This week, NewsBusters is presenting the Media Research Center’s “Best Notable Quotables of 2015,” our annual awards for the year’s worst journalism. Today, the “Pantsuit Patrol Award,” for boosting Hillary Clinton. (As always, thanks to our 39 judges who patiently reviewed dozens of quotes to select the very worst of the worst. And, the full list of winners can be found at www.MRC.org.)
Winning this category was longtime MSNBC political analyst Mark Halperin, a veteran of ABC News and Time magazine, and currently the co-host of Bloomberg’s daily politics show, With All Due Respect. Halperin was on MSNBC’s Morning Joe back on April 14, opining on how Hillary’s candidacy would be affected by her stop during a road trip to buy a burrito at Chipotle:
“The two words she needs are ‘fun’ and ‘new.’ And part of why yesterday was so successful is she looks like she’s having fun and she’s doing, for her, new stuff. We’ve never seen her get a burrito before. Fun and new.”
Next up: ABC and NPR veteran Cokie Roberts. During a roundtable discussion on ABC’s This Week back on August 2, Roberts was impressed by Hillary’s use of the “grandmother message” to sell her liberal positions on issues such as global warming:
“She does have a new message out from the last time, which is the grandmother message, and she’s using it very well. On climate change for instance, when she says, ‘Everybody says I’m not a scientist.’ She says, ‘I’m not a scientist either, I’m just a grandmother with two eyes and a brain.’ Now, that’s brilliant.”
In third place, Time magazine picked Hillary as one of the world’s “100 Most Influential People” as revealed in its April 27-May 4 double issue, and selected Laurene Powell Jobs (widow of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs) to write the effusive commentary:
“Hillary Clinton is not familiar. She is revolutionary. Not radical, but revolutionary: the distinction is crucial. She is one of America’s greatest modern creations. Her decades in our public life must not blind us to the fact that she represents new realities and possibilities. Indeed, those same decades have conferred upon her what newness usually lacks: judgment, and even wisdom.”
Finally, MSNBC Morning Joe co-host Mika Brzezinski on April 14 touted Hillary’s credential as “an experienced, accomplished woman” as she trashed Florida Senator Marco Rubio as “a little boy” compared to Hillary — “she eats him for lunch.”
“You measure up accomplishments, an ability to weather the storm, an ability to have had experience that might apply to this job....This is not even a conversation. She eats him for lunch....Hillary Clinton and Marco Rubio. There is no comparison. Maybe this is my ideology, but I’m sorry — but that’s a little boy, and that’s an experienced, accomplished woman who’s been elected to the Senate twice, who served as First Lady, who served as Secretary of State.”
Tomorrow: the “What Difference Does It Make?” Award for Denying Hillary’s Scandals. The full report, with 10 categories plus the judges’ selection of Quote of the Year, is available at: www.MRC.org.
