Archive
Mudline Archive
STICKS, STONES, BROKEN BONES
During the 2000 Bush-Gore presidential race, we began collecting negative soundbites and posting them weekly on a MUDLINE ticker, as a temporary election feature. But in the aftermath of that tumultuous contest we realized that the tone of public discourse was unlikely to improve, and elected to continue the feature. Unfortunately, we were right; two decades later, incivility is hotter than ever. If you just can’t get enough snark on social media, this mud’s for you.
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October 4, 2012
Debbie Wasserman Schultz on Romney: "Repeatedly and blatantly lied to the American people."....Chris Matthews: "Where was Obama tonight?"....Obama on debate Romney: "Doesn't want to be held accountable for the real Mitt Romney."....Howard Fineman on debate moderator Jim Lehrer: "Practically useless...Criminal negligence."....Al Roker: "I hope Jim Lehrer gets the license plate of the truck that drove over him."....John Podhoretz on Lehrer: "May be the worst moderator in the history of moderation."....Rudy Giuliani on Obama: “Looked like he was looking for his teleprompter.”….Rush Limbaugh on Obama: "He's not prepared to be president. He was never qualified to be president...He's not that smart. He is a total creature of media manufacture. He's not real."....Mark Hemingway: "Mitt Romney just took Obama for a cross country drive strapped to the roof of his car.".... -
October 3, 2012
Tucker Carlson on Obama: "This guy is whipping up race hatred and fear."....Conor Friedersdorf on Carlson: "When it comes to racial demagoguery, the right has become everything it says it hates about the left."....Andrew Sullivan on Carlson: "He is a story in one person of how degenerate and disgusting much of American 'conservatism' has become."....Ryan on Obama: "Trying to confuse the issue..trying to distort our positions...trying to distract people."....Ralph Reed on Obama: "Wants every American dependent on government for their health care [and] their food, housing, and even transportation."....Madeleine Albright on Romney: "He is so two-dimensional. I mean, up close and personal, there's just nothing going on."....Clinton on Romney: "The guy with a tax account in the Cayman Islands is attacking other people for not wanting to pay income tax?".... -
September 28, 2012
Ralph Nader on 2012 campaign: "We're dealing with a real sick, decaying Democratic Party that can't defend the country against the cruelest, most ignorant, most anti-worker, most war-mongering, most Wall Street-indentured Republican Party in its history, since the 1850s."....Sen. Claire McCaskill on Rep. Todd Akin: "Makes Michele Bachmann look like a hippie."....Cherokee Nation principal chief Bill John Baker on Scott Brown staffers' war whoops and tomahawk chops: "Offensive and downright racist."....Karl Rove on Obama: "Doesn't shoot straight because he can't defend his record."....Dick Morris on Libya attack: "This is what happens when you have a weak presidency."....Michael Tomasky on Dick Morris: "Sits there on the Fox set like a betumored walrus on an ice floe assuring his viewers not to worry."....Samuel L. Jackson in ad aimed at inactive Obama supporters: "Wake the f**k up!"....Ann Coulter: "I don't think that liberals ever cared about black people."....Former NH Gov. John Sununu on Obama: "Absolutely lazy and detached from his job."....Michelle Goldberg on Dinesh D'Souza's new book: "Shows that a writer once considered a legitimate conservative intellectual has been reduced to sputtering 'yo mama' at our president.".... -
September 25, 2012
NY Post cover on Ahmadinejad: "Piece of Sh!t!"....Mitt Romney on Obama foreign policy: "Projects weakness."....Ryan on Obama and Libya attack: "If we project weakness, they come."....UN Amb. Susan Rice on Ryan comment: "Empty and baseless."....Ralph Nader on Romney: “A corporation running for president masquerading as a human being.”….McCain on Obama: "Has a fundamental misunderstanding of what is going on in the Middle East."....Bob Shrum on Romney: "The biggest shapeshifter outside of Harry Potter."....Joe Scarborough on Romney campaign: "Inept...A nightmare."....Richard Cohen on Romney: "Robotic, unknowable."....Michele Malkin on Peggy Noonan and David Brooks: "We know what their own best interest is. Their own interest at heart is their own self-propagation."....Joy-Ann Reid: "Battery acid is more popular than the Republican Party right now."....Steve Coll on "Innocence of Muslims": "The low-budget aesthetic recalls 'Santa Claus Conquers the Martians.'".... -
September 19, 2012
Sen. John McCain on the U.S.: "The weak horse."....Pat Buchanan: "Barack Obama is a drug dealer of welfare. He wants permanent dependency."....Peggy Noonan on Romney campaign: "Incompetent."....LA Times on Romney: "An outrageous exercise in opportunism."....David Brooks on Romney: "When will the incompetence stop?"....Amy Davidson on Romney: "He seems to be utterly delusional."....Joan Walsh on Romney: "An equal opportunity class warrior: he disdains everyone who is struggling."....Rush Limbaugh on Obama: "Attempting to stigmatize anybody that has succeeded and is calling them the enemy."....Former Sen. John Danforth on Todd Akin: "Has taken the banner and marched into the woods."....Scientology attorney Jeffrey K. Riffer on Vanity Fair article by Maureen Orth: "The allegations she forwards are akin to asking the Pope if he threw poison in the wine before failing to bless the Holy Communion during the Easter service."....