with a cruel choice: work or daytime television.”
Unknown
“”
“I vow that as long as there are imaginary treaties signed by pretend delegates to create hypothetical peace, this fake news show will be there to cover it.”
John Stewart, on the Geneva Accords
“”
“Our notions of control, who’s an expert and what it takes to establish credibility, have been challenged, and the information dialog of the future may not resemble what we have known from the past.”
“”
“Burn your naked photos. Don’t deny their existence: Just find them, obtain them and destroy them. Otherwise, when you become famous -- and all of us know, secretly, in our hearts, that one day we’ll be famous -- your naked photos will follow you. And they’ll become famous too.”
“”
“One reason we have television is to provide a high-tech means of spreading the word when the human race has stepped back into the cave and reverted to barbaric primitivism. It can happen at any moment, it seems, and all this week we will be remembering the moment it happened 40 years ago.”
“”
“The deal is, he’s gonna interrupt me and then eventually he’s gonna tell me to shut up. That’s what he does, then on to the next thing. Equating any of that with a serious political discussion is like thinking pro wrestling is real.”
“”
“I feel like your concubine. You put money in my pocket. You put me in nice suits. You don’t tell anyone about me. You only call me when you need me.”
“”
“This morning I heard Katie Couric describe oral sex as ‘demeaning to girls’ for the second time this year. For some reason this drives me absolutely mad.”
“”
“The press ranks just below trial lawyers, telemarketers, and the French as a favorite piñata for surly Americans.”
“”
“Have you seen Britney Spears’ naked butt on the cover of this month’s
Esquire? Not too long ago, her handlers ripped into me for asking if it were true she had breast augmentation. How dare I ask such a thing of this innocent, all-American girl?”
“”
“Rush Limbaugh is a lame professional Swine and he makes a good living at it. He is like a hired Geek in some traveling backwoods carnival -- the freaks who bite the heads off Chickens -- but Limbaugh is a modernized Geek who thinks he can bite the heads off of people.”
“”
“In a situation like this, I always ask myself, what would my hero Edward R. Murrow think? And I think that Ed would think that this was censorship. Then I think about what my other hero, General George Patton, would think, and I think George would think that radio and television ought to be cleaned up, and if he were alive today, he’d take two armoured calvalry divisions into Hollywood and knock all those liberal pinheads into the Pacific! So as you can see, I’m a very confused man. And when I get confused, I watch TV. Television is never confusing. It’s all so simple somehow.”
Les Nessman, WKRP
“”
“He [Morgan Freeman] started off playing a chauffeur in ‘Driving Miss Daisy,’ and then they elevated him to head of the CIA, and then they elevated him to president and in his last role they made him God. I just wonder, isn’t Rush Limbaugh right to question the fact, is he that good an actor or not?”
“”
“I don’t want to be another dead comic.”
“”
“If there are three words that need to be used more in American journalism, commentary, politics, personal life ... it’s the magic words ‘I don’t know.’ ”
“”
“Bottom line: If you’re going to sling it ... then stand up to some fire. If not, shut up and don’t be ridiculous.”
“”
“It turns out that what a captive audience gets from a media megalith with a government-enforced subsidy is exactly what a beginning student of economics would predict: The BBC may be arrogant, but it’s also incompetent, not to mention surly and evasive when criticized.”
“”
“A lot more people will now read Franken’s book. It makes Fox look small, mean-spirited and pinch-faced. What they’re really trying to do is politically punish somebody for being critical of them. What more antidemocratic-free-speech act can we witness than that?”
“”
“It’s one of life’s many curiosities, though, that people who love to dish it out often can’t take it in return. It’s almost as if the DNA for big mouths and thin skins were on the same gene. Newt Gingrich used to be my favorite example of that phenomenon, but now Fox and its marquee star, Bill O’Reilly, have stepped to the front of the line.”
“”
“Reality is something you rise above.”
Liza Minnelli
“”
“I can’t bring people together. My job is to rattle the cages.”
Bill O’Reilly, “news” anchor
“”
“But you look at these tanned, blow-dried gym bunnies like Brian Williams, NBC’s next anchor—all they do is read off a teleprompter, and no one has a problem calling them journalists. In the end I really don’t care what I’m called, as long as it’s not blogger.”
“”
“Yes, you can take some stringer’s notes and compose a story, but the difference between that an a piece you wrote from your own research is the difference between a Penthouse Forum letter and your recollection of your wedding night.”
“”
“We’ve created this cottage industry in which it pays to be un-objective. It pays to be subjective as much as possible. It’s a great way to have your cake and eat it too. Criticize other people for not being objective. Be as subjective as you want. It’s a great little racket.”
“”
“Honestly, how clueless can you get? If the [
Atlanta Journal Constitution] wants to attract readers, it needs to do the obvious. It needs to hire good writers and publish reporting and essays of substance longer than 8 inches. Fat chance.”
“”
“’You were a bit flat there, Peter,’ he said. Again, I was astonished. The president of CNN was telling me I seemed less-than-enthusiastic reading Saddam Hussein’s propaganda.”
“”
“There is something inherently unsettling about a news organization that will hire a contract employee to take risks it will not let its own employees face, as ABC did when it took out its correspondents and drew up a contract with a young freelance reporter, Richard Engel. NBC’s ambiguous relationship with Mr. Arnett was even more disturbing.”
“”
“Fox News, meanwhile, has become like Voice of America with prettier anchors.”
“”
“When I get tired of the puffery of FOX News, I counter it with a bit of the defeatism they’re peddling over at NPR.”
“”
“For the first time a lot of people are amazed at how human war is. They see people in Iraq are like people in Tuscaloosa. People are becoming more highly educated without even trying to. If you’re alive today, you’re automatically brought into this global society. You don’t have a choice.”
“”
“I think that a lot of us -- me included, sometimes -- are spending a lot of time reading minute-by-minute reports that are fragmentary and often wrong, and not enough time thinking about the big picture.”
“”
“If truth is the first casualty of war, then CNN and BBC were having trouble in providing it whole, their reporters tossing up shards of the seen-and-heard into an informational whirlwind difficult to piece into a single sheet of reality. But French and German television were having an even harder time in underpinning their inclinations to describe things in a way that neatly fit their governments’ insistence that all this would not end well.”
“”
“The last time the French asked for ‘more proof’ it came marching into Paris under a German flag.”
David Letterman
“”
“If ever two people deserved to be together, for ever and ever, with no possibility of escape, those two people are Joe Millionaire and the Bachelorette.”
“”
“If you watch some of the battle scenes in the new ‘Lord of the Rings’ movie involving hordes of warriors fighting each other with swords, flails and crossbows, you realize it’s no different than the beer line at a Raider game.”
Michael Ventre
“”
“When the politicians complain that TV turns the proceedings into a circus, it should be made clear that the circus was already there, and that TV has merely demonstrated that not all the performers are well trained.”
Edward R. Murrow
“”
“It’s driving me insane. Make the ticker stop. You’re in the middle of a damn sniper story, and all of a sudden underneath it ... ‘Liza Minnelli’s first VH1 show to air.’ “
“”
“Television is an invention that permits you to be entertained in your living room by people you wouldn’t have in your home.”
David Frost
“”
“This is my idea: We combine my two favorite shows, ‘American Idol’ and ‘When Animals Attack.’ And you take some Celine Dion, Ricky Martin wannabes and you put them on a soundstage with a hyena with an ear infection.”
Joe Rogan
“”
“Advertising is not a means of supporting media. Media is an excuse for presenting advertising.”
“”
“Like weary Brezhnev-era Muscovites, the American moviegoing public will line up out of habit and compulsion, ruefully hoping that this episode will at least be a little better than the last one, and perhaps inwardly suspecting that the whole elephantine system is rotten.”
“”
“The reporters want the Big Story, their own Watergate. They’ll try to get it out of something as ridiculous as a blowjob in the Oval Office, and they’re equally happy -- delighted, really -- to turn a savage mass murder by savage terrorists into a White House scandal.”
“”
“But to lazy reporters, the world of blogs represents their worst nightmare: It’s an endless parade of experts in every conceivable subject they might write about, all equipped with Internet-style megaphones ready to pounce on errors.”
“”
“It’s theft. Your contract with the network when you get the show is you’re going to watch the spots. Otherwise you couldn’t get the show on an ad-supported basis. Any time you skip a commercial or watch the button you’re actually stealing the programming.”
“”
“If Clear Channel talks about free markets, they should have their heads dunked into a toilet bowl.”
“”
“O’Reilly calls himself a newsman, but he’s being too modest. In reality, he’s America’s favorite carnival barker, with guests who disagree with him as his sideshow.”
“”
“These silly people will do anything the director suggests because they want to be on television. They want to be somebody! I say, take ‘em and put ‘em in the Congo for four days -- see how they do over there.”
“”
“The media learned that war, unlike politics, does not depend upon the media to exist.”
“”
“Facing the press is more difficult than bathing a leper.”
Mother Teresa
“”
“I have spent half my life trying to get away from journalism, but I am still mired in it - a low trade and a habit worse than heroin, a strange seedy world full of misfits and drunkards and failures.”
Hunter S. Thompson
“”
“We’ve got our anti-US forces. Lots of them. We’ve taken the precaution of rounding them up and keeping them penned in newspaper offices.”
“”
“Web logs are infuriating because they are thoughtful alternatives to the self-important
New York Times,
Los Angeles Times,
Washington Post and their toady satellites, much of whose reporting has become hardly less biased than the bloggers’. Bloggers at least have the honesty to admit their biases up front. They don’t pretend to be objective.”
“”
“CNN, MSNBC and Fox News now spotlight more comely blondes than a Russ Meyer movie.”
“”
“Then there are the times it feels as if the raison d’etre of airing each night’s Olympics coverage is purely to get people to watch the next night’s coverage.”
“”
“We’re never going to win a war if we respond to reflexive anti-Americanism.”
Britt Hume
“”
“If Paula Zahn doesn’t think she’s there partially because she’s a good-looking babe, then she’s in Never-Never Land.”
Bill O’Reilly
“”
“The one function TV news performs very well is that when there is no news we give it to you with the same emphasis as if there were.”
David Brinkley
“”
“They said to get back to work. There were no jobs available for a man in the fetal position under his desk crying, which I would have gladly taken. So I came back here.”
“”
“I can give vent to my emotions. I’ve been doing a lot of crying over the murder of thousands of my fellow citizens. I could not do that if I were at CNN.”
“”
“I will say that Aaron Brown on CNN was the man I wanted standing on my roof, from whom I’d even buy insurance, while Bill O’Reilly factoring on Fox was a guy I wouldn’t let in to check the Con Ed meter.”
“”
“I remember thinking how strange it was to hear an anchorman on TV say this and that would remain closed but that Broadway shows would be open again. I felt a little embarrassed.”
“”
“In some ways, it feels as if Tuesday’s attacks blew a crust of rancid sugar off the nation; suddenly the vulgar nature of popular culture seems not only juvenile, not just banal, but wrong. Eminem: Shut up. Go away. Miss Spears: Put some clothes on, young lady, and stop writhing around with snakes. Grow up.”
“”
“You know, I think Hollywood celebrities have a big role to play. For example, on the environment, not too many people realize this, but Hollywood celebrities make up just .00000000001 percent of the world’s population ... and yet consume nearly 36 percent of its resources. Seventeen acres of rain forest are consumed every day by Barbra Streisand alone.”
Al Franken
“”
“People who are offended by shows that feature contestants vying for money and air time in bug-eating competitions, relationship tests and interpersonal warfare are already counting on a time-honored television tradition to deliver them from what they believe is a noxious plague: the propensity of network programmers to take every original idea and beat it quickly and thoroughly to death.”
“”
“Art is moral passion married to entertainment. Moral passion without entertainment is propaganda, and entertainment without moral passion is television.”
Rita Mae Brown
“”
“I love welcoming the young stars into show business because it reminds me of my own death.”
Steve Martin
“”
“Let’s suppose that this great idea works and the station actually starts making a lot money. Do you know what that can lead to, Andy? Memos. Before you know it, assigned parking spaces. Then chrome furniture, and lots of paintings of wistful children with big eyes. Believe me, I’ve seen it happen before!”
Dr. Johnny Fever
“”
“The TV business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs.”
Hunter S. Thompson
“”
“Mother always told me that journalism wasn’t a gentleman’s pursuit. I think at the end there she really had her heart set on me being a ... cowboy.”
Les Nessman
“”
“Trying to determine what is going on in the world by reading newspapers is like trying to tell the time by watching the second hand of a clock.”
Ben Hecht
“”
“It really bothers me when I see people doing my mother in drag. I mean, just imagine if you saw people doing that with your mother.”
Chastity Bono, Cher’s daughter
