Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

Arab Bashing Reaches Low With Thomas Slur
Arab News ^ | March 2, 2005 | Barbara Ferguson

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.


TOPICS: News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: coulter; dontlookhere; gannon; hateamericafilth; helenthomas; pictureofhelenthomas; seahag
Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-20 ... 121-140141-160161-180181-196 next last
To: Slings and Arrows

"OK pal, you asked for it!"

Gulp! I think you just made me turn gay.


161 posted on 03/03/2005 4:07:40 AM PST by zook
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 152 | View Replies]

To: zbigreddogz

Boy are you brave! I was just lurking this thread, thinking the same to myself. I don't agree with Ann on every issue, and she, like Michelle Malkin, do have a tendency annoy me. If I want to hear a hysterical women rant about how bad things are, I'll listen to myself. However, in Ann's defense, she does have a great sense of humor, so perhaps she was, in her way, making a funny.


162 posted on 03/03/2005 9:27:28 AM PST by two134711
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 14 | View Replies]

To: two134711

Perhaps, but racism isn't funny.

Frankly, I find some of the responses to me on this thread a bit tragic. It seems some of the lib stereotypes about us arn't completely unfounded.


163 posted on 03/03/2005 7:45:58 PM PST by zbigreddogz
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 162 | View Replies]

To: tgslTakoma
Barbara Ferguson, Arab News Correspondent who writes for Aljazeera.
164 posted on 03/03/2005 7:48:08 PM PST by kcvl
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: tgslTakoma

I agree. Mentioning the ethnicity of the reporter was pretty low and petty of Ann. President Bush was probably the foremost one grieved by the uncalled for comment.


165 posted on 03/03/2005 7:50:49 PM PST by Cultural Jihad
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

Arab News Plagarism

http://tinyurl.com/46y35


166 posted on 03/03/2005 7:52:16 PM PST by kcvl
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 164 | View Replies]

To: DrampireXIV; Admin Moderator
How lovely to hear that while American men and women are today dying with, and for, Arab men and women, you somehow think your little patriotic bit will help the cause of freedom and liberty, rather than hatred and bigotry.
167 posted on 03/03/2005 7:54:21 PM PST by Cultural Jihad
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 158 | View Replies]

To: John Lenin
Who's been charged with anything, Sherlock? The discussion is on the impropriety of bringing anyone's ethnicity into a discussion for which it clearly doesn't belong.
168 posted on 03/03/2005 7:56:15 PM PST by Cultural Jihad
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 160 | View Replies]

To: kcvl
Barbara Ferguson, Arab News Correspondent who writes for Aljazeera.

It just dawned on me... she's getting all bent out of shape because Ann Coulter called the old Arab broad, Helen Thomas, an old Arab. But Ferguson is a writer for Arab News.

Now I don't get just what Ferguson is objecting to. It can't be the use of the word Arab, because her employer uses the same word to identify itself. It appears that they (she) simply objects to Ann's existence, and feigns offense at Ann's use of the word Arab.

Insanity.

169 posted on 03/03/2005 7:58:47 PM PST by tgslTakoma
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 164 | View Replies]

To: tgslTakoma

Helen Thomas is not an official "Arab correspondent" for Hearst Newspapers. She is a United States Citizen writing for a United States news service (regardless of its quality, objectivity, or political slant). Her ethnicity is not at all germane to her position or writings.


170 posted on 03/03/2005 8:08:08 PM PST by Cultural Jihad
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 169 | View Replies]

To: Cultural Jihad
If Arab News can so boldly identify itself as Arab, why can't a non-Arab identify a bitchy, angry, old, anti-American Arab hag as an Arab?

If Arab News, through it's token white woman reporter, can lambaste Ann Coulter for using the same identifier that they use to "sell" hits on their website, why can't Ann Coulter do the same?

It's just more hysteria from the America-haters.

171 posted on 03/03/2005 8:24:31 PM PST by tgslTakoma
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 170 | View Replies]

To: tgslTakoma

The tag doesn't say "Half-Scottish Half-Italian Barbara Ferguson, Arab News"


172 posted on 03/03/2005 8:36:12 PM PST by Cultural Jihad
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 169 | View Replies]

To: tgslTakoma

Ann Coulter needs to retake Conservatism 101, wherein we judge people by the content of their character, not by the color of their skin, and wherein we accept people as individuals, not as members of a larger special interest group.


173 posted on 03/03/2005 8:44:30 PM PST by Cultural Jihad
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 171 | View Replies]

To: tgslTakoma
I read Anns column and she didn't use skanky harpy or meddlesome uninformed old hag once.. She choose much nicer terms.. Ann cut the old mewler a break..
174 posted on 03/03/2005 9:17:02 PM PST by hosepipe (This Propaganda has been edited to include not a small amount of Hyperbole..)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: tgslTakoma
These people just don’t understand Ann’s extensive lexicon. Ann wasn’t commenting on Helen Thomas’s ethnic heritage; obviously Ann meant Arab in the sense of a homeless vagabond in the streets of a city, particularly and outcast boy or girl.( Webster Dictionary ).

Thomas has been relegated to the back of the press room, she is an outcast girl, a (professionally) homeless vagabond wandering around the White House Press Corp.

175 posted on 03/03/2005 9:44:20 PM PST by Plutarch
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Cultural Jihad

Sorry to hear you have been slayed by PC ism.


176 posted on 03/03/2005 10:01:32 PM PST by John Lenin (Liberalism is a disease and it needs to be eradicated)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 168 | View Replies]

To: John Lenin

It's a conservative principle to judge people as individuals, not as members of a group.


177 posted on 03/03/2005 10:05:23 PM PST by Cultural Jihad
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 176 | View Replies]

To: Cultural Jihad

Bet you have no problem calling white people 'white trash'.


178 posted on 03/03/2005 10:06:06 PM PST by John Lenin (Liberalism is a disease and it needs to be eradicated)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 172 | View Replies]

To: Yo-Yo

Conservative babes with guns are so hot!


179 posted on 03/03/2005 10:06:27 PM PST by Euro-American Scum (A poverty-stricken middle class must be a disarmed middle class)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 18 | View Replies]

To: John Lenin
You lose.
180 posted on 03/03/2005 10:07:37 PM PST by Cultural Jihad
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 178 | View Replies]


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-20 ... 121-140141-160161-180181-196 next last

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson