SIEGEL: Well, thanks a lot for talking with us about it. And I don't believe that were any future famous lines coming out of his inaugural address. He really, I think, made a conscious decision to go for substance rather than style. SHAPIRO: Well, it is a common event - although, I guess, one surprise of the year was that Barack Obama - a very intelligent, eloquent person - in his speeches did not really try for the rhetorical heights. SIEGEL: But it isn't for lack of politicians giving set-piece speeches and trying to sum up their ideas very eloquently. You know, maybe there are eloquent, inspiring quotes out there, but it would just take a while for us to realize it. SHAPIRO: I mean, I have to say, having really studied this, there are no Shakespeares or Lincolns out there, that the kinds of quotes we get nowadays are entirely different in nature. SIEGEL: Are there any quotations on your list that are - sort of the traditionally, carefully wrought, well-shaped, little bits of rhetoric that we might have expected from a John F. SHAPIRO: And I think what this represents is the extremism, or the confusion, of our political times. An anonymous speaker at a health-care-reform town hall meeting in Simpsonville, South Carolina, said this to congressman Bob Inglis, a Republican congressman who answered him by saying that Medicare is entirely created by the government. SHAPIRO: The number one quote of the year: Keep your government hands off my Medicare. And the number one quotation, what does it express? SIEGEL: So, we've got a statement of incivility, a statement of commercial language, and a statement of courage. We're going to be in the Hudson, Captain Sully Sullenberger's response to air traffic controllers asking him which runway he preferred to land in. SHAPIRO: Well, this one was actually a positive, inspiring quote. What's the second biggest one, you think? SIEGEL: Now, we're up to the silver medal for the year in quotations. SHAPIRO: Third place, a less controversial quote - there's an app for that, Apple's advertising slogan for the iPhone. That epitomized the times, I think, in that it was a poster child for incivility in political discourse -reflected the polarization that seemed to dominate the year. SHAPIRO: That was number four on the list. SIEGEL: One very famous quotation - or infamous quotation, I guess, was the interruption of President Obama during his speech to the Joint Session of Congress: You lie. SHAPIRO: Yes, it's a way of updating "The Yale Book of Quotations," and amassing material that can be added to the next edition. SIEGEL: And we should explain that in addition to your - being associate librarian and lecturer in legal research at Yale Law School, you annually survey the year in quotations. FRED SHAPIRO (Editor, "The Yale Book of Quotations"): Thank you. So, it's with great expectations that we turn now to Fred Shapiro, editor of "The Yale Book of Quotations." Welcome to the program. We've had wars, we've had a recession, we've had immensely contentious politics in Washington. So if memorable rhetoric is the offspring of distress, then 2009 should be pretty rich in catchy quotations. I mean, after all, all those great quotations from Napoleon and Lincoln and Churchill and FDR were uttered in times of war or economic devastation. It's a curse to live in times when people say really notable, historically interesting things. Here's a dubious corollary to that dubious Chinese curse about living in interesting times.
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