Besides, The Rules Call For A Pic
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.
If Helen Thomas was a journalist for 60 years, what did she do for the first 40 years of her life. Saying "old Arab" is a slur? I don't hear quite the indignation when Arabs/Muslims cut heads off innocents on TV, blow up women and children on the streets and murder judges they don't like.
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.
Poor Helen Thomas, she wants Bush to like her after she's unfairly trashed him. Only a LaLa-land liberal would expect that.
But it isn't a lie. It's posted on Anns own website. She really did call her "old!"
" 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. Still, it would be suspicious if Dowd were denied a press pass while someone from "Talon News" got one, even if he is a better reporter. "
Tough shit if they can't take it..
Except when kissing both of the Clintons' arses.
It's entirely too easy to say bad things about Helen Thomas without resorting to that.
HUH? What am I missing here?
Signed......an OLD SICILIAN...
I do, when I go to her web site:
http://www.anncoulter.com/
"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. Still, it would be suspicious if Dowd were denied a press pass while someone from "Talon News" got one, even if he is a better reporter. "
I think she's Danny Thomas's mother. She was "Uncle Tonoos's" older sister, wasn't she?
Besides, The Rules Call For A Pic
My favorite was James Rosen, of FoxNews doing his Helen Thomas impression at a press awards show, shouting "It's all the Jews fault". The crowd hissed in shock, then erupted in laughter!
You spell and use grammar like Arabic is your first language!
It would take the mutawa about 5 seconds to find her and beat her into submission.
"Ann Coulter, a loudmouthed, mean-spirited, pro-Bush columnist, decided ..."
Marry me, Ann?
yeah,...I wouldn't be suprised to hear her ask,..."Mr. President, when did you stop beating Laura, your wife LAURA??"
Considering these things:
1. The outrageous things Thomas has said about the President and Admin.
2. The fact that she is both old and of Lebanese descent.---
I don't think calling her an old Arab is so very bad. Compare that with calling Bush Hitler, Rumsfeld a facist, etc.-which are NON-factual.When have any of the media besides Rush et al EVER called Thomas on some of her lying remarks.
It was, however, not good politics on Ann's part; but Ann does not play the PC game.
I don't care how venerable the press thinks Thomas is, she cut her own throat when she said MANY of the things she has said about this Admin. I think her press pass should have been revoked. That
the President usurped her closing of the press conferences limelight is great. You do not reward and venerate people for spitting in your face and on the office of the President.
vaudine
I just checked and you sir are correct, Ann Coulter never said "Arab"
Sorry 'bout that...
;-)
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