Helen Thomas – R.I.P.
No, she is not dead in the common use of the acronym. But something has ended and we consider that a good thing. Her career has ended! While Helen Thomas was in many ways a ground breaker for women in journalism, she was also for a very long time at a minimum very controversial. From President Kennedy (in the early 1960’s) on forward, she enjoyed a front row seat at White House Press briefings and she became known for her acidic and even confrontational questions and exchanges with Presidents and whoever the Press Secretaries were. She eventually became the White House bureau chief for UPI and was the first female member and president of the White House Correspondent’s Association and the first female member of the Gridiron Club. Later on, she joined the Hearst Newspaper company as an opinion columnist. Since she was an admitted liberal, the main stream media cut her more slack than almost anybody else. Her longevity was admirable, she celebrated her 89th birthday in the White Press briefing room last year on August 4 and had her picture taken with President Obama who shares birthdays with her.
Her Lebanese heritance made her automatically an enemy of Israel but it seems she managed to hide her antipathy to that country fairly well from the outside world for a very long time. Her liberal bias would surface every time a Republican became President and her exchanges were caustic as when she laid into George W. Bush in March 2006 asking him what motivated him (Bush) to invade Iraq since all previous given reasons were proven false. In November 2007, she asked then White House Press Secretary Dana Perino why Americans should depend on General Petraeus in determining when to re-deploy U.S. troops. She asked: “You mean how many more people we kill?” Now with the Obama administration she has been critical about the handling of the press which in her opinion was and is too controlling.
Then came May 27, 2010, when she was asked during a Jewish Heritage Celebration Day event at the White House if she had a comment on Israel. The questioner was Jewish Rabbi David Nesenoff who filmed the interview (as he apparently did with everybody else). Helen Thomas knew that she was filmed and answered his question: “Tell them to get the hell out of Palestine, remember, these people (the Palestinians) are occupied and its their land.”
Next question: “Where should they (the Jews) go?”
Answer: “They should go home, go back to Poland and Germany.”
Question: “So you are saying the Jews go back to Poland and Germany?”
Answer: “And America and everywhere else. Why push people (the Palestinians) out of there who have lived there for centuries? See?”
That was all and it was finally enough to get her fired from her last employer, the Nine Speakers agency. Her openly hateful attitude towards Israel was simply too much to defend. Even though she apologized for her comments, she was ousted and they let her turn in her resignation on June 7 ending her relationship with Hearst Newspapers.
What should we call the R.I.P. (Rest in Peace) then in her case since she has not died? We suggest among things based on her longstanding attitude towards Israel the following: Refusing Israel Peace or maybe even Rejecting Israeli People. Common Sense University has only one question: How could Helen Thomas in her obviously deep felt hatred towards Jews be tolerated and even admired by the media, the U.S. Governments for over fifty years and the American public in general? The answer is in our opinion simple: “She was and still is a liberal!”
No related posts.
Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.
