The 40 Most Obnoxious Quotes Of 2004

John Hawkins explores the nadir of journalism and speech in 2004.

Update: William Raspberry of The Washington Post gets the jump on next year’s list by invoking the Copperhead Conjunction to tell us what a wonderfully “functioning country” Saddam had before we upset the apple cart:

We can argue all day that Saddam Hussein was a tyrant whose defeat and humiliation should evoke no sympathy from us. But he did have a functioning country. There was a government in place. People went to work and to the market and to school in relative safety. Can anyone really believe that the U.S.-spawned anarchy has left the Iraqi people better off? We broke it. Do we have the moral right to walk away with the shards scattered across the floor?

As Jim Geraghty writes:

A