Truly, if you can't cover a five-car pile-up on Route 128, you should not be covering a presidential campaign.
Interpretation
Journalists should have the skills to cover complex and significant events, such as presidential campaigns.
Molly Ivins emphasizes the importance of journalistic competence, suggesting that if a reporter is unable to handle a serious situation like a car accident, they may not be equipped to report on the intricacies and importance of a presidential campaign. This highlights the expectation that journalists must possess a certain level of expertise and capability in order to inform the public effectively about critical political matters.
In practice
In a seminar about journalism ethics, this quote can be used to highlight the importance of skills in covering significant events.
Racists seem obsessed by the idea that illegal workers - the hardest-working, poorest people in America - are somehow getting away with something, sneaking goodies that should be for Americans. You can always avoid this problem by having no social services. This is the refreshing Texas model, and it works a treat.
Populism is the simple premise that markets need to be restrained by society and by a democratic political system. We are not socialists or communists, we are proponents of regulated capitalism and, I might add, people who have read American history.
We should all laugh more at our elected officials - it's good for us and good for them.
Although it is true that only about 20 percent of American workers are in unions, that 20 percent sets the standards across the board in salaries, benefits and working conditions. If you are making a decent salary in a non-union company, you owe that to the unions. One thing that corporations do not do is give out money out of the goodness of their hearts.
Imagine wasting all that perfectly good anger on paranoid fantasies. Not since Emily Litella got upset about "Soviet jewelry" has there been such a waste of anger. You will notice a certain theme to these Emily Litella Moments. Behind them all is a touching faith that someone, somewhere is actually in charge of what's happening - a proposition I beg leave to doubt.
All anyone needs to enjoy the state legislature is a strong stomach and a complete insensitivity to the needs of the people. As long as you don't think about what that peculiar body should be doing and what it actually is doing to the quality of life in Texas, then it's all marvelous fun.
Unfortunately for governments like that of Iran, when they forbid something, people become more interested.
The biggest lesson I learned from Vietnam is not to trust [our own] government statements.
Politics is not the art of the possible. It consists in choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable.
If elected members of any body - whether it's a state house or Congress - were not willing to take career-ending or at least election-losing votes, I would not have the right to vote today.
Elections are always a Rorschach test - people look at the results and see what they want to see.
Politics ought to be the part-time profession of every citizen who would protect the rights and privileges of free people and who would preserve what is good and fruitful in our national heritage.
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