The Top Quotes of the Year in 2009

Below, in chronological order, are my picks for the top quotations of 2009 — the quotes that seemed to get the most attention during the past year in the news and elsewhere.

There were more than would fit into a top 10 list. So, I’ll call them The Top 10 Quotes of 2009 – Plus a Few.

“I hope he fails.” Rush Limbaugh Conservative talk show host Comment about newly-elected President Barack Obama, on his radio show, January 16, 2009.

“I do believe that marriage should be between a man and a woman, no offense to anybody out there. But that’s how I was raised and I believe that it should be between a man and a woman.” Carrie Prejean Miss USA beauty pageant contestant and winner (later fired) Answer when asked by pageant judge Perez Hilton whether she believed in gay marriage, during the Miss USA contest, April 19, 2009.

“My hope is, is that as a consequence of this event, this ends up being what’s called ‘a teachable moment.’” President Barack Obama Comment to the press on July 24, 2009 about the uproar over his remark two days earlier that “The Cambridge police acted stupidly” when they arrested Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates, Jr. President Obama’s use helped popularize the already existing term “teachable moment.”

“Obama...has a deep-seated hatred for white people...This guy is, I believe, a racist.” Glenn Beck Conservative talk show host Commenting on President Obama’s comments about the arrest of Henry Louis Gates, in a discussion on the FOX News Network, July 28, 2009.

“The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s ‘death panel.’” Sarah Palin Former Alaska Governor Post on her Facebook site on August 7, 2009, which first brought attention to the term “death panels.” She then gave it even more exposure in an op-ed she wrote that was published in the Wall Street Journal on September 8, 2008.

“We should not have a government program that determines if you're going to pull the plug on grandma.” Republican Senator Chuck Grassley Adding a new catchphrase to the rhetoric used to attack the Democrats’ health care plan, at a town meeting in his home state of Iowa on August 12, 2009.  Four days later, President Obama publicly scoffed at claims that he or the Democrats wanted to “pull the plug on grandma” or create “death panels.”

“You lie!” Republican Congressman Joe Wilson The instantly infamous words yelled by the South Carolina Congressman as President Barack Obama was addressing Congress on the health care plan, on September 9, 2009.

“I’m really happy for you, I’mma let you finish, but Beyonce had one of the best videos of all time.” Musician Kanye West His rude rant after grabbing the microphone from award winner Taylor Swift at the MTV Video Music Awards on September 13, 2009 (creating the much-parodied meme “I’mma let you finish”).

“I know it wasn’t ‘rape’ rape. I think it was something else, but I don’t believe it was ‘rape’ rape.” Actress Whoopi Goldberg Defending director Roman Polanski on ABC-TV’s show The View, on September 28, 2009, by attempting to portray his admitted rape of a thirteen year old girl in 1977 as, er, something else.

“If you get sick, America, the Republican health care plan is this: Die quickly.” Democratic Congressman Alan Mark Grayson Remark by the Florida Congressman on the floor of the House on September 29, 2009, making “die quickly” the controversial Democratic counterpoint to “death panels,” “pull the plug on grandma” and “You lie!”

“Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels.” British “Supermodel” Kate Moss Her answer when asked if she had a motto, in an interview published by the “fashion Bible” Women’s Wear Daily on November 13, 2009, prompting righteous outrage from anti-anorexia groups.

“We have a social purpose...[I’m] doing God’s work.” Lloyd Blankfein Chairman and CEO of the investment firm Goldman Sachs Defending himself and the financial industry, despite their role in creating the current financial crisis, in an interview published by The Sunday Times on November 8, 2009.

“The system worked.” Janet Napolitano Secretary of Homeland Security Her comment in a CNN interview on December 27, 2009 about the Nigerian terrorist who managed to board a plane with explosives, but failed in his attempt to blow up a planeload of Americans on Christmas Day. Napolitano’s absurd assessment was quickly repudiated by President Barack Obama.

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“Wise Latina” and “Too big to fail” – two top quotes of 2009 that were actually uttered years ago

Every year, a number of “quotes of the year” lists are published.

My favorite is the annual list issued by Fred R. Shapiro, editor of the excellent Yale Book of Quotations.

But my own picks for the top quotes of 2009 include some that are not on Fred’s list.

Two of them share an unusual characteristic. They were both made famous in 2009, but they are not new quotes.

In late May of 2009, President Barack Obama nominated Sonia Sotomayor, a judge of Hispanic descent, to serve on the United States Supreme Court.

Republicans and conservative talk show hosts raised various objections and issues, hoping to prevent her confirmation by the Senate. The thing they dug up that seemed to get the most media attention was a comment Sotomayor had made eight years previously.

In a speech at the Berkeley School of Law on October 26, 2001, Sotomayor noted that gender and cultural background affect any judge’s view. However, she added:

“I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.”

Only a handful of people had ever heard of the quote until it was used in the debate over her nomination in 2009.

When conservatives claimed the quote showed Sotomayor was a reverse racist, it created a media firestorm.

Sotomayor was confirmed anyway. But the hubbub over her “wise Latina” remark made it one of the most notable quotations of 2009 — even though she’d said it years before.

The second notable quote that had a delayed rise to fame in 2009 is the phrase “too big to fail.”

It gained wide use during the past year to defend and deride the recent government bailouts of some of the country’s largest financial firms. But it was actually coined 25 years ago, during another government bailout.

In 1984, Continental Illinois — the seventh largest bank in the country at the time — faced insolvency due to overly aggressive lending policies.

The bank’s lobbyists and federal financial regulators warned that, if Continental were allowed to “fail,” it would threaten dozens of other banks and the entire economy.

Therefore, they argued, Continental should be bailed out with taxpayers’ money.

And, it was. Continental ultimately received $4.5 billion from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC).

On September 19, 1984, during Congressional hearings on the bailout, Congressman Stewart B. McKinney (R-Conn) observed wryly:

“Let us not bandy words. We have a new kind of bank. It is called too big to fail. TBTF, and it is a wonderful bank.”

Continental Illinois survived thanks to the government’s largesse. In 1994, it was acquired by Bank of America.

McKinney’s “too big to fail” also survived. But, but until, recently it was an obscure phrase known primarily to financial insiders.

In the most recent bank crisis, financial institutions received $700 billion from the federal Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), because they were deemed “too big too fail.” One of them was Bank of America.

The TARP funds first began to be disbursed by the Bush administration late in 2008. This year, as the Obama administration continued and expanded the bailout, the widespread use of “too big to fail” made it (in my opinion) one of the top quotes of 2009.

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How the 1965 Watts riots led to a new holiday – and added a new word to our language…

Kwanzaa is a Swahili word that entered the American lexicon in 1966.

It’s the name of the African-American holiday celebration that starts on December 26 and lasts for seven days.

Kwanzaa was created by Dr. Maulana Karenga, a professor and Chairman of the Department of Africana Studies at California State University at Long Beach.

After the terrible 1965 Watts riots in Los Angeles, Karenga wanted to find a new way of bringing African-Americans together as families and as a community.

His research on traditional African “first fruit” harvest ceremonies gave him the idea for Kwanzaa. And, on December 26, 1966, he organized and launched the first Kwanzaa celebration.

Karenga took the name from the Swahili phrase matunda ya kwanza, which means “first fruits.”

He then mixed together and adapted several African traditions to devise the week-long Kwanzaa celebration — becoming one of the few people in history to establish a whole new holiday tradition.

Today, Kwanzaa is observed by millions of people of African descent in America, Canada and other countries.

Since Kwanzaa is a cultural, rather than a religious holiday tradition, many of them celebrate both Christmas and Kwanzaa.

On each night of Kwanzaa week, families join together to light one of the seven candles on a special candleholder (called the Kinara), and discuss one of seven basic principles Dr. Karenga designated as important to honoring their shared African heritage and strengthening family and community bonds.

Those basic principles are unity, self-determination, collective work and responsibility, economic cooperation, purpose, creativity, and faith.

I’ve heard some people scoff at Kwanzaa.

And, there are critics of Dr. Karenga, who has an admittedly controversial past (see the Wikipedia entry about him).

But it’s hard to dispute the fact that the principles he designated for African-Americans to focus on during Kwanzaa are worthy values for any family or cultural group to think about and celebrate.

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Further reading…

The famous Christmas song written by a Jewish songwriter that ended the Vietnam War

I like odd facts. And, there are a number of them about the song “White Christmas” — a song with lyrics that are now cited in many books of quotations.

Let’s start with the fact that it was written by a Jewish songwriter, Irving Berlin (1888-1989).

Berlin’s original name was Israel Baline. He was born in Russia, where his father was a cantor at the local synagogue and a Shochet — a ritual slaughterer of animals to make kosher meat. The family left Russia in 1893 to escape the violent pogroms against Jews and emigrated to America, settling in New York City.

By the age of 20, the young immigrant was on his way to becoming one of the greatest songwriters in modern history, under his new Americanized name, Irving Berlin. 

Berlin wrote “White Christmas” sometime in the late 1930s. Bing Crosby introduced it publicly on his NBC radio show, The Kraft Music Hall, on Christmas Day, December 25, 1941.

But the song first gained true national fame the following year, when it was sung by Crosby in Holiday Inn, a movie full of Berlin songs that was released on August 4, 1942.

In the fall of ‘42, Decca released a single of Crosby singing “White Christmas.”

It became a huge hit and a sentimental favorite of American troops and their families during World War II.

The recording of the song we’re all familiar with today, however, is not the 1942 version.

In 1947, the Decca master of Crosby’s 1942 recording had been used to make so many records that it was literally worn out. So, Crosby recorded the song again on March 19, 1947.

That version of “White Christmas” went on to become the biggest selling recording in history.

According to the Guinness Book of World Records, over 100 million copies of records with Bing’s 1947 version of the song have been sold.

In 1975, “White Christmas” also played a bizarre role at the end of the Vietnam War.

By April of ‘75, the United States had pulled most of its troops out of Vietnam and the North Vietnamese were closing in on Saigon.

As part of secret preparations for the evacuation of all remaining American personnel, the American embassy distributed a 15-page booklet. It included a map showing where evacuation helicopters would be landing.

A page inserted into the booklet said:

“Note evacuational signal. Do not disclose to other personnel. When the evacuation is ordered, the code will be read out on American Forces Radio. The code is: THE TEMPERATURE IN SAIGON IS 112 DEGREES AND RISING. THIS WILL BE FOLLOWED BY THE PLAYING OF ‘I’M DREAMING OF A WHITE CHRISTMAS.’”

The final panicky evacuation of Saigon is now inglorious history — and the fact that “White Christmas” played a role in it is one more odd thing about the song.

OK, now, let’s all sing along (without panicking):

“I’m dreaming of a white Christmas,
Just like the ones I used to know.
Where the tree-tops glisten
And children listen
To hear sleigh bells in the snow...”

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Yes, Ivory Soap is “99 44/100% pure.” And, yes – Marilyn really was an Ivory Snow Mom.

One of the most famous and long-lasting advertising slogans in history is the Ivory Soap slogan “99 44/100% Pure.”

As recorded in the U.S. Trademark Database, it was first used in commerce 127 years ago on December 21, 1882.

Ivory Soap was created by Proctor & Gamble in 1878. Previously, P&G sold a hard, dense yellow soap made from tallow.

Then, a new soap formula devised by James Gamble resulted in a white soap with some special characteristics. Bars made from it floated, instead of sinking like other soaps, and made an especially nice, creamy lather.

The famed slogan was inspired by lab tests. The tests were conducted to compare the new white soap to castile soaps, which were considered the standard of excellence at that time.

“One chemist's analysis was in table form with the ingredients listed by percentage. Harley Procter totaled the ingredients which did not fall into the category of pure soap — they equaled 56/100%. He subtracted from 100, and wrote the slogan ‘99-44/100% Pure: It Floats.’”

The Ivory Soap sold today is essentially the same soap created over a century ago.

But, since then, one additional “impurity” was added to the 56/100th of a percent.

Around 1970, a young, unknown actress posed as a mother holding a baby in a photo used on boxes of Ivory Snow laundry detergent.

Then, in 1972, the actress became world-famous as the star of the groundbreaking art house porn movie, Behind the Green Door.

Yes, the late, great Marilyn Chambers was indeed an Ivory Snow girl, or more precisely an Ivory Snow Mom.

Contrary to some stories, though Marilyn was a babe, she never was an Ivory Snow baby.

And, contrary to other stories, the baby Marilyn was holding in her Ivory Snow photo is not Brooke Shields — though Brooke did appear in some Ivory ads as an infant.

“Politics is not an exact science,” said Bismark. But is it an art?

On this date in 1863, the Prussian statesman Otto von Bismark (1815-1898) made a famous remark about politics to members of the Prussian parliament.

“Politics is not an exact science,” he said, on December 18, 1863.

At the time, Bismark was serving as right hand man and Minister-President for Prussian King William I, who faced occasional challenges to his policies from Prussian legislators.

When legislators balked at the King’s proposal for more military spending in December 1863, Bismark told them: 

“An assembly of three hundred and fifty members cannot, nowadays, in the last resort, direct the policy of a great power...Politics is not an exact science...I am not afraid of democracy; if I were, I should give up the game. If the House refuses to vote supplies, we must take them where we can find them.”

The Prussian legislators were not convinced and rejected the King’s military funding proposal.

So, Bismark — a tough “statesman” known for his belief that state policy should be carried out “through blood and iron” when needed — had the King dissolve the Prussian parliament.

Problem solved.

In 1867, as Bismark was overseeing the unification of Prussia and other formerly separate German states into the German Empire, he uttered an oft-quoted variation on his earlier remark when he said: “Politics is the art of the possible.”

Then, in 1884, in a speech to the German parliament as the Imperial Chancellor, Bismark made yet another famous comment about politics: “Politics is not a science...but an art.”

Now, most of us might agree that politics is not a science, especially not an exact one.

But I doubt if many people would call what happens in the U.S. Congress or their state legislatures “an art” — unless they’re talking about the Surrealism genre.

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Did Alan Greenspan’s “irrational exuberance” refer to the economy or his sex life?

Is it just me, or do profound statements by economic pundits seem a lot like predictions made by the Delphic Oracle or Nostradamus?

Their statements are murky enough to be interpreted in different ways and — eventually — something will happen that at least appears to confirm some part of what they said.

For example, on December 5, 1996, the Chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve Board, Alan Greenspan, uttered the profound phrase “irrational exuberance.”

He was discussing potential issues facing our economy, or our monetary policy, or the stock market, or all three.

Or something like that.

Here, from the speech he gave that day at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C., is the first part of the paragraph in which Greenspan’s famous two-word quote appears:

“Clearly, sustained low inflation implies less uncertainty about the future, and lower risk premiums imply higher prices of stocks and other earning assets. We can see that in the inverse relationship exhibited by price/earnings ratios and the rate of inflation in the past. But how do we know when irrational exuberance has unduly escalated asset values, which then become subject to unexpected and prolonged contractions as they have in Japan over the past decade?”

OK, I believe Greenspan’s oracular mumbo-jumbo must mean something to economic experts and bankers. (You now, the guys that helped create the economic mess were in today — and made money doing it twice: first when they created the mess and then when taxpayers bailed them out.)

But if Greenspan is so damn smart and prescient, why didn’t he do something to prevent the Dot-com bust, and the mortgage and banking crisis, and the other economic messes that happened or began to develop while he was Chairman of the Fed, from 1987 to 2006?

And, speaking of irrational exuberance, the year after Greenspan coined that term, at the age of 71, he married TV journalist Andrea Mitchell — who is 20 years younger than him.

I predict that future scrutiny of the inverse relationship exhibited by the Greenspan/Mitchell age ratio could someday give new asset values to Greenspan’s famed term.

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Oh, the irony! President Bill Clinton forced Surgeon General Jocelyn Elders to resign over a sex-related remark she made on this date…

Dr. Jocelyn Elders endured a lot on her rise to becoming the first African American to be appointed Surgeon General of the United States.

She was born in 1933, the daughter of a poor sharecropper in a segregated community in rural Arkansas. As a child, she had to balance working in the cotton fields with attending an all-black elementary school 13 miles away. But she studied hard, made it through high school, and earned a scholarship to Philander Smith College, an all-black college in Little Rock.

After graduating, Elders served for several years in the United States Army’s Women’s Medical Specialist Corps. In 1956, she entered the Arkansas Medical School on the G.I. Bill, where she was the only black student and was required to eat in a separate dining room with the cleaning staff.

Elders persevered, obtained her M.D. degree in 1960, then a Masters in biochemistry in 1967. She became a respected professor, an expert in pediatric endocrinology and a pioneering researcher in childhood growth problems and juvenile diabetes.

In 1987, Dr. Elders became the Director of the Arkansas Department of Health, where her efforts led to major increases in early childhood screenings and immunizations.

In 1993, President Bill Clinton appointed her as the U.S. Surgeon General. Like many Surgeon Generals before her, Dr. Elders was outspoken on the need to address current health-related issues, such as the growing AIDS epidemic.

On December 1, 1994, she was a featured speaker at the United Nations-sponsored World AIDS Day conference in New York City.

In a Q&A session after her formal remarks, a conference participant asked her if it might be possible to reduce the spread of AIDS through “more explicit discussion...of masturbation,” as an alternative to heterosexual or homosexual sex.

Dr. Elders answered:

“I think that is something that is a part of human sexuality and it’s a part of something that perhaps should be taught.”

Well! Omigod! That caused shock and awe! You’d have thought she’d said something really scandalous — like she thought it was OK for Presidents to have sexual affairs with young White House interns.

President Clinton decided that Dr. Elders’ remark about masturbation would cause an embarrassing media frenzy he didn’t want. So, he forced her to resign. His spokesman said he’d have fired her if she didn’t.

About a year later, Clinton started having a sexual affair with a young White House intern named Monica Lewinsky, which created an embarrassing media frenzy that almost cost Clinton his presidency.

After that hubbub, Clinton’s decision to force Dr. Elders to resign seemed like an even lower blow than it did at the time. (So to speak.)

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