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.
Just as an FYI, arabnews.com(the source of this story) while also being in bed with Aljazeera and a bunch of Anti-American sites is owned by none other then "Saudi Research and Marketing Group", and for those folks in the know we all know what this company tries to do. That being said, I have no idea why this post is even here.
Ann should apologize immediately to every Arab on the face of this earth for the disgusting insult of associating Arabs with such a beast.If the writer is so upset by Ann's name calling then maybe he should try to keep from doing it himself.Liberals might think the rules don't apply to them but they look like idiots when they break their own rules in the first paragraph of their complaint.Ann would have been better off and more than accurate if she called her hideous Helen Thomas the beastly old bat who happens to be an Arab.
Tough! To hell with the nasty, old bat!
We Need Our Best, Brightest to Improve Our Global Image ...
When Marlon Brando made a remark that Hollywood was dominated by Jews (he in no way insulted them) he was forced to apologize. But we are fair game! ...
www.arabnews.com/?page=7§ion=0& article=58945&d=14&m=2&y=2005
So much for arabnews.com being objective. Don't have to apologize to the Jews, do we...
I see that, the release I saw must have been edited
Wolcott is a lazy moron. Lucianne Goldberg is not Jewish.
I once spoke on the phone with the Old Arab. She wasted no time in launching on Israel.
That old harridan Helen Thomas is going to have a seat in the press room even when they have to wheel her deathbed into the room
Probably. Torques one off when a good slur is edited.
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.’"
Nothing at all would happen for many reasons: First of all, the leftists routinely use smear labeling against our punditry and political figures, attacking everything from their physical appearance to their religion, even on to their families. The left smears people so viscerally and so frequently nobody would even notice.
Secondly, the MSM would never even pick up on it if a leftist did such things, just because they always protect their own. It's only a big deal when someone on our team dares to speak up or knock someone down a pole.
Lastly, everyone with a body temperature above atomspheric ought to know by now that the left has a deep-rooted anti-Jewish bias to it and has since the 1960s. Thus, ethnic slurs against Jews would not really be noteworthy.
So it's awful for Ann Coulter to call Thomas an old arab, but they can call Coulter a fascist? Figures. Goes right along with Dean calling Republicans evil.
LOL, Personally, I would have called her a smelly old Arab
"Wolcott is a lazy moron. Lucianne Goldberg is not Jewish."
Even when they try they screw it up.
Imagine peeling back a burka to discover that ugly rat inside!
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