They Shoot Old Reporters,
Don’t They?
Helen Thomas
has lost her way
You have to laugh when you see once-upon-a-time
UPI reporter Helen Thomas. A creviced stump of a woman, she nevertheless
goes toe to toe with anyone in the White House that happens to
bare the initials “GOP.”
So, in keeping with the natural order of things --- for it is
rumored that Thomas has been inside the White House press room
long enough to ask Abraham Lincoln if freeing the slaves was worth
the lives of so many Americans --- Thomas again decides that embarrassing
a president is much more personally indulgent than merely acting
the part of a professional journalist:
Helen Thomas: I'd like to ask you, Mr. President,
your decision to invade Iraq has caused the deaths of thousands
of Americans and Iraqis, wounds of Americans and Iraqis for a
lifetime. Every reason given, publicly at least, has turned out
not to be true. My question is, why did you really want to go
to war? From the moment you stepped into the White House, from
your Cabinet --- your Cabinet officers, intelligence people, and
so forth --- what was your real reason? You have said it wasn't
oil --- quest for oil, it hasn't been Israel, or anything else.
What was it? (http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1002200220)
For his part, Bush said that he “didn't really regret”
calling on Thomas, but then added that he “kind of semi-regretted
it.” Up until recently, Bush had essentially avoided calling
on Thomas.
One wonders who gets the better of these exchanges --- the President
or the press? Well, as the saying goes, “sometimes you eat
the bear, and sometimes the bear eats you.” In this instance,
the doyen of the White House press corps met her match in President
Bush.
Opinions will vary. But since everyone knows Thomas’s routine
by now --- ask a supremely partisan and pointless query that leads
with accusations and cynicism --- you have to assume that President
Bush had something in mind.
Might that something be the embarrassment of the national press?
What better way to do this, one supposes, then to call upon the
room’s most experienced journalist and expose her for the
bitter partisan that she is? In the same press conference, Bush
upbraided the press for its coverage of the war in Iraq, thereby
reminding the public that it is not just Helen Thomas that has
trouble with her liberal inclinations, but the mainstream media
as a whole.
The only discernible difference is that the flamboyance with
which Helen Thomas operates is missing, but the sentiments are
the same.
Of course, Helen Thomas stopped being a “reporter”
some time ago. Thomas is an op-ed columnist for the Hearst newspapers,
where she writes a regular piece for syndication.
News reporters, as I have come to know the term, do not pen articles
four days before a presidential election with titles like “Bush
Win Would Mean Dark Times.” (http://www.commondreams.org/views04/1030-24.htm)
Nor does a news reporter tell a respected Beltway journal, like
The Hill Newspaper, this: “The day Dick Cheney is
going to run for president, I'll kill myself. All we need is one
more liar.” (http://worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=45493)
No. Reporters report the news. They do not seek to make it. But
that is what Helen Thomas does every time she opens her mouth
and spews out another “screw you, Mr. President” oratory
disguised as a question.
Helen Thomas is anything but objective, as is most of the Washington
press corps. If anyone has ever attended one of the daily briefings
given to the “Gaggle,” as White House press pool reporters
are called, one draws the analogy of Christians and lions. It
is a daily blood sport with the victim usually being members of
the Administration.
Helen Thomas is an example of what this White House has had to
deal with these past five-plus years. And after former White House
Press Secretary Ari Fleischer left in July, 2003, things degraded
even more. Replacement Scott McClellan, not nearly the authority
figure Fleischer was, is almost serially abused.
It was only a month ago that NBC’s David Gregory called
the President’s chief spokesman a “jerk,” as
Gregory and the entire White House press corps behaved as foam-flecked
jackals before the country’s very eyes over the accidental
shooting of Harry Whittington by Vice President Dick Cheney.
And it wasn’t that long ago that these very same “bastions
of integrity” called the press were apoplectic upon learning
that a “controversial reporter for a conservative Web site”
had infiltrated their sacred ranks. While it is true that Jeff
Gannon, whose real name is James Dale Guckert, had questionable
credentials and an even more problematic past, the press was just
as upset with the questions that, they say, were “so friendly
it might have been planted.” (http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1339944/posts)
Of course, all the questions asked by the Gregorys, Sangers,
and VandeHeis of the White House press corps are never
tinted with the eruditeness of liberalism. Sure. Still, even these
products of an elite media are more reporter and/or journalist
than Helen Thomas is.
Helen Thomas has had a long and storied career. Beginning with
the Kennedy White House, Thomas has covered nine different presidents
and 12 White House administrations, worked for United Press International
(UPI) for 57 years, and is now entering her 63rd year in the press.
Somewhat famously, Helen Thomas is known for closing presidential
press conferences with her trademark, “Thank you, Mr. President.”
A suggestion for the widely acclaimed “First Lady of the
Press:” “Thank you” as well. Now, take your
pad and pen to the nearest trash can and drop them in, and exit
the press room. Longevity does not give one the right to continually
keep trashing the nation’s president.
But like Sydney Pollack's 1969 movie adaptation of the Horace
McCoy novel They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?, Helen
Thomas is the “ultimate spectacle” in this media Bush-bash
marathon. But even marathons come to an end, and hopefully, the
dance is nearly over for Helen Thomas.
Somewhere in Florida, there is a spot at the bingo table that
calls to you, Helen.
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