Dan Quayle

honoring our rubber-stamp congress, whose members have found plenty of time to do squat

Image: AP/Wide World Photos

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


Stepping in from outside the ring, the former Senator never fails to win his own award. During the increase of violence in Israel, Quayle struggled to maintain a balanced attitude toward the Palestinians, asking, “How many Palestinians were on those airplanes on September 9? None.”

 

From The Source:
Audio File of Quayle’s NPR Appearance

From the Archives:
What’s So Funny?

The September 11 Demagoguery Award

Rep. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.) suggested that a good strategy to combat terrorism would be to “arrest every Muslim that crosses the state line.”

Senator Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) told NBC that Chelsea almost died in the World Trade Center collapse. Chelsea, meanwhile, was writing a piece explaining how she was in Manhattan but nowhere near the towers.

Rep. John Cooksey (R-La.) told a radio audience, right after 9/11, “If I see someone come in that’s got a diaper on his head and a fan belt wrapped around the diaper on his head, that guy needs to be pulled over.”

Freshman Rep. Brian Kerns (R-Ind.) told his hometown paper that he’d witnessed the disaster at the Pentagon: “I’m in shock. I thought it was strange that they were letting airplanes still fly after the World Trade Center. Then it was so low, and it just banked into the building. I still can’t believe it.”

Back | And the winner is…

Fact:

Mother Jones was founded as a nonprofit in 1976 because we knew corporations and billionaires wouldn't fund the type of hard-hitting journalism we set out to do.

Today, reader support makes up about two-thirds of our budget, allows us to dig deep on stories that matter, and lets us keep our reporting free for everyone. If you value what you get from Mother Jones, please join us with a tax-deductible donation today so we can keep on doing the type of journalism 2022 demands.

payment methods

Fact:

Today, reader support makes up about two-thirds of our budget, allows us to dig deep on stories that matter, and lets us keep our reporting free for everyone. If you value what you get from Mother Jones, please join us with a tax-deductible donation today so we can keep on doing the type of journalism 2022 demands.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate