#or

Roosevelt's declaration that Americans had 'nothing to fear but fear itself' was a glorious piece of inspirational rhetoric and just as gloriously wrong. ↗

— Russell Baker

#fear #glorious #gloriously #had #inspirational

Situation comedy on television has thrived for years on 'canned' laughter, grafted by gaglines by technicians using records of guffawing audiences that have been dead for years. ↗

— Russell Baker

#been #canned #comedy #dead #grafted

The early commentators who put down the pre-presidential Roosevelt as an empty-headed young lightweight, all ambition and no talent, now seem comically wrong to a modern book-reading, movie-going, television-watching, legend-loving American public conditioned to think of him as one of the presidential giants on the order of Washington and Lincoln. ↗

— Russell Baker

#american #american public #commentators #conditioned #down

The only thing I was fit for was to be a writer, and this notion rested solely on my suspicion that I would never be fit for real work, and that writing didn't require any. ↗

— Russell Baker

#fit #i #never #notion #only

There is a growing literature about the multitude of journalism's problems, but most of it is concerned with the editorial side of the business, possibly because most people competent to write about journalism are not comfortable writing about finance. ↗

— Russell Baker

#because #business #comfortable #competent #concerned

Those who remember Washington's cold war culture in the 1980s will recall the shocked reactions to Reagan's intervention. People interested in foreign policy were astonished when in 1985 he met alone at Geneva - alone, not a single strategic thinker at his elbow! - with the Soviet Communist master Gorbachev. ↗

— Russell Baker

#astonished #cold #cold war #communist #culture

When sudden death takes a president, opportunities for new beginnings flourish among the ambitious and the tensions among such people can be dramatic, as they were when President Kennedy was killed. ↗

— Russell Baker

#among #beginnings #death #dramatic #flourish

I like working with kids. I just have a way with kids. ↗

— Stephen Baker

#just #kids #like #way #working

To bathe a cat takes brute force, perseverance, courage of conviction - and a cat. The last ingredient is usually hardest to come by. ↗

— Stephen Baker

#brute #brute force #cat #come #conviction

We have newsreaders behaving like actors, lowering their voices if it's a sad story, as if we didn't know it's a sad story. There isn't a single cool newsreader. ↗

— Tom Baker

#cool #know #like #lowering #sad