Among the Intellectualoids / Dr. Spinquote
Gold, Victor
Dr. Spinquote by Victor Gold I'm not going to disguise the fact that I despise Ronald Reagan. —Justin Kaplan, editor of Bartlett's Familiar Quotations (16th ed.), quoted in the Philadelphia...
...For the record, I consider Meyerson one of the brightest conservative bulbs around post-Reagan Washington, but in this instance he's missed the point...
...That—that happened to be the way it was...
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...Reference by President Carter to a harrowing incident while bream-fishing in the Georgia lowlands, circa 1979...
...President, 1977-81) • You can tell Kennedy I'm not going to kiss his ass...
...Comedian-mimic Joe E. Lewis...
...Recognize the matchless bromidity...
...Turnabout—a little lateral movement—is fair editorial play...
...JAMES EARL "JIMMY" CARTER (U.S...
...For that matter, so does Bernays...
...Kaplan's worst "abuse," his ultimate spin in bastardizing Bartlett's, isn't in the conservative but the liberal quotes he omitted...
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...I didn't think Diefenbach was a son of a bitch...
...For those who, as with the Mapplethorpe exhibit, have only heard about, but never actually seen, what Kaplan did to Bartlett's, following is "the selection" that Kaplan considers the essence of Ronald Reagan: • Government is like a big baby—an alimentary canal with a big appetite at one end and no responsibility at the other...
...The goddamn thing won't work expressing displeasure with.a recalcitrant voting machine, 1944...
...The reference was to labor union boss Sidney Hillman, not Sidney Hook...
...Killer Rabbit...
...On Sen...
...According to Miss Monroe, the same sentiment was repeated in the privacy of the presidential suite later that evening...
...My wife Eleanor hates war...
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...One month later, at the Democratic National Convention in New York, Carter did in fact "kiss his ass...
...12955 • The American Spectator March 1994 47...
...About that editor: Before his recent notoriety as the liberal grinch who stole Bartlett's, Justin Kaplan was best knownfor having written a biography of Mark Twain and married the daughter of Edward Bernays, the self-styled "father of public relations" and foremost American propagandist of his time...
...Edward M. Kennedy, campaign of 1976...
...46 The American Spectator March 1994 speechwriters...
...We're the party that wants to see an America in which people can still get rich...
...Clarifying the events at Chappaquiddick, to Roger Mudd, 1980...
...Kaplan contends that these three quotations reflect the best of Reagan's rhetoric because, as he puts it, the 39th president "could not be described as a memorable phrasemaker or thinker," in that he used (are you ready for this...
...ibid...
...Let them get their own broad...
...Carter is your typical smiling, brilliant, back-stabbing, bull-shitting Southern nut-cutter...
...a curious distinction coming from an editor who includes fifty-six quotations from John F. Kennedy and Franklin D. Roosevelt that more accurately belong to Ted Sorensen, Richard Goodwin, Sam Rosenman, and Ben Cohen...
...For popular variations on this line, circa 1941-45, note the following: • I will not send your sons abroad...
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...quoted in the Philadelphia Inquirer incoln and Teddy Roosevelt L aside, Republican presidents have caught very few breaks from the Judgment of History, and for good reason: the court is packed...
...President" at a Los Angeles gala...
...Roosevelt pledge, campaign of 1940...
...which in this case would mean convening a fresh panel of judges, to give Calvin Coolidge his due by defining presidential "greatness" in terms other than having led the country through periods of war, famine, pestilence, or wage-price controls...
...Every few years a distinguished claque of trendy historians hands down a dictum on which American presidents it considers Great and Near-Great...
...Two hints from the new Bartlett's: • No poor, rural, weak or black person should ever again have to bear the additional burden of being deprived of the opportunity for an education, a job, or simple justice...
...predictably, the letters find a home in the Dustbin of History...
...President, 1933-1945) • Clear it with Sidney...
...to friend Ben Bradlee, on Canadian Prime Minister John Diefenbach, 1962...
...FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT (U.S...
...Adam Meyerson's ongoing assault on the latest (16th) edition of Bartlett's Book of Familiar Quotations, edited by Justin Kaplan, is the most recent case in point...
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...JOHN F. KENNEDY (U.S...
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...The results are invariably the same: Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, and Franklin D. Roosevelt are judged Great...
...And finally, one last dazzler Dr...
...Jackson, T. Roosevelt, Wilson, and Truman are judged Near-Great...
...R eel's criticism of the new Bartlett's pales, however, against that of Meyerson, editor of the Heritage Foundation's Policy Review, who sees Kaplan's bias as "an abuse of cultural power" and has written me (along with others of what Kaplan would call our right-wing ilk) seeking memorable conservative quotations omitted from Bartlett's 16th, for possible inclusion in Bartlett's 17th...
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...expressing appreciation to popular film star Marilyn Monroe, on the occasion of her singing "Happy Birthday, Mr...
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...I have said this before, and I shall say it again and again and again...
...The first step in providing economic equality for women is to ensure a stable economy in which every person who wants to work can work...
...Tribute to the 38th president by AFL-CIO President Lane Kirkland, circa 1977...
...As the patriarch of all spin doctors, the father-in-law prided himself on cosmopolitan subtlety, the rapier thrust, whereas his son-in-law, a hot-eyed ideologue in pedant's clothing, is more given to the Atlanta tomahawk chop, e.g.: • / confess that I was less than dazzled by the Reagan presidency and its rhetoric, but it occurs to me now that I am doing his reputation a favor by the selection I made as general editor of Bartlett's...
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...With few exceptions, they lack what, in the parlance of the boxing Victor Gold is The American Spectator's national correspondent...
...It's difficult to believe that people are starving in this country because food isn't available...
...But more: Kennedy and Roosevelt aside, which recent president do you think is Justin Kaplan's favorite phrasemaker/thinker—the White House occupant who, to borrow Kaplan's term, most dazzles him...
...The perception, however, remains...
...Conservatives may not be "the stupid party," as some nineteenth-century Michael Kinsley once said, but they do have a bull-like penchant for frontal rather than oblique attack...
...Herewith my first offerings—an even dozen—to be added to the Carter, Kennedy, and Roosevelt files...
...Why, it's that old dazzler Jimmy Carter, deliver- ing lines which, as Nigel Rees suggests in his critique of the new Bartlett's, "one can hardly imagine ever having been quoted, or indeed, are ever likely to be...
...Is Ronald Reagan (with quotes dredged from the 1960s) to be portrayed by Bartlett's as the Reagan caricature of liberal myth...
...that great American, Hubert Horatio Hornblower...
...But as the English quote-collector Nigel Rees points out in his newsletter Quote-Unquote, never before has a respected volume of "familiar quotations which have become household words" been so arbitrarily shaped to fit the political spin of its editor...
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...on the proposed nomination of Harry Truman as his running mate, 1944...
...I hate war...
...Never before has a mere reference book—even one treasured by desperate Clinton speechwriters and over-reaching doctoral candidates—produced such a ruckus...
...But there is no denying their contribution to what Bob Tyrrell aptly terms the Kultursmog, in this case a port-skewed perception of what the American people ought to look for in choosing a president...
...That these renditions are empirically inane, on the order of college football polls, goes without saying...
...t's an old story...
...Predictably, conservatives rail against these putative judgments, firing letters of dissent to the usual suspects: Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., James MacGregor Burns, the New York Times, the Washington Post...
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...President, 1961-63) • Thank you, Marilyn...
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...What Bartlett's publishers should be deluged with are liberal quotations-in-kind...
...I thought he was a prick...
...On Senator Hubert Horatio Humphrey, acceptance speech, 1980...
...Your boys are not going to be sent into any foreign wars...
...Spinquote omitted from Bartlett's 16th edition that positively has to be included in Bartlett's 17th: EDWARD MOORE "TED" KENNEDY (U.S...
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...Senator, 1962- ) • On that, there's—the problem is—from that night—I . . . I found the conduct, the behavior, almost sort of beyond belief myself, I mean, that's why it's been—but I I. . . think that's, that's—that's the way it was...
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...gym, is called "lateral movement...
...Justin Kaplan, responding to a critical Wall Street Journal editorial...
Vol. 27 • March 1994 • No. 3
