TimesWatch Quotes of the Year for 2005

You gotta love the folks at Timeswatch.org. These guys do an excellent job of keeping an eye on the NYTimes. This years list of quotable quotes was the best I have seen to date. Here are a few I particularly enjoyed.

"And in the shadow of the bleak and often horrific news emerging from Iraq nearly every day, historians and political experts are finding at least a wan hope in those imperfect historical analogies. Even in the absence of a sudden and dramatic shift on the battlefield toward a definitive victory, there may still be a slight opening, as narrow as the eye of a needle, for the United States to slip through and leave Iraq in the near future in a way that will not be remembered as a national embarrassment."
-- From reporter James Glanz's November 27 story for the Week in Review section.

What did James say??? "A wan hope in those imperfect historical analogies? James, I certainly hope "you continue your workman-like efforts to endeavour to work diligently". Whatever that means.

"A nostalgic insider turned outsider can still offer insights, however, and the most useful is that cable news outlets were ludicrously rah-rah during the invasion of Iraq and that embedded reporters felt a credibility-damaging kinship with soldiers."
-- From Ned Martel's February 4 review of a documentary by left-wing media critic Danny Schechter.

You put your left foot in...you put your left foot out...you put your left foot in and you shake it all about. You do the Hokey Pokey and you turn yourself around. That's what it's all about. Ridiculous.

"Nonetheless, [Bush campaign strategist Mark] McKinnon said that Mr. Bush had not gone so far as to include on his playlist 'Fortunate Son,' the angry anti-Vietnam war song about who has to go to war that [John] Fogerty sang when he was with Creedence Clearwater Revival. ('I ain't no senator's son....Some folks are born silver spoon in hand.') As the son of a two-term congressman and a United States Senate candidate, Mr. Bush won a coveted spot with the Texas Air National Guard to avoid combat in Vietnam."
-- Elisabeth Bumiller's April 11 "White House Letter" on the songs on Bush's iPod.

Guess what, Superfreak by the late Rick James ain't on his playlist either. I guess 'Liz never asked John McCain what was on his silver-spoon-pod. Idiot.

"My own sense is that Mao, however monstrous, also brought useful changes to China….But Mao’s legacy is not all bad. Land reform in China, like the land reform in Japan and Taiwan, helped lay the groundwork for prosperity today. The emancipation of women and end of child marriages moved China from one of the worst places in the world to be a girl to one where women have more equality than in, say, Japan or Korea. Indeed, Mao’s entire assault on the old economic and social structure made it easier for China to emerge as the world’s new economic dragon….In the same way, I think, Mao's ruthlessness was a catastrophe at the time, brilliantly captured in this extraordinary book -- and yet there's more to the story: Mao also helped lay the groundwork for the rebirth and rise of China after five centuries of slumber."
-- Foreign policy reporter turned columnist Nicholas Kristof reviewing a new Mao biography in the October 23 Book Review.

Are you Freaking kidding me? Land reform? Ask those in Russia as they watch a toxic plume migrate through their drinking water supply what they think about China's land reform. Selling a book are we? To whom?

"The [Amnesty International] report, released May 25, placed the United States at the heart of its list of human rights offenders, citing indefinite detentions of prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib in Iraq and secret renditions of prisoners to countries that practice torture. But it is the use of the word gulag, a reference to the complex of labor camps where Stalin sent thousands of dissidents, that has drawn the most attention."
-- Lizette Alvarez, June 4. It's estimated some 2.7 million perished in Stalin's slave labor camps.

This chick brings shame to the words "community college."

I could go on and on, but go to timeswatchdotcom and get all of the action live.

Thanks to the Mudville Gazette for their Open Post.