My Breakfast With Helen
Nov 4th, 2006 at 3:50 pm by Susie
I had the pleasure of meeting and speaking with White House correspondent Helen Thomas this morning. She was in town to speak at an American Friends Service Committee meeting, and there was a private press reception beforehand.
She has a new book, “Watchdogs of Democracy? The Waning Washington Press Corps and How It Has Failed the Public.” She was very angry when she wrote it, she says, and she still doesn’t understand the performance of the press in the runup to the Iraq war.
“Why did they go silent, especially now?” she said. She talked about how Colin Powell became the “Pied Piper” for the fencesitters, used by the administration to supply a veneer of credibility to the invasion of Iraq. The war, she said, is “unconscionable, killing people who did nothing to us” and this election is a referendum on “which way this country goes.”
Odds and ends: She doesn’t think Bush can make a move against Iran, Hillary’s advisors are still divided over her entering the presidential race, John McCain is working “night and day” to woo the ultra-right, but the press won’t call him on it “because he’s one of the boys on the bus.”
“Boys will be boys,” she said, sounding annoyed. “The only thing he’s against is torture.”
“And barely that,” someone said to general laughter.
She think it’s too early for Barack Obama to run. “I’d like to see him be less cautious. He walks too cautious a line, just like Hillary,” she said. “It’s a question of courage. I’ll go for Barack Obama when he says something that indicates he has some.”
The Iraq war and Israel’s bombing of Lebanon (she’s of Lebanese descent) trouble her greatly. “I’ve spent 57 years with the wire service, and it’s always been, ‘just the facts,’ but I never bowed out of the human race,” she said.
“We struck a match and lit a fire across the Middle East.”
Helen Thomas is a national treasure.
If only there were a few thousand more like her.
The woman is a hero. She was speaking out when the rest of the press corps was cowering before Ari Fleischer. She could have retired at any time, but she fights the good fight.
God bless her.
[...] When I interviewed her about a year and a half ago, she said: She think it’s too early for Barack Obama to run. “I’d like to see him be less cautious. He walks too cautious a line, just like Hillary,” she said. “It’s a question of courage. I’ll go for Barack Obama when he says something that indicates he has some.” [...]