"The reason for all this confusion and over thinking is that I can't square the comic chops and the evident intelligence of the people responsible for Ed with the dumbness of Ed itself: Is the show acting dumb on purpose (as the Hoosier host of Late Show often does), or is it just plain dumb?"
-Nancy Franklin, The New Yorker, on NBC's new dramedy, Ed, produced by David Letterman.
"We have never been able to rise to the level of the Bill Clinton bunko squad, where we can get money directly from a Riady family or someplace in China. However, I understand the executives of Fox are meeting with Time Inc. and are going to get some tips over there."
-Bill O'Reilly to Time magazine's Joel Stein when asked, "Does Fox News get money directly from the GOP or does it have to launder it first for the sake of the FCC?"
"There are people in Congress who regularly threaten us, and they are just venal enough to do something to make our lives miserable."
-Wendell Bailey, NBC chief technologist for advanced broadband planning, at a Dec. 6 Visual Communications Symposium in Murray Hill, N.J., explaining why NBC continues to broadcast HDTV programming.
"In focusing on a tattooed, leather-strutting, aggressively sexual segment of the gay community, this series creates its own danger, that of demonizing all gays as predators who are incapable of controlling their desires."
-Howard Rosenberg of the Los Angeles Times, on Showtime's Queer as Folk.
"You could say I'm a guy who loves his Absolut [vodka] and who loves to spend his Sunday mornings on one of his three BMW motorcycles. Besides, you can bet your chaps I wouldn't trust a religious organization as far as I could throw them."
-Bill Florian, owner of WNIB(FM) Chicago, quoted in the Chicago Sun-Times in 1995, the first time it got an offer to sell from Bonneville International Corp., operated by the Mormon Church. On Nov. 29, Florian and his wife sold the classical-format station to Bonneville for $165 million.
"You seem to stick to the issues, and you don't go after one's personal life. You don't go after cheap shots and I appreciate that. So I'll reward."
-Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura, pledging last Tuesday to drop his opposition to state funding for public radio and TV stations. From the Associated Press.
"I asked for a blood test."
-Richard Lester, director of the Beatles film, A Hard Day's Night, in The Newark Star Ledger, when told his film's style led to his moniker as "the father of MTV."
