Fox's Gibson: "I've never said in public all the bad things I think about" Carter
During his "My Word" segment on the January 11 edition of Fox News' The Big Story, host John Gibson claimed that he has "never said in public all the bad things I think about [former President] Jimmy Carter." But, as Media Matters for America noted, Gibson has called Carter "a calamity" and declared that Carter's presidency "created the worst and most bitter years of my life and the lives of every American I knew." Gibson also noted that Carter is "getting on in years" and advised him: "Don't drive at night, don't write for the op-ed page. Reading it will be quite enough."
In addition, during his January 11 "My Word," Gibson claimed that Carter had a "disastrous presidency." Gibson concluded: "My main point about Carter is simply this: Since he was sent from the White House with a hearty 'Good riddance,' Carter's been trying to make people forget how bad his tenure in the White House really was. I have just one bit of advice: Never forget. Never."
From the January 11 edition of Fox News' The Big Story with John Gibson:
GIBSON: Now "My Word." Ex-presidents deserve respect, so I've never said in public all the bad things I think about Jimmy Carter, but let me tell you now about other people who think it is time for Jimmy to retire from public pronouncements.
[...]
What I do know about Jimmy Carter is his public pursuit of a Nobel Prize as a rebuke to President Bush was a bad thing. His insistence that U.S. elections don't meet the standards of even third-world countries holding occasional balloting was a bad thing. And, of course, then there was his disastrous presidency.
My main point about Carter is simply this: Since he was sent from the White House with a hearty "Good riddance," Carter's been trying to make people forget how bad his tenure in the White House really was. I have just one bit of advice: Never forget. Never. That's "My Word."
Ronnie Raygun.
Choosing MY catastrophes, I'd pick Carter every time! He didn't lie to me, or cheat me, or steal from me - very unpolitician of him, and certainly disqualifying him from having airports named after him by the vermin of the Repugnant Right.
about Carter. You can't be serious.
Are you able to post a substantive reply?
Gibson has called Carter "a calamity" and declared that Carter's presidency "created the worst and most bitter years of my life and the lives of every American I knew."
It's not Carter's fault you weren't gettin' any from 1976-1980.
Rusty!
You don't think the Gibster was doin' the hustle in'76?
That made me laugh. Seriously. Can I get a rim shot or a "zing!" please?
Jimmy Carter, regardless how ineffective his presidency was, is a good and decent man. He also has more intelligence in his little finger than Gibson has beneath his carefully-coifed hair.
Here you have the basis, or the foundation, of modern conservatism: Gibson said Carter's presidency "created the worst and most bitter years of my life and the lives of every American I knew." What a drama queen who won't take responsibility for his own misery. I'm sure Gibson said during the economic boom of the 1990s that "presidents don't have any real impact on the economy." I've heard dozens of "conservatives" say this in recent years, especially during the Bush recession of 2002.
more and more, I think the same thing about these neocons: drama queens.
Why aren't they embarrassed? They're so..............................................................................................................................................................................................................unmanly.
And this is so catty: "Ex-presidents deserve respect, so I've never said in public all the bad things I think about Jimmy Carter, but let me tell you now about other people who think it is time for Jimmy to retire from public pronouncements."
So, he's above bad-mouthing J. Carter and saying what he really thinks?
Uh, no he isn't. Suggesting something terrible is generally worse than saying something terrible.
will certainly make every SANE person put the lack luster performance of Jimmy Carter in perspective. Oh yeah and I just love Jimmy Carter, such a decent human being. Imagine not believing in preemptive war and forcing our will on sovereign nations that never attack us, what a man!
...interview when he admitted to adultery because he had lusted for women other than his wife. Being a Christian, he knew that the contemplation of sin is the same as the commission of sin. So, not only did he cleave to his faith, but he was humble and didn't pretend to be better than others.
Of course, people laughed at him for his sincerity and decency.
And the allegedly Christian Republican party loathes him still.
more than somebody effortlessly being what you strive for (one strives for, not you)
Carter being a humble man of faith who has spent his post-prez years walking the walk, makes the money-grubbing, war-mongering rightys NUTS!
Just as Clinton running a surplus and keeping the countries enemies controlled while dating, and not even talking about it- pisses off the cheerleaders of a guy who can hardly wind his watch and breathe at the same time.
One of our local channels here shows the old Johnny Carson comedy bits from the tonight show(is that syndicated/national? Carson Comedy Classics or something)Pretty corny, I watch it in bed sometimes, but the other night was one from the Ford years, and it was ALL about the lousy eceonomy that was just kicking in- must have been 10 bad jokes about "Ford's economic advisors", etc.
As hokey as Carson was (not in a bad way, I like him) he was doing "headline" jokes every night for a few decades.I watch the show to remind myself how much of history is re-written by the media.
If this narrow-minded greedy corporate media did'nt have an agenda to promote the above-mentioned announcer would not have a job outside of a caller in front of a strip tease joint! A spooze cleaner at the Adut Bijou!!!
Jimmy Carter, as it turns out should be considered a seer of unpresidented insights. If we had followed his lead the Middle East would be worrying about their own problems. The Palestinians would have an independant state that includes peace with Isreal.
Saudi Arabia would be begging to sell oil for less than $20 a barrell. The oil companies would be accountable to government, and we wouldn't be reliant on just oil, and coal for a fuel source!! We would be the leader in the world on renewables, not the Brazilians!!!
We would be ahead of Global Warming as we were with the Clean Air & Water Act of the 60's.
We wouldn't care who was in charge of who's oil, we would have at best a $10 billion dollar deficit in total, instead of the $1 trillion dollar whole we're in now.
We would have all of our civil liberties!!
I could go on, but we don't want to change the attention of the electorate from the atrosities done in our name by the Republican Fascists over the past 6 years!!
We'll keep a light on them, and Mr. Gibson will soon be looking for a small southern T.V. or Radio market to play to!! Deep, Deeeeeep in the Bible Belt!!!
Happy Thoughts;
Dan Grady
I'm no fan of John Gibson, but all he really said was that he thought Jimmy Carter was a terrible president. Don't we all think that George Bush is terrible as well?
Gibson said Carter "created the worst and most bitter years of my life." LOL. No, Gibson and his dysfunctional personality are what created the worst and most bitter years of his life. He's like a lot of conservatives - blaming "the liberals" for his personal problems and bitterness. I've never blamed a president for "the worst and most bitter years of my life." Gibson is obviously a head case who uses politics as an outlet for his personal anguish and unhappiness which is unrelated to politics.
I had a few years where I didn't make the little league team, my best friend got the girl I liked, and i got some hellacious acne.
I hold Grover Cleveland responsible to this day.
He repeatedly said bad things about Carter, and now he claims he never publicly said bad things about Carter. It's called a lie.
He said he never publicly said ALL the bad things he was thinking about Jimmy Carter. So it's not really a lie, I bet John Gibson thinks even worse of Jimmy Carter in private.
For the last three months, Jimmy Carter has been under attack from much of the U.S. political establishment, including the Democratic Party, because his latest book criticizes Israeli policies in the West Bank. MMFA has mainly sat this one out, coming to Carter's defense only in the case of the most over-the-top attacks (like this one) and only in ways that obscure the underlying substantive issues (again, as in this post). It's all well and good for MMFA to wring its hands over John Gibson's crude rantings, but how about Alan Dershowitz's claim that Carter is "bought and paid for by Arab money," or the highly misleading and unfair reviews of Carter's book by Jeffrey Goldberg and Michael Kinsley? When will MMFA criticize them?
for likening Israel's policies to South African Apartheid. One million Arab citizens of Israel could testify to his missing the mark in making such accusations.
applies only to Israeli policies on the West Bank, not to the situation within Israel itself. Numerous articles about and reviews of Carter's book have failed (or perhaps refused) to portray his argument accurately, making it possible for critics to bring up the status of Israeli-Arabs, which is of course a red herring. This is precisely the sort of misinformation and distortion that MMFA should be exposing, rather than focusing only on wild attacks by John Gibson and his ilk.
... defined Carter's presidency, because the rightwing was into "framing" long before today's crowd of rightwing Media. Shortly after Reagan took office, Iran took MORE hostage ... and almost nothing was said of it.
Carter didn't manage to get the hostages killed ... they returned safely ... so I guess that's unforgivable to the rightwing. Massive death (256 Marines for Reagan, 3000 soldiers for Bush so far) is all gung-ho and wonderful. But getting the hostages home safely? Unforgivably inept.
- I feel very strongly that Jimmy Carter was a disaster, particularly domestically and economically. I have said more than once that he was certainly the poorest president in my lifetime - Pres. Ford
At a minimum...that makes three of us.
Raygun was much worse a lying, terrorism dealing weasal. Responsible for a terrorists carbombing in Beiruit, and creating a proxy terrorist group in Nicaragua (the Contras called themselves the Sons of Raygun) supporting the worlds worst and most brutal dictators like Suhuarto, and Rios Montt. Raygun wasnt fit to shine Jimmy Carters shoes. Conservatives WANT to be lied to. They want everything to conform to the fantasies they have made up in their heads. They HATE the truth and reality and despise Carter BECAUSE he told us the truth. They continue to despise him because he is so clearly a good man who STILL tells the truth.
Please cite the source and the timing of this quote from President Ford. It seems quite out of character for him.
Thank you.
I looked up your quote to see what Ford said about Carter. The first place I looked mentioned your 1981 quote and then it said this:
But two years later [1983], [Gerald Ford] praised Carter's performance on the Panama Canal treaty, China and the Middle East. And in 1998, he said Carter "will be looked on as a better president than some comments we hear today."
"He was a very decent, fine individual," Ford told the paper. "There were no major mistakes. There just weren't a lot of exciting results." -- source:Newsmax of all places!
Wow! Looks like Ford softened his view as he matured. Thanks for pointing me to that info.
Jimmy Carter was essentially a failure as president precisely because of his decency and honesty. This is truly an American tragedy. It was Carter who talked about a national malaise and who urged people to turn down their thermostats and wear sweaters, rather than lying to people and saying that cheap oil was their birthright. During Carter's presidency, we had even-odd lines at gas stations, inflation was 11%, mortgages were 16-18%, at least partly due to the inflationary pressure from the crash of the Vietnam war. Carter was blamed for the taking of hostages in the Iranian Embassy, and for the failure of the rescue mission in the Iranian desert. He had a stupid brother who was a true embarrassment to him, and at least one dishonest people in his Cabinet (sorry, I can't think of his name, but I think it was Lance somebody, and they were skimming $ or something) I think that Carter was weak as a president precisely because of his decency. He refused to strong-arm, threaten, or lie to other people, including both Congress and we the people. He's the only president I'm aware of who actually acted like a Christian for the most part.
His decency has been so well demonstrated in his retirement because he uses the advantages of being a former president to leverage his ability to act like a true Christian and serve others. He teaches Sunday School, he participates in Habitat projects still, and if you read his books, even if you disagree with his train of thought, it's clear that Jimmy Carter is a very decent, thoughtful, and humble man.
And the HUGE tragedy of this is that a man with these characteristics can probably NEVER be a successful president.
What does this say about the people of the United States?
What I was trying to contrast in listing some of Carter's depressing truth-telling ("national malaise") was to contrast it with Reagan in 1980. Here came a huckster who succeeded in becoming President very effectively because he began lying from the start. Reagan told us "Carter's full of crap; everything's going to be okay!", and gave us short term happiness by telling everyone, in effect, "you don't need to sacrifice or look out for others... you can have what you want, just come and get it!" This came, of course, at the expense of our longer term health as a nation, and was, in effect, a pyramid scheme that began to collapse with Iran-Contra and continues it's collapse today be revering Reagan as a quasi-diety. The problem is that we as a society will always gravitate towards "me, today!", and our more contemporary politicians actively feed this culture of selfishness. Every time a Hummer drives by, every time I see an ad for a high def TV with no payments due this year, every time I see a fast food outlet, every time Faux news or the Limbaugh crowd crow about their superiority or perks of being an American, and on and on, it just reinforces my view on this. And ultimately I'm depressed because I refuse to believe that we are so shallow as a people, but my visual clues contradict this in toto. 'Kay, I'm done now.
My feelings about the Carter/Reagan contrasts are very close.
I know people who really HATE Reagan , I never had that hate for him as much as what he stood for. I graduated from high school in 1980, and my first election was that one.
I saw Reagan as a dopey actor, a "feel-good" puppet for the part of America that hated Carter for being honest. I blame Reagan (not really him, but the people who packaged him and voted for him) for really being the turning point for where we are today. Bush is the same sort of empty suit that some of my fellow Americans voted for because they'd like to have a beer with him, and he read cue cards that made them feel good.
I also blame the Reagan years for the fact that my Governor is the Terminator.
There are posters on this site who will criticize the Democratic candidates for not being honest enough, for being too cautiously full of crap and Republican-oid to respect, and although it may be true, can you blame them?
They're trying to get into power, and that involves not offending or hurting the feelings of most Americans, and that involves not being very straight with them.It also involves not coming off as too thoughtful or intellectual, and ignoring big old heaping hunks of reality.
I posted on another thread that I watched "Idiocracy" last night, and I had some strange feelings while watching it. As I watched this depiction of a future where the smartest people were marginalized and the stupidest, through reckless reproduction and bellowing in 3 word sentences ,dominated, my girl turned to me and said "it's funny, but these people aren't that far from people I meet out in the real world."
I had been thinking the same thing. Morning in America always sounded to me like "born yesterday".
I voted for Jimmy Carter in 1980, and take every opportunity to mention it to this day. Living in the Republican Zone that I'm in, it gets some pretty funny reactions.
But I think I had some stuff figured out when I was 18 that many Americans still can't quite handle,
I thought MMFA was all about exposing media distortions, lies, etc. Whatever Gibson said, it wasn't distorted or untrue.
""I've never said in public all the bad things I think about" Carter --John Gibson
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
What don't you understand? What is the point of Gibson's statment? He is trying to imply he has been holding stuff back about Carter when that apparently hasn't been the case at all.
Misinformation.
You've just reduced minutia down its irreducible essence.