When the Clock Broke Quotes

“The LAPD’s Public Information Division planted favorable newspaper stories in the press, published its own magazine, and closely cooperated with the creators of the popular TV series Dragnet, down to reviewing each one of its scripts. (The future creator of Star Trek, Gene Roddenberry, worked in the PID and was Parker’s speechwriter for a time. He based Mr. Spock, the coldly rationalistic science officer, on Parker.)”
― John Ganz, When the Clock Broke: Con Men, Conspiracists, and How America Cracked Up in the Early 1990s

“The head of the Los Angeles Fraternal Order of Police told CBS Evening News, “I believe that the rap music promotes, by its very language and by its very actions—promotes violence against authority and, consequently, violence against law enforcement.” The music was “infecting young people with hate and bigotry,” editor Philip Gailey wrote in The St. Petersburg Times. “No amount of government aid to the cities will be able to repair the damage the hate rappers are doing to race relations. They are as sick as any Klansman.”
― John Ganz, When the Clock Broke: Con Men, Conspiracists, and How America Cracked Up in the Early 1990s

“The Bush administration caught a break when the Supreme Court handed down a compromise on June 29. Ruling 5–4, the justices preserved key portions of the Pennsylvania law but also upheld Roe, striking down the portion of the Abortion Control Act that placed an “undue burden” on the mother’s efforts to seek an abortion, which was just the spousal notification requirement. The court also overturned the trimester standard governing abortion restrictions in favor of the looser concept of “viability.” Sandra Day O’Connor, writing the majority opinion, expressed a degree of exasperation with the Republican administration’s continued efforts to attack Roe: “Liberty finds no refuge in a jurisprudence of doubt. Yet 19 years after our holding that the Constitution protects a woman’s right to terminate her pregnancy in its early stages, Roe v. Wade, 410 U. S. 113 (1973), that definition of liberty is still questioned. Joining the respondents as amicus curiae, the United States, as it has done in five other cases in the last decade, again asks us to overrule Roe.” Justice O’Connor’s opinion also included a good deal of concern for the institutional damage that would happen if the court were politically whipsawed to overturn the settled precedent of Roe: “A decision to overrule Roe’s essential holding under the existing circumstances would address error, if error there was, at the cost of both profound and unnecessary damage to the Court’s legitimacy, and to the nation’s commitment to the rule of law. It is therefore imperative to adhere to the essence of Roe’s original decision, and we do so today.” In his dissent, Chief Justice William Rehnquist complained that the court had rendered Roe a “facade” and replaced it with something “created largely out of whole cloth” and “not built to last.” “Roe v. Wade stands as a sort of Potemkin village,” Rehnquist wrote, “which may be pointed out to passers-by as a monument to the importance of adhering to precedent.”
― John Ganz, When the Clock Broke: Con Men, Conspiracists, and How America Cracked Up in the Early 1990s

“The Times was founded by the Korean cult leader Reverend Sun Myung Moon in 1982 as a conservative counterweight to The Washington Post, but also as a beachhead for his Unification Church in D.C. Another investor was the government of apartheid South Africa, which funneled several million dollars to Moon’s outfits for an interest in the paper.”
― John Ganz, When the Clock Broke: Con Men, Conspiracists, and How America Cracked Up in the Early 1990s

“Edwards, who certainly did not lack for worldliness and even cynicism, was unsettled by the degree of rancor Duke could inspire. At a debate in front of the state convention of the American Association of Retired Persons, Edwards discovered how deep the Duke appeal went. Edwards promised improvements in services for seniors; the crowd wasn’t interested, but they gnashed at Duke’s red meat about the illegitimate birth rate and the welfare underclass. Edwards tried to appeal to facts: “A welfare mother only receives an extra $11 a week with each extra child she bears. Can you see a woman sitting around the kitchen table scheming to get pregnant to get another $11 a week?” The crowd shouted back, “Yes!” Edwards protested: “He’s appealing to your base emotions. Who is going to be next? The disabled? The old? You better think about it.” He was drowned out by boos. The Louisiana AARP endorsed Duke.”
― John Ganz, When the Clock Broke: Con Men, Conspiracists, and How America Cracked Up in the Early 1990s