Former White House correspondent and professional harridan Helen Thomas has acknowledged she looned out with remarks about Israel that led to tar and feathers. But she says the comments were "exactly what I thought," even though she realized soon afterward that it was the end of her job."Being an anus is just part of my girlish charm!"
"I hit the third rail. You cannot criticize Israel in this country and survive," Thomas told Ohio station WMRN-AM in a sometimes emotional 35-minute interview that aired Tuesday.
There are lots of ways of criticizing Israel. Some of them are valid, some of them reek.
It was recorded a week earlier by WMRN news hound Scott Spears at Thomas' Washington, D.C., condominium.
"Howl into the microphone, please, Ms. Thomas!"
Thomas, 90, stepped down from her job as a columnist for Hearst News Service in June after a rabbi and independent filmmaker videotaped her outside the White House calling on Israelis to get "out of Paleostine."
Had she criticized Israel as a social democracy with a welfare program that's unsustainable who woulda cared? Maybe a few people would have gotten their backs up at criticism of Israeli wines, probably not as many people would have huffed up at criticism of Tel Aviv drivers. The bit about "go back to Europe" was in an entirely different category.
She gave up her front row seat in the White House press room, where she had aimed often pointed questions at 10 presidents, going back to Eisenhower.
Back when Ike was in office she seems to have been a lot more coherent.
She has kept a low profile since then.
Who's noticed? Has anybody been paying attention to her?
| She did get that lifetime achievement award from CAIR as a result of her little outburst. |
I'm not too sure what that fact has to do with anything. Lots of people's parents emigrated from someplace else. Helen's 90 years old. You'd think that by now she'd be old enough to form her own opinions.