Tim Blair

QUOTES OF 2003 - MAY

• "Twenty-five pieces is not the same as 170,000." -- Colonel Matthew F. Bogdanos corrects a certain "looted museum" rumour

• "I was wrong. The flag that was draped over the statue of Saddam did not come from the Pentagon." -- me, to Media Watch

• "There's only one solution to preventing him taking the civilised world down his own private S-bend - take him out immediately; one bullet through the forehead at point blank, and all of a sudden the gene pool will be that little bit cleaner." -- a contributor to The Sydney Morning Herald’s online forum

• "Only the state can buy the things that make people happiest.” -- The Guardian’s Polly Toynbee

• "Iraqis of all faiths, ethnic backgrounds and political persuasions were liberated by young men and women who came from the other side of the world -- from California and Wyoming, from New York, Glasgow, London, Sydney and Gdansk to risk their lives, and for some to die, so that my people can live in dignity." -- Iraqi poet Awad Nasir

• "We don't want biased news over here." -- editorial, The Guardian

• "Not so long ago, I dreaded this. And now, I have to admit, I was wrong." -- The Age’s Joanna Murray-Smith revises her opinion of the war

• "Fuckin' no-brainer, kid." -- Dennis Miller responds to a fan’s comment on his support for George W. Bush

• "Australians, Americans, whatever - they are all white people." -- Bali bombmaker Ali Imron on his intended victims

• "My favourite spectator sport is watching people who should know better searching for something (and often claiming to find it) where it never could be. Women claiming to find feminism in Islam is a good one." -- Julie Burchill

• "There was the president, landing on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln, stepping out of a fighter jet in that amazing uniform, looking - how to put it? - really hot. Also presidential, of course. Not to mention credible as commander in chief. But mostly 'hot,' as in virile, sexy and powerful." -- the WSJ’s Lisa Schiffren

• "It's a huge black eye." -- Arthur Sulzberger Jr., publisher of The New York Times, on a scandal involving a black reporter who may have been hired because he was black, promoted because he was black, and whose errors may have been overlooked because he was black

• "WHO the F-CK is that man? He's a f-cking traitor. Get his ass off the stage. Oh, F-CK him. Who IS that fat f-ck anyway?" -- Joan Collins critiques Michael Moore's Academy Award speech

• "Yesterday's budget continues the trend to turning Australia into a less caring and sharing society, into a country of individuals." -- SMH columnist Adele Horin

• "The Government should introduce programs to help all those unfortunate enough to possess arts degrees ... Re-education cafes could be set up with courses in basic psychology, science and economics. We need cheap, large-type anthologies of Adam Smith to show the baby boomers there is life after Noam Chomsky." -- The Daily Telegraph’s Michael Duffy

• "The other day they burned a Walgreens Drug store because the candy aisle had Pixie Stix. Why, you ask? Because they rhyme with Dixie Chicks! That's how bad it's gotten." -- James Lileks

• "Palestine, the home of the Jessica Lynch family, is not 'a hellish war-torn wasteland filled with a million stories of pain and suffering at the hands of murderous Zionists.' It is a small farming community in West Virginia." -- Randal Robinson tries his hand at a New York Times-style correction

• "The people who run the New York Times are insane. Really insane, like those bums who stagger down the street making chicken noises while their filthy pants slide ever downwards." -- Ken Layne

• "It has always been easy to oppose a war, but this time I realised that people were really suffering under [Saddam]. I've been in the German prison camps, and you could fit all of the combined concentration camps just into Abu Ghraib." -- former opponent of the war George Gittoes changes his mind after visiting Iraq

• "My first car was a doggy doo-doo brown 1972 Ford Pinto - the model US consumer advocate Ralph Nader infamously dubbed 'unsafe at any speed.'" -- The Australian’s Susan Maushart doesn’t know her Pintos from her Corvairs

• "Only last week George W. Bush was boasting that al-Qaeda was on the run, 'not a problem any more'." -- SMH columnist Mike Carlton recycles Maureen Dowd

• "They come here, people such as Americans, the Jews and their allies. They want to colonise, not just to play. They want to control Muslim people. They make us weak and they take our people to bars." -- Bali bomber Amrozi

• "When OJ Simpson was chased through Los Angeles, it was in a Lincoln Navigator." -- The Guardian’s Gary Younge doesn’t know his Navigators from his Broncos

• "You tell the big lie by carefully selecting only the small, isolated truths, linking them in such a way that that advance the bigger lie by painting a picture inside the viewer's head. The Ascended High Master of this Dark Art is Noam Chomsky." -- Bill Whittle

• "Bin Laden's upbringing in Saudi Arabia as one of 50 children of a wealthy Yemeni builder, his brief dalliance with a western life, his discovery of piety, his growth as a leader and finally his turn to anti-western terrorism, all add up to a great story." -- the SMH’s Bernard Zuel

• "Surprised to see you crawl from under the debris so quickly." -- ever-charming Media Watch executive producer Peter McEvoy

• "Gun, gun for you. Don't forget (this is a) terrorist country. Life for life. Soul for soul. I am a killer for you.” -- Bali bomber Imam Samudra

• "I'm a symbol of is what's wrong with The New York Times. And what's been wrong with The New York Times for a long time." -- Jayson Blair

• "This eulogy owes nothing to artifice or chance. It has ripened inside me since childhood. From the bottom of my pockets, stuck to the back of my smock, hidden in the corner of abacuses, poetry gushed out." -- French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin

• "[Robert Byrd’s] admirable background stands in splendid contrast to the slippery neo-conservative spivs and silver-spooners who infest the Republican Administration of George W. Bush." -- SMH columnist Mike Carlton, forgetting that Byrd’s admirable background includes membership of the KKK

• "When Amrozi himself explains he just wants Westerners ‘finished’ for something as trivial as drinking in a bar on a Hindu island, or for being Jewish, then it's time to stop negotiating and start shooting." -- the Herald Sun’s Andrew Bolt

• "Australia joined in separating East Timor from Indonesia." -- one reason why Bali bomber Imam Samudra hates Australia

• "I'm from Chicago." -- Donald Rumsfeld explains why he doesn’t get modern dance

• "I'd do Tim just to say thanks for all of his Margo Kingston posts." -- comment of the year, from Jackie D

• "The Bush administration is the most radical - in a positive sense - in its approach to Africa since Kennedy." -- Bob Geldof

• "Dickhead. Next question?" -- The Mirror’s Sue Carroll, asked for her opinion on fellow Mirror columnist John Pilger

• "Now that you’ve tasted it, you’re one of them." -- SMH economics writer Ross Gittins, after I drank wine offered by the ABC’s Jennifer Byrne

Posted by Tim Blair at December 24, 2003 03:22 PM