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Home Front: Politix
Being a Liberal - Never Having to Say You're Sorry
2005-08-03
My affair with Helen

Hope all of you already ate lunch after reading that line...

Legendary in her own mind White House reporter Helen Thomas is mad at me, big time, as Vice President Cheney once said in a different context about a different reporter.

My sin? I made the mistake of assuming that, when I called her last week to ask about her recent Hearst Newspapers column on Cheney, I wasn’t calling to pass the time of day but actually intended to write a story about it. Calling him “the most powerful vice president in recent times, perhaps in U.S. history,” she said that Cheney “certainly could campaign on the theme that he has had experience in running the White House."

Um, kinda like Al Gore did? No hypocrisy here...

Figuring that, having covered every president since Andrew Jackson Abe Lincoln John F. Kennedy, she knew I was going to quote her, since I assume people are on the record unless they state otherwise, which she didn’t, I asked her if she was promoting a Cheney candidacy in 2008.

Emphasis mine - that's the whole 'he said - she said' argument in a nutshell. I guess it depends on how often they've ever chatted w/ each other; if it was less often, I'll side with him.

I then wrote what I thought was an innocuous item in our “Under the Dome” column Thursday in which I quoted her response: “The day I say Dick Cheney is going to run for president, I’ll kill myself. All we need is one more liar.” She says I shouldn’t have quoted her “because we all say stuff we don’t want printed.”

Little surprise here - I can imagine much, much worse things being said in private by the likes of Krugman, MoDo, and the other usual suspects...

Little did I know, being a creature of the typewriter/telegraph era of journalism, that cybergossip (Um, try internet reporter - Ed.) Matt Drudge would pounce on the item and transmit it to the farthest regions of the Internet universe, along with an unflattering photograph of Ms. Thomas.
You have a flattering one?
That was all Drudge acolytes needed to unleash a flood of e-mails condemning her — and me, as her unwitting accomplice.

Unwitting? Color me skeptical...

The general tone of the e-mails, and a number of phone calls as well, can be captured in one from Rob Clark of Sarasota, Fla., who wrote, “Please tell Helen Thomas that she can borrow one of my guns if she wants to shoot herself.”

This is called 'Open Mouth, Insert Foot"...

Of course, there were also such gems as this one from an anonymous foul-mouthed Drudgoid who described me with a scatalogical term combining an adjective for a common sexual practice with a noun for a bodily orifice.

The old Kos "Take one letter from untold thousands to portray the opposition as nutjobs" meme? Couldn't see that coming. That trick's almost as old as Helen Thomas!

“No wonder the fourth estate is in such sorry state, you f- - - - - - sleezeball,” he wrote. I’d have taken his comment seriously if he’d had the guts to sign his name, but it’s easy to be a coward on the Internet. I just hope this slack-jawed degenerate reads this so he learns how to spell “sleazeball,” which he can easily see in the mirror.

'Slack-jawed degenerate'? So much for taking the high road.

Anyway, having unintentionally caused Ms. Thomas considerable pain, I wish to rise to her defense. Thomas is a great journalist, the stand-in model for the Old Man of the Mountain in Franconia, NH first lady of the White House press corps, who has blazed a trail for women journalists and has been doing for decades what White House reporters are supposed to do but too often don’t, which is to ask tough questions of presidents.

I'd be breathless after such verbal fellatio / cunninlingus. Anyone want Helen's sloppy seconds?

Naturally, that doesn’t sit well with a lot of people, who apparently would prefer to see their politicians treated like gods and who have a visceral hatred of the press.

You mean like JFK, Carter and Clinton, or like Gingrich, DeLay and Santorum?

But the larger lesson here, and one that I’m surprised Ms. Thomas, who has been a Washington reporter since Charlemagne1943 and retired as UPI’s White House correspondent in 2000, failed to understand, is that “off the record” is a virtually meaningless term, which is why this column bears the name it does. It’s bad enough that I public officials hide behind it to try and weasel out of a huge mistake discredit their critics, as the CIA leak imbroglio demonstrates, but even worse when reporters do it.

"Thus I piously wash my hands of L'affaire Thomas".
Posted by:Raj

#5  He's a reporter, his rent was probably due and he needed a story he could sell.
Posted by: Jealet Jise3212   2005-08-03 23:18  

#4  GK - Doh! Can't believe I missed that one...
Posted by: Raj   2005-08-03 19:21  

#3  I thought being a liberal meant always saying you are sorry. It means being an apologist for everything.
Posted by: John Q. Citizen   2005-08-03 18:19  

#2  Raj, good Fisk, but you missed one.
.... and has been doing for decades what White House reporters are supposed to do but too often don’t, which is to ask tough questions of Republican presidents.
Posted by: GK   2005-08-03 17:14  

#1  I wonder if he realizes the foul-mouthed fellow was a Helen "Ozzy Impersonator" Thomas supporter?
Posted by: Robert Crawford   2005-08-03 14:35  

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