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
