There’s no denying that Helen Thomas was a pioneer in journalism: Most notably, she was the first woman to become a chief White House correspondent, and the first female member of the Gridiron Club – the oldest and most prestigious journalistic organization in the world.
Perhaps even more impressive, though, was her professional longevity, during which time she occupied a privileged, front-row seat for press conferences by every president from Kennedy to Obama.
The Gridiron Club announced that Thomas died on Saturday after being “sick for a long time.” She was 92.
As it happens, I wrote what I considered to be her obituary three years ago under the somewhat irreverent but wholly warranted title, “Helen Thomas Ends Celebrated Career With Foot in Mouth,” The iPINIONS Journal, June 10, 2010. Therefore, I shall suffice to reprise it here.
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Tell them to get the hell out of Palestine… Remember, these people are occupied. And it’s their land. It’s not German, it’s not Poland. [The Jews] should go home … move to Poland, Germany, and America and everywhere else.
This is how Helen Thomas, veteran White House reporter and columnist for Hearst newspapers, responded when a reporter from RabbiLive.com asked her to comment on the state of Israel. It is particularly noteworthy that she made these comments at a White House celebration of Jewish Heritage on May 27, 2010.
Unsurprisingly, her comments incited near-universal outrage in Washington when they were published over the weekend. Yesterday White House Spokesman Robert Gibbs called them “offensive and reprehensible.”
I deeply regret my comments I made last week regarding the Israelis and the Palestinians… They do not reflect my heart-felt belief that peace will come to the Middle East only when all parties recognize the need for mutual respect and tolerance. May that day come soon.
(Helenthomas.org, June 4, 2010)
Also, unsurprisingly, her non-apology apology was not enough to save her job. Hearst duly prevailed upon her, after Gibbs’s official rebuke, to retire, effective immediately.
I cannot help noting, however, that this outrage over her comments is laced with a strain of disingenuousness. After all, the 89-year-old Thomas has been roundly celebrated throughout her 50-year career at the White House for her acerbic, intemperate and brazenly biased reporting.
In point of fact, she never missed an opportunity during White House press conferences to imbue her questions about the Middle East with an anti-Israel taint.
In this case, her age notwithstanding, nobody doubts that she fully understood the genocidal implications of suggesting that Jews should go home to Poland and Germany, where six million Jews were exterminated. Not to mention her ignorant, Ahmadinejad-like protestation that the Jews have no right to even exist in the Middle East.
Yet, despite her antic reporting, or perhaps because of it, Thomas was accorded the incomparable honor of presiding front and center as the Dean of the White House Press Corps. This was so even after she retired as a reporter for U.P.I. and began writing strictly opinion pieces for Hearst in 2000.
Of course I appreciate why Hearst had to let her go, but it reeks of hypocrisy that so many of her colleagues are pretending to be “shocked, shocked” by her comments. For this would be like Hollywood producers pretending to be shocked if Betty White were to let rip a profane sexual joke on TV that finally offends all notions of public decency. After all, they have helped her become celebrated in her dotage for acting like a drunken sailor.
It’s too bad Thomas’s trailblazing career as a female journalist has ended in this ignominious fashion. Not least because, given her age, this episode will now figure prominently in her obituary.
Farewell, Helen.