Posted by
John David Powell on Tuesday, June 15, 2010 10:41:43 AM
Politicians and pundits widely accept Social Security as the fatal third-rail of U.S. politics. To touch it, regardless of intentions, leads to political death. That’s why Social Security remains unfixed even though everyone agrees it will crash and burn under its own weight if nothing is done to change it.
The Palestinian question is the third rail of Middle-East politics that will bring political or professional harm to anyone who unwisely touches it, regardless of intentions. Helen Thomas is an example of how quickly the jackals of journalism will throw one of their own under the wheels when they sense an opportunity to score political points at the risk of exposing their true biases.
To recap, Thomas, 89, a native Kentuckian of Lebanese descent, has covered the White House since 1960. During John Kennedy’s term, Thomas was the first female to close a presidential news conference with the traditional “Thank you, Mr. President.”
She served as president of the Women’s National Press Club, the first female officer of the White House Correspondents’ Association and its first female president, and the first female member of the Gridiron Club and its first female president. In 1975, she was named Woman of the Year in communications by Ladies Home Journal. And, the World Almanac named Thomas one of the twenty-five most influential women in America.
Conservatives had good cause to name her Bleeding Heart of the Century, if they had such a title. By her own admission in a 2006 interview with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5O-ShWgw6g), Thomas is a brazen liberal who wishes her colleagues covering the White House were more in line with her political views.
During that same interview, Thomas pointed out that the woman who was like a second mother to her was a Palestinian, born in Bethlehem.
Thomas brought about her own demise when she exercised her First-Amendment right to free expression. During the White House Jewish Heritage celebration on May 27, Thomas engaged in what appeared to be a good-natured, on-the-record video banter with Rabbi David Nesenhoff for his web site (http://rabbilive.com/RabbiLIVE/Helen.html).
When asked to comment about Israel, Thomas said, “Tell them to get the hell out of Palestine.” She and Nesenhoff chuckled briefly before she added these fateful words: “Remember, these people are occupied, and it’s their land. It’s not Germany. It’s not Poland.”
When asked by Nesenhoff where Jews occupying Palestine should go, Thomas answered, “Poland, Germany, America, and everywhere else.” She did not rule out Israel as a destination, even though she didn’t include it.
This topic came up over the weekend at Sparky’s Diner. I won’t go into detail of who said what to whom, but I will offer five personal observations that don’t bring me near that third rail.
1) At no time does Thomas advocate the murder, systematic or otherwise, of any human being, regardless of the hyper-hyperbolic reporting, aimed at inflaming passions, that followed in various media accounts. In fact, some sites use the word holocaust as a tag for search engines. She did not use the word in the interview nor did she mention a final solution.
2) I may have had a small-town education in history, but I do not recall acts of the Holocaust on U.S. soil. I do know about "relocation" camps for Japanese-Americans during WW2 and about government efforts to eliminate the Native American population and cultures.
3) I'm tired of people misusing the term "anti-Semite". Arabs are Semites. You can't be an Arab promoting Arab causes and be an anti-Semite. By the way, Phoenicians are Semites, and we sure don't hear enough from them these days.
4) People who use anti-Semite are really saying Jew Hater. So, come on, just say it.
5) “You can say what you like, as long as I like what you say” is the interpretation of the First Amendment by members of the political left, and now, it seems, from members of the objective media and the political right. The sad and disturbing irony is that the same liberal colleagues in the White House Correspondents’ Association, the ones who gave Thomas a place of honor on the front row during news briefings, the ones who applauded her when she skewered conservative presidents and policies, were shocked - shocked I tell you - to discover she was too old and too opinionated to be a member of their club. Or maybe she got too close to that third rail and started giving off sparks that shed light on bi-partisan Beltway hypocrisy.
Mundus vult decipi
(The video commentary is available at www.youtube.com/jdp1953)