As such, her profile fits very well with other young professionals we’ve selected as the next generation of foreign policy leaders. [emphasis added]

—Lisa Shields, vice president of communications at the Council on Foreign Relations, announcing that Angelina Jolie has been given membership in the legendary think tank.

I responded to his comment with my right hand.

— Republican Sen. Charles Bishop, after slugging Democratic Sen. Lowell Barron on the floor of the Alabama Senate, charging Barron called him a nasty epithet.

Don’t bother to ask any questions, because believe me I am not going to answer them.

— Singer George Michael, after being sentenced to community service and a two-year driving ban after pleading guilty in a British court to a charge of driving while unfit through drugs.

The effectiveness of the newspaper’s daily operations will not be jeopardized.

— Robin Saul, publisher of the News & Record of Greensboro, N.C. The paper has “laid off” 41 employees “after careful consideration of the marketplace, the changing media environment and the needs of our readers and customers,” Saul said. The paper will “continue our strategies of innovation and developing new products for print, online and mobile.”

And this, a statement about a moron:

That’s the genius of this ostensibly empty-headed young woman, the ability to make the world watch her every move, even if the world doesn’t particularly want to. People who say that she’s nothing but a professional nightclubber, partygoer and red-carpet poseur are missing the point. Paris Hilton’s great talent is for celebrity. In the art of being famous, she combines the gifts of Mozart with the strategic insight of Sun Tzu.

— Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson

xpost: 5th Estate