Wag the Dog Quotes

“Then there’s the sex business. For example, there are persistent rumors that Bush has girlfriends. Remember that “power is the ultimate aphrodisiac,” look at Barbara, and there are three possibilities: George is a normal male attracted to younger women and he cheats; George chooses to have sex exclusively with a woman who looks like a Hallmark greeting card grandmother; George is a eunuch. Think about it—which George would you want running the country?”
― Larry Beinhart, Wag the Dog: A Novel

“Silverado”
― Larry Beinhart, Wag the Dog: A Novel

“GARRY TRUDEAU IN his Doonesbury comic strip had been twitting the president about his shattered syntax and making it appear as if the president couldn’t organize a sentence on his own. While that was frequently true when speaking extempore, he could do so with preparation.”
― Larry Beinhart, Wag the Dog: A Novel

“Extremism in defense of virtue is no vice.”
― Larry Beinhart, Wag the Dog: A Novel

“Maureen Dowd and Thomas Friedman, The Fabulous Bush & Baker Boys, New York Times Magazine, 5/6/90.”
― Larry Beinhart, Wag the Dog: A Novel

“The current decline of America and the rise of Japan was due, obviously, to forgetting that simple and essential lesson. Don’t eat your dessert until you deserve it. Don’t spend your money until you’ve earned it. Don’t take your pleasure until you’re stronger than pleasure and can prove it.”
― Larry Beinhart, Wag the Dog: A Novel

“I live in Hollywood where truth is a speech defect.”
― Larry Beinhart, Wag the Dog: A Novel

“You’d be surprised how many divorces start with “I smelled the bitch on him.”
― Larry Beinhart, Wag the Dog: A Novel

“From his earliest days, Mr. Atwater displayed a skill in the use of racial messages and maneuvers, a crucial part of the effort by Southern Republicans to appeal to white voters.” (Obituary, New York (Times, 3/30/91)”
― Larry Beinhart, Wag the Dog: A Novel

“Democratic representative Pat Schroeder called him “the most evil man in America.” Reverend Pat Robertson said, “Lee Atwater has used every dirty trick known to mankind” and “the Republican campaign was blamed for planting specious rumors about the mental-health history of Michael Dukakis.” (William Greider, Rolling Stone, 1/12/89)”
― Larry Beinhart, Wag the Dog: A Novel

“He had made brilliant and devastating use of innuendo, half truth, and political distortion to exploit the malignancies of American society, especially racism.4Racism was always effective, but it was dangerous to employ and required expert handling. It was not excessively egotistical for the dying man to feel that it was he himself who had made George Bush president in 1988.”
― Larry Beinhart, Wag the Dog: A Novel

“In many ways the greatest the world had ever known though there was a prohibition against saying so in polite political society. In any case, it so far exceeded the sort of minor realm ruled by the Borgias, the meager reach of the Medici, the influence of any Italian city-state, that any such comparison was like comparing an elephant to an ant. It could only be compared, de facto, no matter what political-speak required people to say, to Rome when Rome was the very definition of empire.”
― Larry Beinhart, Wag the Dog: A Novel

“I read this book for the first time in almost ten years to prepare this introduction. On one level I am pleased to see that it holds up. On another level, I was appalled. I found myself wondering if the current administration had read it and used it as an instruction manual.”
― Larry Beinhart, Wag the Dog: A Novel

“Bill Maher, on a program called Politically Incorrect said “lobbing cruise missiles from 2,000 miles away. That’s cowardly. Staying in the airplane when it hits the building—say what you want about it, it’s not cowardly.” Maher was fired and the program was terminated. Some portion of the media should have risen up in outrage, not necessarily to defend Maher and get him his job back, but in defense of speaking the truth. They did not.”
― Larry Beinhart, Wag the Dog: A Novel

“Wag the Dog became an international byword for fake wars staged to distract from domestic political problems. Without a doubt, it raised the level of cynicism, which is to say it raised the level of awareness that real events are directed and staged for their political impact.”
― Larry Beinhart, Wag the Dog: A Novel