[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 41 (Friday, March 22, 1996)]
[House]
[Page H2705]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                   COMMENTS ON CORRESPONDENTS DINNER

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Florida [Mr. Goss] is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. GOSS. Mr. Speaker, I had no intention really of using this time 
today. It is more by circumstance that I take it.
  Last night, after our long day's work here, I went home. I was having 
my dinner with my wife, and we turned on the TV and I was checking on 
C-SPAN to see if in fact we were having any further floor action on 
subjects that interested me. I got into the Correspondents Dinner 
downtown in Washington.
  I believe that is a dinner traditionally where the correspondents and 
the top leaders of our country get together and, in a good natured and 
good humored way, poke fun at each other; they get together and have 
some time of friendship and fellowship, take time out from their 
schedules. It is usually an enjoyable circumstance.
  I would say that I thought that President Clinton did an extremely 
good job of carrying the mood, making a fine presentation. I enjoyed 
what he had to say. I think everybody there did. I think Speaker 
Gingrich did also. I thought his remarks were appropriate, on target, 
amusing, and it was a good thing going on.
  Then, Mr. Speaker, we had a monologue from a gentleman, who I guess 
is a talk show host, named Don Imus, that I think went well beyond 
anything that should be tolerated on the public airways. I realize it 
is a free country, and I am in no way suggesting that people do not 
have a right to say or do what they want, to speak what they want. I 
would never take that right away from Mr. Imus.
  But I certainly feel that what he had to say went beyond 
inappropriate. It was excruciating, it was embarrassing, it was 
certainly blood sport. It was far more mean than it was amusing. I 
consider it not washing dirty laundry, but reveling in dirty laundry. 
And I wonder why anybody would take joy or have any particular 
participation in something that certainly went beyond decency and went 
beyond respect, particularly when we are talking about the President of 
the United States and the Speaker of the House, of this institution.
  I make these observations because I hope that the people who organize 
this dinner in the future will get principal speakers who will deal 
with the spirit of what this evening was supposed to apply itself to, 
which is in fact some good natured time of fellowship among people who 
have tremendously difficult decisions to make, tremendously difficult 
jobs here, who work long days at great personal sacrifice.
  I think we are certainly all human beings and we all have our little 
failures, but to go and systematically try and demean people, which is 
what the purpose of the monologue was, seems to me to be immensely 
disrespectful, and, again, I hope those folks will not have a speaker 
like that again. I think it ruined the evening.
  Fortunately, this is a free country. We are very happy that this is a 
free country. We just passed in this body something called the V chip, 
so we do not have to watch violence on TV. My TV set has a V chip 
already. It is called an off button, and, as a free citizen in a free 
country, I exercise my prerogative to turn off Mr. Imus. I hope others 
will do the same if they feel the same way I do about his performance 
last night.

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