Jack Cafferty
Biography and Quotes

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"It occurs to me that John McCain is as intellectually shallow as our current President....Bush goes bumbling along, grinning and spewing moronic one-liners, as though nobody understands what a colossal failure he has been....I fear to the depth of my being that John McCain is just like him."

— Jack Cafferty in commentary at CNN.com, August 19.
http://www.mrc.org/notablequotables/2008/nq20080825.asp

"I think it’s very much playing the race card to put a highly-educated, articulate, middle-aged black family man into a television commercial with two blonde bimbo airheads with a combined I.Q. of a box of cereal. And if you have any doubts about what I’m talking about, it’s the same kind of thing that was done to Harold Ford down in Tennessee in 2006, and it stinks. It’s more subtle, but it stinks just the same."

— CNN’s Jack Cafferty on The Situation Room, July 31, complaining about McCain’s ad that included images of Britney Spears and Paris Hilton to suggest Obama is more celebrity than substance.
http://www.mrc.org/notablequotables/2008/nq20080811.asp

The "Tin Foil Hat Award for Crazy Conspiracy Theories," presented by Mary Matalin, went to CNN's Jack Cafferty, who suggested that the Bush administration might be coordinating with Osama bin Laden:

"The last time we got a tape from Osama bin Laden was right before the 2004 presidential election. Now here we are, four days away from hearings starting in Washington into the wiretapping of America's telephones without bothering to get a court order or a warrant, and up pops another tape from Osama bin Laden. Coincidence? Who knows."

Friday, March 30, 2007 9:46 a.m. EDT
NY Times' Sulzberger Tops 'Dishonor' Awards
This article was written by Susan Jones, CNSNews.com Senior Editor
http://archive.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2007/3/30/100059.shtml

Delivering the ultimate liberal insult, in an online commentary posted Tuesday morning on CNNPolitics.com, CNN's Jack Cafferty charged that John McCain is as incompetent and incapable as President George W. Bush. "It occurs to me that John McCain is as intellectually shallow as our current President," Cafferty felt compelled to share. "Bush goes bumbling along, grinning and spewing moronic one-liners, as though nobody understands what a colossal failure he has been," Cafferty fretted before concluding: "I fear to the depth of my being that John McCain is just like him."

The 2,713th CyberAlert. Tracking Liberal Media Bias Since 1996
6:35am EDT, Wednesday August 20, 2008 (Vol. Thirteen; No. 158)
CNN's Jack Cafferty: McCain 'as Intellectually Shallow' as Bush
http://www.mediaresearch.org/cyberalerts/2008/cyb20080820.asp#2

Cafferty soon launched a rant: “I have never, ever seen anything as badly bungled and poorly handled as this situation in New Orleans. Where the hell is the water for these people? Why can't sandwiches be dropped to those people that are in that Superdome down there? I mean, what is, this is Thursday. This is Thursday. This storm happened five days ago. It's a disgrace.”

A full transcript of what the Manhattan-based Cafferty, at about 3:30pm EDT on September 1, told Wolf Blitzer at CNN's Washington, DC studio:

Cafferty: “The thing that's most glaring in all of this is the conditions continue to deteriorate for the people who are victims in this and the efforts to do anything about it don't seem to be anywhere in sight. I want to read you something, Wolf. This is a quote fro an editorial (text on screen): 'A better leader would have flown straight to the disaster zone and announced the immediate mobilization of every available resource....The cool, confident, intuitive leadership Bush exhibited in his first term, particularly in the months [“immediately' on screen but not said by Cafferty] following 9/11 [“Sept. 11, 2001" on screen], has vanished.'

“Now, that's not from some liberal rag. That is an editorial from one of the most conservative newspapers in the country, New Hampshire's Union Leader. The New York Times, not unexpectedly kind of chimed in, they said the President 'showed up a day later than needed' and they excoriated him for 'appearing casual to the point of carelessness.' Harsh words coming from FEMA's former disaster response chief, Eric Tolbin (sp?), who says the government was not ready and shifted its attention from natural disasters to fighting the war on terror. The questions that we ask on The Situation Room every afternoon, Wolf, are posted on the Web site two or three hours before we go on the air and people who read the Web site often begin to respond to the questions before the show actually starts.

“The question this hour is: 'How would you rate the response of the federal government to Hurricane Katrina?' I got to tell you something. We got five or six hundred letters before the show even went on the air. No one, no one says the federal government is doing a good job in handling one of the most atrocious and embarrassing and far reaching and calamitous things that has come along in this country in my lifetime. I'm 62. I remember the riots in Watts, I remember the earthquake in San Francisco, I remember a lot of things. I have never, ever seen anything as badly bungled and poorly handled as this situation in New Orleans. Where the hell is the water for these people? Why can't sandwiches be dropped to those people that are in that Superdome down there? I mean, what is, this is Thursday. This is Thursday. This storm happened five days ago. It's a disgrace. And don't think the world isn't watching. This is the government the taxpayers are paying for and it's fallen right flat on its face, as far as I can see in the way it's handled this thing.”

CNN's Jack Cafferty Again Goes on Anti-Bush Tirade
By Brent Baker (Bio | Archive) September 1, 2005 - 16:58 ET
http://newsbusters.org/node/835