Today's Elian sound bite

The weekend's battle of images in the Elian Gonzalez drama turned into a war of words as Washington windbags tried to top one another with out-of-control rhetoric and imagery.

Peggy Noonan kicked it off in the Wall Street Journal on Monday, with her complaint that the godless President Clinton ignored the symbolism of the dolphins who allegedly accompanied Elian while he waited for rescue. "Mr. Reagan would not have dismissed the story of the dolphins as Christian kitsch, but seen it as possible evidence of the reasonable assumption that God's creatures had been commanded to protect one of God's children."

No one has quite matched Noonan, but Salon is committed to a daily report on the day's best Elian sound bite. Today's comes from Maureen Dowd in the New York Times -- as hilarious as Noonan, albeit intentionally.

Dowd's spoof of the post-Elian Republican platform included a "family values" plank that held, "The best care for some children, especially in the early years, can come from a loony cousin-on-the-verge-of-a-nervous-breakdown. Government must sometimes separate a child and parent, if that parent is hindering electoral votes."