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Jewish World Review
January 4, 2008
/ 26 Teves, 5768
What they should have said
By
Mort Zuckerman
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
Here are my fantasies about what was said over the New Year's holiday, with inadequate acknowledgments to various contributors, some of whose words I adapted a bit:
New England Patriots football coach Bill Belichick: "Nobody ever says, 'It's only a game' when his team is winning."
President Bush after being roasted at the White House Correspondents' Association dinner: "I have had a perfectly wonderful evening, but this wasn't it."
Bill Clinton on his political skills: "Never do card tricks with the group you play poker with."
Sen. Hillary Clinton on her instinct for the jugular: "My politics are borrowed from Mike Tyson, who said, 'Everybody has a strategy until I hit them.' "
Bill Clinton on a mean-spirited attack on Sen. Barack Obama by one of his wife's top aides: "Don't assume malice for what stupidity can explain."
Mitt Romney on his multiple shifts in policy: "A truth that's told with bad intent beats all the lies it can invent."
Connecticut Sen. Joseph Lieberman on Democrats who didn't support his independent campaign: "It is easier to forgive an enemy than to forgive a friend."
Paul Bremer on his role as head of Iraq's Coalition Provisional Authority: "Anytime you have a fifty-fifty chance of getting something right, there's a 90 percent probability you will get it wrong."
President Bush on Congress's Democratic leadership: "They have delusions of adequacy."
The Democrats on the failure of intelligence in Iraq: "It is no use saying we are doing our best. You have to succeed in doing what is necessary."
Steve Jobs on merging Pixar with Disney: "A friendship founded on business is better than a business founded on friendship."
European Union envoy Tony Blair to the Palestinian leadership: "Don't go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first."
Jennifer Aniston on being married to Brad Pitt: "I was married by a judge; I should have asked for a jury."
Tom Brokaw on retiring as anchor of NBC News: "I could have certainly slowed the aging process down if it had to work its way through Congress."
Sen. John McCain on the immigration controversy: "The greatness of this country should be measured by the number of people trying to get in versus the number of people trying to get out."
Former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton on the United Nations: "The U.N. has been as effective against war as foghorns have been against fog."
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on sex education in California schools: "Let them teach it. If the schools teach sex the way they teach everything else, the kids will lose interest anyhow."
Jon Stewart on political comedy: "I don't approve of political jokes; I have seen too many of them get elected."
Rudy Giuliani's second wife: "My husband and I divorced over religious differences. He thought he was G-d, and I didn't."
Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson: "It is not possible for this nation to be politically internationalist and economically isolationist. This is just as insane as asking one Siamese twin to high-dive while the other plays the piano."
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke: "Balancing the budget is like going to heaven. Everybody wants to do it, but nobody wants to do what you have to do to get there."
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© 2005, Mortimer Zuckerman
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