Thank you Helen Thomas

[LynneSin]

You have done an amazing job these past decades and asked the tough questions that needed to be asked, even when faced with hostile administrations like during the Bush2 years.

It's a shame it was related to something a bit tacky that you said that prompted your retirement but I'd like to look beyond one comment you've said and remember the other decades of amazing work that has defined your career.

Thank you Helen Thomas!

[YOY]

1. I haven't always agreed with her but this is not the way she should have gone out.

n.t.

[Skittles]

32. it is hugely disappointing

I've been a longtime fan but this episode is an ugly end

[Ninga]

2. We are the sum of ALL of our parts. Helen Thomas has many good parts and those

are what I will remember.

[mbperrin]

3. Yes, thank you, Helen!

Now I'm waiting for the Shrub and Dead-eye Dick to make one decent comment between them in their entire evil lifespans.

[Enthusiast]

66. Thanks for pointing this

out, about Shrub and Dick. It's a valid point.

And just consider the number of horrible right wing "journalists" making even more insensitive remarks than Helen's every single day.

In this country it matters most who you make a remark about, as to whether it is acceptable. Seems it is acceptable to say anything about a left of center politician.

[jp11]

4. Agreed.

One misplaced comment will not be what defines her.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

5. Yes! Thank you, Helen Thomas!

You dared to speak truth to power all these years...

Your voice will be missed in this mess we call DC...

[OhioChick]

6. Thank you Helen...

You'll be missed.

[asdjrocky]

7. The last fighter in the press corps.

[Whisp]

29. yes, no one there is near her stature. Thank you, Helen!

I've admired you over so many years and still do.

If I was judged so harshly by the occassional really dumb and thoughtless things I've said, well,,,, I consider myself imperfect and have much to learn, as we all are.

If the Chimperor can be so forgiven for his huge 'mistake' (yah sure it was a mistake, it was deliberate) of sending hundreds of thousands of people to death and suffering in Iraq, I think their hearts should be able to forgive you.

[tekisui]

8. The rest are lap dogs. Thank you Helen Thomas!

[shirleym]

34. Lap doges who would dare criticize Israel although they might want to. nt

[xchrom]

9. thank you helen. nt

[Patsy Stone]

10. Yes.

Thank you for your many years of being dedicated to the truth! Now, go relax and enjoy yourself, please. :loveya:

[kenny blankenship]

11. Meanwhile, in related news

the Society for American Media Pundits and Reporters Who Advocate Openly For The Periodic Mass Murder of Palestinians and Other Troublesome Muslim Peoples has announced that its annual convention has been postponed due to the lack of any adequately sized stadium in North America. The Meadowlands Stadium in New Jersey folded its bid to host the annual extravaganza of Islamophobia last week after organizers concluded that while 82,000 seats could hold their principle membership, it could not also accomodate the overflow and retinue of visiting family members, press people covering the convention, AIPAC operatives and Congressional staff.

Plans are now underway to reorganize the convention in a kind of tent city, pitched in the infield of Florida's Alabama's mammoth Talladega Superspeedway

[Chulanowa]

24. Thanks for that

While we have the Becks and Coulters and even Matthews of the media advocating racism and violence and mayhem against the "undesirables," it's helen Thomas who becomes a media feeding frenzy.

I guess that some people really are more equal than others. Even here on DU, islamophobia, anti-Arab and anti-mexican outbursts, and demands for certain people to be killed are fully 100% acceptable.

What Helen said was no worse than anything lots of the people jumping on the bandwagon have ever said, and is in fact better than most.

I will give her some credit for at least having the integrity to not claim she was "just joking" like her conservative counterparts do when they "joke" about poisoning public officials, when they "joke" about massacring Muslims, like when they "joke" about reinstituting slavery, like when they "joke" about slaughtering liberals, like when they "joke" about nuking mecca, like when they "joke" about how fun torture is...

[sabrina 1]

25. Selective censorship. Thanks for making the point.

K&R for a great journalist. Thank you Helen! And shame on your colleagues who never had half the courage you had in your little finger.

Write a book now that you are free from the constraints of the U.S. censored media. I'm sure she has kept a lot to herself all these years.

She is a national treasure and will one day be recognized as such.

[katandmoon]

12. K&R

[Kitty Herder]

13. Thank you Helen!

[laughingliberal]

14. K & R nt

[Peregrine Took]

15. Ditto! n/t

[MsLeopard]

16. Thank you, Helen K&R

For your years of service to the truth - there's nary a reporter found today who can hold a candle to your professionalism and dedication. We'll miss you.

[Ichingcarpenter]

17. Beauty is Truth and Truth, Beauty

'Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.'



Ode on a Grecian Urn
by John Keats

She was my Grecian Urn...... Thank you Helen

[jotsy]

18. I know I'm being selfish and I've no right to ask, after your decades of professional candor.

But I'm gonna.

What the media delivers this public continues to be a pile of hooey. Would you please consider remaining in the fight to inform the masses from a fresher venue? The fledgling stage of the internet as a news source would be well rudder-ed by your wisdom, wit and wary ways until it is deemed prepared to fly on its own accord, navigated by an objective more genuine with your standards as a homing signal of sorts.

As much as we need you, I also know you've gone 'above and beyond' in answering the nobility of purpose in your calling that fell on deaf, bought ears all around you. They lack the caliber to define you. Despite your vertical challenges, I will always see you as standing tallest.

Thank you and be the very best of well, deservedly so.

:cry:

[tilsammans]

19. Thank you, Helen Thomas!

:applause: :yourock: :patriot:

[annabanana]

20. She certainly deserves better than the media-mugging she just got.

It was "pile on Helen" and everyone did it.

[Name removed]

69. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. 
[link:www.democraticunderground.com/forums/rules.html|Click
here] to review the message board rules.

[annabanana]

72. Welcome to DU, wvsailor.

I agree with you. We either have freedom of speech or we don't.

[kgnu_fan]

21. Thank you Helen, I love you!!!!

[inna]

22. K&R

Thank you for decades of excellence, Helen.

What an unfortunate end of a great career.

[lpbk2713]

23. A real professional.

Thank you for your vigilance.

[Spheric]

26. The last journalist has left the building. Turn out the lights.

Thank you Helen. You have always been a breath of inspiration and reality and light in those very dark halls.

You will be missed.

[Rhiannon12866]

40. +1

Well said. ;(

[dlfuller]

27. Thanks Helen-- you were right

[liberation]

28. So it ends with a whimper indeed...

They won we lost... denial away.

Thanks Mrs. Thomas.

[gaspee]

30. Poor Helen

It's only been 60 years since Palastine was taken from its indigenous population and given to people on the word of a fictional book. The local people lost their lives and their land because the people of Europe felt bad about the mass murder of the Jewish population. The Jewish people wanted a homeland (can't really blame, them, who doesn't want a homeland) and it's too bad for them that the Palastinians already lived there.

No one can discuss this topic without being called an anti-semite. No one can criticize Israel's human rights abuses without getting labeled anti-ISrael.

America was built on stolen land so of course Americans don't really care about the Palastinians plight.

It's a story as old as time. The weaker party loses their land and their lives and the stronger get what they want.

If you were a Palastinian would you just give up your land and not hate the people who you think stole it from you? Would you not care that you are stateless, homeless, without rights and no end in sight. Would you just give up and die? What would you do if you were born in Palastine? Would you give up and emigrate? Would you let the UN take away your land and give it to another people because the Bible says it was theirs?

Say you live a part of the US where the government broke their treaty with the Native Americans and the Native Americans won a verdict in the World Court/UN that says your property is no longer yours. Would you just give up everything your family community has worked on for many generations and just leave with no bad feelings? You would? Really?

I think people forget how long the US was at war with the native populations before we had them under control (dead and or on reservations) - and how much blood was spilled. How the "Savages" were thought of - in case you need a reminder, they were thought of as less than human, as deserving of death and as worse than terrorists.

For the US native population it's been a couple hundred years, or more, in he northeast, or less out west.

For the Palastinians, it's only been 60 years, Helen is 89.

History will be written by the victors and this whole ugly, bloody nightmare will get whitewashed.

I feel bad for Helen. Who knows what she really thinks. If I had to guess, I'd guess she wants the bloodshed to stop. Don't we all.

I don't know how to make it stop, short of them all killing each other. I wish I knew. It seems like most Americans would like the Palastinians to disappear. I don't think that's going to happen any time soon.

My wish is that they could all live together, side by side as two states, with a goal of peace and friendship as neighbors. I don't think that's going to happen either.

[annm4peace]

68. awesome writing. maybe we should post these comments

in paper's online comment section, and hope people are writing LTE and commenting to the Whitehouse

[madmax]

31. Thank You, Ms. Thomas

:hug:

[MissDeeds]

33. Well said

K&R

[laylah]

35. Thank you Helen...

at the risk of being chewed up and spit out, Israel is not doing good things (my husband, his family, our children are Jewish). IMVHO, may the best "man" win. This is so wrong, so very wrong. They remember their Holocaust, AS THEY SHOULD; however, to place such pain and suffering on another culture is just wrong. They have forgotten, IMVHO.

[Blue_In_AK]

36. I love Helen Thomas and I don't even care what she said.

She's 89 years old, for heaven's sake. I think she's earned the right to say whatever the hell she wants.

[Atticus]

37. Amen! Not one of the moral pymies screaming in faux outrage for her resignation is fit to carry her

notebook.

Right wing hypocrisy truly knows no bounds!

[demigoddess]

39. agreement here, people are ignoring Israel's policy of not allowing Palestinians

to return to their own country. Israel keeps them from living in their own country, what gives Israel the right to decide who lives in a country that is not Israel.

[EgyptianGirl]

57. +1

You are totally right.

[laughingliberal]

38. The very end of an era when journalists saw their job as holding government accountable

and upholding the people's right to know. A sad day. :cry:

[sabrina 1]

41. Sad that she retired, but I doubt we've heard the last from her.

Helen will stand out in the history of journalism as one of a very few who had the guts to stand up to the torturers and liars in the Bush administration.

She's clearly a person who cares about injustice, a fact proven by her long career as she questioned each president regardless of party whenever she felt they were not being honest with the American people.

It's a sad day when the WH refuses to condemn the murders of peace activists, torturers, the ghettoization of over one million human beings, but finds it necessary to 'condemn' a single remark by a highly respected journalist.

Shame on them. The rabid rightwingers are having a field day, but around the internet, Helen is getting a lot support for her honesty, courage and integrity throughout her long career. She apologized for her remark and I agree with her that it did not reflect what we should know about her by now.

Meantime, we are still waiting for the WH to condemn Israel's killing of a U.S. citizen and eight other innocent people as every other country in the world has done. I would like to see an apology from Biden to the family of that U.S. citizen for his far worse comment that 'it was no big deal'. Imagine how those people must have felt when he said that.

Now that they have 'condemned' this comment, there is simply no excuse for their silence on the atrocity that was committed by the Israelis. It is simply mind-boggling the priorities this country has.

[vanboggie]

43. So, so true

Helen will be greatly missed. She's a wonderful, true journalist. Seeking the truth seems to be a lost art these days.

[Yo_Mama]

42. A Bit Tacky?

Seriously? You think Thomas' comment that supports ethnic cleansing of Jews is "a bit tacky"?

Perhaps it's ignorance. Perhaps you did not know that all over the ME, there were large groups of Jews that had maintained a continuous residence for thousands of years. Now there are almost none. Almost all of them were driven out and ended up in Israel. What Thomas said ignored that blatant, screaming fact. At LEAST 35% of the current population of Jews in Israel is descended from this group - and there were Jews who lived in what is now Israel before it became a country. Here is a basic Wiki article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_exodus_from_Arab_and_Muslim_lands

Anyone who believes that Jews should be the ONLY people on the face of the earth who have no right to live in their people's birthplace is a very bitter anti-Semite.

Adding in the comment about shipping them to Germany and Poland is just icing on the cake, but it did make me think that Thomas does not believe the holocaust ever happened. Nor do I think she is ignorant of these facts due to her ancestry, so I suspect that she was willfully distorting the truth.

Israel is the Jewish people's reservation in the ME. I do not believe that any people may be justly and lawfully driven from their homeland.

I am shocked and surprised at the degree of anti-Semitism being shown on this board. It is very disturbing. And no, I am not Jewish - but I do believe in truth and decency. There was nothing of either in Thomas' statement.

[cornermouse]

44. She wasn't supporting ethnic cleansing.

If she was supporting ethnic cleansing she would have been in favor of sending them to Israel where they could fight with the Palestinians till the end of time or until there's only one person left alive. She made a mistake and was deliberately misunderstood by others to achieve an objective, and was forced to pay a price for something she never meant.

[Name removed]

45. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Name removed]

47. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[heliarc]

63. Calling what she said "support" "for ethnic cleansing"

Is just about the most idiotic thing I've seen come up in reference to her poorly contextualized call for Foreign born Jews in the settlements to pack up and go back to their countries of origin. If you really think that she was calling for Jews to be slaughtered because of their ethnicity, you are way deep into the corporate Kool Aid my friend. Way deep...

[deaniac21]

46. Yeah, that "jews go back to Poland" was really a thinking person's

remark. She may be losing her mental abilities.

[kgnu_fan]

48. She has been trying to bring the truth of crime of Israel to light, Wake up America!

Report: Israel Had Assassination List

Passengers who were aboard the Mavi Marmara continue to provide new accounts of the Israeli assault. Some are now claiming they discovered a list of people the Israeli military intended to assassinate during their raid on the ship. The Independent of London reports passengers seized a booklet during their altercations with the Israeli forces who rappelled aboard. The passengers claim the booklet contained names and pictures of passengers the Israeli military intended to shoot dead. The Israeli military has denied the existence of an assassination list, and the claims could not be independently corroborated. A Turkish autopsy report shows the nine slain victims were shot a total of thirty times, many at close range. The Guardian newspaper reports five of those killed were shot either in the back of the head or in the back.
http://www.democracynow.org/2010/6/7/headlines#2

[EgyptianGirl]

58. Thanks for the link

[laurel46]

49. First they take out a 19 year old then a 90 year old, shame on Israel

The irony of calling her an despicable anti-semite. The racism that exist is the same old tired white on black poison going on for years, except the white racists get a pass if they have a good PR machine. I agree with her, they have been in Gaza 65 years and the atrocities are worse and the world is outraged. Just how many american lives will be ruined by these hyper sensitive bigots. Israel has screamed racism for so long, I am not sympathetic and see it as bullying anyone who speaks out against anything. We have free speech and she is not alone in her feelings. For me this is one more nail in the coffin for the failed colonization of the middle east. Their ancestral home? Why not the rift valley? Most of our ancestors traveled through the middle east in human history and do not claim an arbitrary spot and kick out the current residents.

Hire her back and apologize.

[EgyptianGirl]

59. You should fight more for her

You should show the world you are not stupid people affected by propaganda and controlled by others, cause this is what some people want the world to believe, you should show her your support, write a letter and give it to her for example.

[kgnu_fan]

50. One more kick for Helen, Love and Thanks

[KoKo]

51. More Roses for Helen...A single Woman Reporter who had courage to go against the Darkness!

We will never forget what you did for us all these years and especially in our darkest hours of the Bush Regime!

[Douglas Carpenter]

52. kick and recommend!!

[mzmolly]

53. Thank you Helen Thomas!

:kick:

[liquid diamond]

54. I'm proud of what she has accomplished and her

perseverance over the years, but she had to go after her shitty comments. Anyway, relax and enjoy the rest of your life Helen.

[Spaldeen]

55. thank you helen

She was my favorite, and I will miss seeing her around. Maybe she can do some freelance work?

[EgyptianGirl]

56. Thank you Helen

[saracat]

60. I am sorry the self serving bastards took you down. You are wonderful Helen.

[HEyHEY]

61. Considering she has Lebanese blood, I'm shocked it took this long

Christ, for the last 60 years she's sat through countless press conferences calling her people terrorists.... sometimes we just snap!

Anyway, I'll always love the old broad.

[ooglymoogly]

62. I cannot rec this op for the syde remarks.

Helen had no reason to apologize. She spoke the truth as always.

[cornermouse]

64. She put every single other "reporter" in the room

to shame. None of them were willing to ask the hard questions. They were afraid of losing their status. Getting Helen fired probably is the final touch that will ensure no one ever asks anything upsetting or embarrassing to the status quo again.

[AngryOldDem]

65. Thank you, Ms. Thomas.

She is the last of the true fourth estate journalists who put the story over personality, and the truth over sensationalism. We can count on her to always ask the tough questions, and to keep digging when leaders try to dodge.

I will miss seeing her at the news conferences.

[on point]

67. You were right BTW

You were right. Essentially the problem in Palestine is that a number of European jews used terrorism and genocide to steal land that didn't belong to them. The Palestinians have the right to resist this in order to get their land back.

The problem is the US lacks the guts and wisdom to admit they are backing the wrong party and are on the wrong side of justice and history.

The answer is a secular state, all the 6 million palestinians forced out should be allowed to come back. The jews should be allowed to stay, but it is no longer a religious state based on the theft of other people's land.

Doesn't matter if Israel will never accept this solution, because their state will gradually fade away. The only question is how much pain and suffering occurs before the inevitable and Israel is consigned to the evil state dust bin of history.

[Safya]

73. +1

[ooglymoogly]

75. Just imagine what a heaven it would be without

religion casting folks into the bloody, dark ages.

[ooglymoogly]

76. s wrong place

[orbitalman]

70. Thank you Helen...

It is amazing to me to hear the Bill Press Show say you were exemplary in your career but capitulate to the conventional wisdom of the day regarding your jewish comment and say how awful it was. I totally disagree, not because I am anti-semite but rather because Israel NEEDS a spanking. You were the gem among so many rockheaded "journalists."

[valerief]

71. Thank you, Helen. You're the end of the line. Now for the gruesome Tell-All! nt

[Safya]

74. Thank You Helen Thomas

[ooglymoogly]

77. I'd buy Helen a drink any ol day and feel privileged to be in her presence.

of such principled honesty and honor. She is a world treasure and a crime is being committed against her by a crooked press and even by many on this site. Honesty poses a grave danger to propaganda, to this administration and the corporate powers that be. That is why she has been so dishonestly taken down. The light of honesty has now cynically been removed from the briefing room and it will be an orgy of propaganda, darkness and stand up comedy, farce and dumb show and noise from here on out; A veritable Pravda.