Posted on 03/01/2005 5:51:11 PM PST by tgslTakoma
WASHINGTON, 2 March 2005 — Arab bashing reached a new low in Washington last week when Ann Coulter, a loudmouthed, mean-spirited, pro-Bush columnist, decided to defend the White House press pass controversy over faux-reporter James Guckert (a.k.a. Jeff Gannon) by writing in her syndicated column: “Press passes can’t be that hard to come by if the White House allows that old Arab Helen Thomas to sit within yards of the president.”
Thomas, whose Hearst column is distributed by King Features Syndicate, is of Lebanese descent. The former United Press International reporter has been a journalist for nearly 60 years, and has covered every president since John F. Kennedy. She was the first female president of the White House Correspondents Association.
Even her syndicators realized the gaffe. When Coulter’s column was posted on Universal Press Syndicate’s (UPS) website, someone edited out the race-based slur “that old Arab Helen Thomas,” using instead: “that dyspeptic, old Helen Thomas.”
But the “old Arab” reference still appears the column posted on Coulter’s website: www.anncoulter.com/cgi-local/article.cgi.
Coulter was, perhaps, taking a cue from the White House, which has slighted Thomas several times since 2003. During a televised news conference, President George W. Bush deliberately snubbed several reporters he ordinarily calls upon, including journalists from the Washington Post, Newsweek, and USA Today. But the most conspicuous recipient of the Bush freeze-out was Thomas, who has barbed and grilled every president since Kennedy and almost always gets to ask a question. Bush pointedly ignored her.
Bush then dealt Thomas a second slight. By custom, Thomas concludes White House press conferences at the president’s signal by saying, “Thank you, Mr. President.” Bush instead ended the conference with his own sign off, “Thank you for your questions,” and killed a decades-old White House custom. Lastly, she was removed from her front row seat, and delegated to a back seat in the press choir.
Is this treatment due to the fact that Thomas has been critical of the Bush administration? She has condemned the terror-fighting Patriot Act and slammed Bush’s domestic and international policies. She also called the Iraq war “a violation of international policy under any circumstance,” and said it is “immoral.”
But she has never been known to mince her words to any president.
There has been disappointingly little reaction in defense of their colleague by White House journalists.
In an article entitled “Lipstick Fascism,” James Wolcott, a Vanity Fair contributing editor, writes: “I wonder what would happen if a writer, say me, were to refer in a Vanity Fair column to ‘that old Jew Norman Podhoretz’ or, naughtier still, ‘that old Jewess Lucianne Goldberg.’
“Through the magic of exaggeration, I can just imagine the commotion. Daniel Pipes and David Horowitz would blow their respective lids...petitions would file in to Vanity Fair demanding that I be fired, or, for penance, be forced to tour Auschwitz with Prince Harry.
“Arabs of course are fair game on talk radio and the trash punditry, of which Ann Coulter is stringbean queen,” says Wolcott. “Presumably Helen Thomas’s very ancestry, about which I know nothing, makes her an incipient terrorist threat, though presumably commando call boy Jeff Gannon would have been coiled to pounce into action if the octogenarian made any sudden violent moves. Coulter’s typically crass wisecrack is the cartoonish version of the hostile profiling of Arabs and Muslims being conducted all over the neoconservative right, as typified by Michelle Malkin’s pioneer work to excuse the Japanese internment in order to justify the preemptive incarceration of Muslims and other suspicious elements.
“I’m sure this sort of thing doesn’t fluster them in the slightest. Conservatism and sadism have become indivisible,” writes Wolcott.
Ha! Were Helen's feelings hurt, or just an excuse for more whining by those not involved? I sure am tired of the whining.
The use of the word "Arab" does NOT refer to race. There is no such thing as an Arab race. Arab ethnicity, yes, but not race. The constant use of "race-hate" as a bashing term is far MORE despicable than Coulter's reference to Thomas's ethnicity.
Hear hear.
Coulter should have said: "That old Semite, Helen Thomas"
Ms. Coulter's venom may be what it takes to expose the left. She has a big mouth and knows how to use it.
Instead of taking cheap shots at the likes of Helen Thomas (whose own don't even defend her), perhaps Coulter could apply her "constitutional scholar" acumen to current events and actions by our government. Or not.
Talk about paranoid.
=== Bush would be insane if he acknowledged Helen Thomas.
No more so than he would be to acknowledge the "friendly questions" from a poseur conservative whose cyber "smoking guns" are a walk in the park for liberal bloggers to plot.
This is the guy we trust to appoint an Intel Czar?
The left does not have a Coulter. Like Rush says, they lie about everything and haven't told the truth in 40 years.
She reminds of Oswald Cobblepot in Batman II. No wait.........It is he!
Usually when I see something resembling Helen Thomas, it's in tightly coiled piles on my lawn.
That's a big 10 - 4
Wireless keyboard, does not always register the keys, and especially misses a lot of caps. So bite me. Be embarrassed for yourself that you are mindless enough to find such drivel, as Savage spews, amusing. Bet your a Jerry Springer fan too, huh?
=== Savage offensive to the point that I almost suspect him of being a closet liberal whose mission is to be some sick caricature of a conservative.
Ding ding ding ... we have a winner!!
(I figure that's the modus operandi of more than few posters on this site ... the only sad thing being that they're not sick to their stomachs about it but, instead, probably find it such a gas to gig FReepers into a frenzy they continue on and on ... become Favorites, even.)
i.e. an agent provocateur.
Why would anyone defend Helen Thomas, a comtemptible old bat who has done nothing but bash this President since he took office, and this country since forever?
Her allegiance is elsewhere.
She does not deserve any respect.
It's about time someone points it out.
Well, since there is no "Jewish race", it cannot be a "race thing". Since there is both Jewish ethnicity, and Jewish religion, it would depend on context. Kind of like Arab and Muslim.
Many Freepers routinely mock the physical appearance of liberals.
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