Saturday, October 5, 2024

Helen Thomas, Famed UPI Reporter, Dead at 92, Said Jews “Should Go Back to Poland and Germany”

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Helen Thomas, famous for being the bulldog of the White House press corps for UPI, has died at age 92. Thomas sadly destroyed her own long and stellar career in 2010 when she was videotaped by the 17 year old son of a rabbi on a visit to the White House. She told the boy that the Jews should get out of Israel and “go back to Poland and Germany.” It was Thomas’s Paula Deen moment. In an instant she had revealed something to the world that no one had known about it. The rabbi’s son posted the video, and Thomas was forced from her job, ruined.

http://www.showbiz411.com/2010/06/05/helen-thomas-self-destruction-rabbi-has-more-on-tape

 

And now it’s her epitaph: brave journalist was secret anti-Semite. But let’s rewind. Because before the incident with the rabbi’s son, Thomas was known as the one journalist sitting in White House press conferences who would ask the hard questions. If there was anti-Semitic subtext when it came to Israel, it went right over the heads of people watching TV at home. It didn’t seem to matter whether the president was Democrat or Republican. So for that, she should be remembered, and we are grateful.

This other stuff: it’s bad. And it’s interesting that, as with Paula Deen or Mel Gibson and some others, one day it just comes out. And then the game is over.

Read the NY Times full obit here: http://tinyurl.com/lxdt746

 

 

Roger Friedman
Roger Friedmanhttps://www.showbiz411.com
Roger Friedman began his Showbiz411 column in April 2009 after 10 years with Fox News, where he created the Fox411 column. His movie reviews are carried by Rotten Tomatoes, and he is a member of both the movie and TV branches of the Critics Choice Awards. His articles have appeared in dozens of publications over the years including New York Magazine, where he wrote the Intelligencer column in the mid 90s and covered the OJ Simpson trial, and Fox News (when it wasn't so crazy) where he covered Michael Jackson. He is also the writer and co-producer of "Only the Strong Survive," a selection of the Cannes, Sundance, and Telluride Film festivals, directed by DA Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus.

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