If you want to look at a media circus in action, check out the Helen Thomas foot in her mouth story. I didn't watch news all weekend so missed a lot of it. Had to go to YouTube to find exactly what she said, since not one of the written references I found this morning had an exact quote. Here is what she said: "They (the Jews) Should Get the Hell Out of Palestine." You would think that, this story being about a bunch of journalists, it wouldn't be that hard to find the right quote, but it was. It's harder to find an exact context. I saw a couple references to a radio show with a Rabbi, but the You tube thingy looks like a random person on the street interview… except of course, its Helen who was on the street, and she is not random. One Helen apologist insisted she was talking only about how Israel should abandon it's policy of making new settlements in Palestine. The same story insisted that the follow-up question… "Where would they go?" "Back where they came from, to Germany and Poland and Brooklyn," meant that she was pointing out that the settlements are being filled by newcomers to Israel who came directly from Brooklyn and Poland and Germany, and we would be better off if they went back to a place where they recently had homes than if they stayed in Palestine, where their presence poses a challenge and a menace. (I have to give some credence to this version, since she said Palestine, not Israel.) Helen's media fellows are feeding on this like cats on mice. Right wingers and Israeli apologists claim she wants to turn back the clock and force all Jews to go back to Germany and Poland and somehow relive the Holocaust. They claim it is proof that she is an anti-semite because she obviously does not know anything about the horrors of the Holocaust and such. Better, and I really like this one, the right wing also claims the Washington media establishment is circling the wagons to protect Helen, PROOF that the left wing supports fascism. In the meantime, the straight media, often referred to as the left wing media by the paranoid monkeys of the right, has been very busy proving the right wing media is completely wrong. Poor old Helen has been thrown under the bus by everyone who has been, had been or ever wanted to be a big cheese inside the media circus. That's about everyone she ever worked with who is still alive. This is, after all, the kind of gaff that causes all of Washington, particularly the press corps, to run as far as possible from the splatter. Her agent was the first to go. (I suspect it was more because her dollar value dropped than principled opposition.) Then her "co author," Craig Crawford, who was too happy to hitch his wagon to her highly respected star when his own career seemed to be running out of gas, no longer knows her. The White House Press Association is talking about censoring her, and every pundit in the industry is working overtime to get in front of the story. Where's the old lady? Where's the bus? I don't think Helen Thomas said anything a lot of people have not thought, some of which I have written here, and which some other people are saying. I don't think she really wants the USA to abandon it's support for Israel or means that all Israelis should go back to Europe. I certainly so not believe she is unmindful of the history of Jews in Europe. LIke many of she is frustrated that Israel has taken a number of actions that appear to ignore international sentiment and which have made it appear that they are as much the problem as is Hamas. More importantly, Helen Thomas is the only reporter who has lately asked any useful or penetrating questions about our little war in Afghanistan, proving she has not lost her chops as a reporter. She has been a stalwart of the journalism community for decades and it is a sad thing to see her treated with so little respect. If you are leading pack of Washington journalists, you have to expect that they will turn on you eventually. (I was going use a simile here, comparing journalists to whores, but I refrained out of respect for whores.)
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