Category: Best Line of the Day

Clever turns of phrase, special splashes of wit, provocative insight — all in a sentence or two.

Best McCain-Palin lines of last night

McCain announced today that he bought a hybrid car. Apparently, McCain thinks a hybrid car is one that has A.M. and F.M. radio. — Conan O’Brien

Hi, everyone. I’m Jimmy, I’m the host of the show. Before we go any further, I want to just take a minute to apologize for some jokes I’m planning to make about the Palin family tonight. They are in extremely poor taste and I know that I will regret saying them. — Jimmy Kimmel

Thank you very much. Welcome to the “Late Show”, ladies and gentlemen. Now, when I call your name, please come forward and pick up your apology. — David Letterman

John McCain said on his Twitter feed, on Monday, that he’s buying a brand new Ford Fusion Hybrid. A year ago, McCain didn’t use a computer. Now he’s on Twitter and buying a hybrid. What’s going on? I think he’s like Benjamin Button. He’ll be a cute little baby. — Jimmy Fallon

Provocative paragraph of the day

I once met a celebrated psychiatrist who told me how he picked up his daughter every morning at his former wife’s house and took the little girl—I think she was 10—to breakfast. He said it was the high point of his day. “What do you talk about?” I asked. “We talk about what we’d do if we won the lottery.” “Every day?” Yes, pretty much every day: there had already been an entire year of lottery-winner talk, and there was apparently more to come. At the time, I thought the guy, smart as he was, was implanting some questionable values. But later I changed my mind. What better way for a young girl—and her father too—to figure out who they might be than by figuring out what they would want if they could have anything at all? Psychoanalysis is generally the analysis of suppressed desires, but it might make some progress by taking overt desires seriously too.

UVa Professor Mark Edmundson in an excellent and most readable essay on the bores in life. Good stuff, if a little long-winded (appropriately enough).

Thanks to Veronica for the pointer.

Best line published on this date, so far

Marriage is one of the “basic civil rights of man,” fundamental to our very existence and survival. … To deny this fundamental freedom on so unsupportable a basis as the racial classifications embodied in these statutes, classifications so directly subversive of the principle of equality at the heart of the Fourteenth Amendment, is surely to deprive all the State’s citizens of liberty without due process of law. The Fourteenth Amendment requires that the freedom of choice to marry not be restricted by invidious racial discriminations. Under our Constitution, the freedom to marry, or not marry, a person of another race resides with the individual, and cannot be infringed by the State.

Supreme Court of the United States, Loving v. Virginia, June 12, 1967. (Unanimous opinion written by Chief Justice Warren.)

At the time the case was decided 42 years ago, Virginia was one of 16 states that still had laws prohibiting interracial marriage.

Best quote of the day, so far

Chuck Taylor:

As a 30-year pro journalist myself, I abhor sloppy and imprecise journalism like the next person. But bloggers aren’t the first to practice bad journalism any more than they are the first to do good journalism, as some have. Training does not make you responsible. Peer approval does not make you responsible. Method of dissemination does not make you responsible. Those are all arbitrary definitions that are transcended by the First Amendment.

Best quote of the day, so far

I know it is coming, and I do not fear it, because I believe there is nothing on the other side of death to fear. I hope to be spared as much pain as possible on the approach path. I was perfectly content before I was born, and I think of death as the same state. What I am grateful for is the gift of intelligence, and for life, love, wonder, and laughter. You can’t say it wasn’t interesting. My lifetime’s memories are what I have brought home from the trip. I will require them for eternity no more than that little souvenir of the Eiffel Tower I brought home from Paris.

Roger Ebert quoted by Will Leitch at Deadspin.

Best line of the day

A man in St. Louis dropped off his computer for repair at the area Best Buy, but apparently forgot that he was also using it as a bank. “Employees at a Best Buy store in South County discovered about $10,000 cash inside,” writes the St. Louis Post Dispatch.
. . .

What kind of person [hides] his savings in his computer tower and then forgets about it? The same kind who takes his computer to Best Buy for repair.

Consumerist

Best line of the day

“Lord, I’ve been a Rockets/Nuggets addict since I was 9, and I keep trying to picture my lovable, dog-butt Nuggets winning it all. This state would come unglued. People would paint the Front Range powder blue. Half a million fans would clog the streets. People would stand on John Elway to get a view.”

Rick Reilly praying for a Denver win.

Best lines of the day about journalism

If we were to start an online newspaper from scratch today … One option might be to imitate cable TV, and engage in a furious volume of he-said/she-said reporting, voyeurism, contrarianism, gossip, triviality and gotcha journalism. But that would come at the cost of our souls. The right way to reinvent ourselves online would be to do precisely what journalists were put on this green earth to do: Seek the truth, hold the powerful accountable, expose the B.S., explain how things really work, introduce people to each other, and tell compelling stories.

Dan Froomkin from the first of four brief essays this week on newspapers.

Best redux line of the day

“Because every barrel exhibits its own unique qualities, our tasters must sample each one along the way in order to guarantee that every barrel is pulled from the warehouse at just the right time. It’s challenging work, but there sure isn’t much job turnover.”

Sign at visitors center, Jack Daniel Distillery, Lynchburg, Tennessee. Dad and I took the tour three years ago today.

Best spam line of the day

From among the many, many comments you don’t see — some 10,000 in three years:

“it is interesting that while everybody else is discussing the financial crisis you are taliking about it. Very well done.”

This comment was attached to the post about the three-year-old.