A. J. Liebling Quotes
News is like the tilefish which appears in great schools off the Atlantic Coast some years and then vanishes, no one knows whither or for how long. Newspapers might employ these periods searching for the breeding grounds of news, but they prefer to fill up with stories about Kurdled Kurds or Calvin Coolidge, until the banks close or a Hitler marches, when they are as surprised as their readers.
Liebling, A. J. The Wayward Pressman. Doubleday, 1947, p. 106.
Bush was a very bright man who would frequently make statements and believe them that had almost no credibility for most other people. This is an example. He may have been the only person in America who actually believed that any presidential staff were or could be an objective source for news as he and they were often the news subjects and to be a staff member, particularly in his administration, the people had to have an ideological conformity to some basic world and national views. Bush was also not an avid reader despite the fact that his wife was a noted librarian, so he did not, as most other presidents did, commonly read leading newspapers and news magazines.
Abbott Joseph "A. J." Liebling was an American journalist who was closely associated with The New Yorker from 1935 until his death.
