Word: shaw
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...recalls that telling exchange in the second debate because it came just minutes after moderator Bernard Shaw asked Michael Dukakis the Big Question presumably all America wanted answered: "If Kitty Dukakis were raped and murdered, would you favor an irrevocable death penalty for the killer?" Even with four years of hindsight, that hypothetical query still chills with its smarmy invasiveness and macabre posturing. Politically, of course, Dukakis' unemotional, uninflected, unyielding answer ("No, I don't, Bernard") was in effect his concession speech. But nothing, save the yen for televised blood sports, justified the original question; capital punishment is an issue...
Already wounded by "Willie Horton" and other so-called family value issues, Dukakis found himself mortally wounded by a question from Cable News Network anchor Bernard Shaw...
...Governor," Shaw asked, "if Kitty Dukakis was raped and murdered, would you change your opposition to capital punishment...
...only did many Republicans think Dukakis finished himself with that answer, but more than a few Democrats thought so as well. Bernard Shaw has told me often that, for months following the debate, a number of Democratic activists were livid with him, and that some accused him of being a Republican ringer in the debate...
...truth, it wasn't Shaw's question that did Dukakis in. The question, in many ways, was a softball. The coup de grace was Dukakis' cold fish response...