Was Helen Thomas being disrespectful?

[Zbu]

The question shouldn't be 'is Helen being disrespectful to the President,' it's 'gee, why should any reporter feel the need not to hurt the President's feelings?' The buzz on this is just insane. If the office of the President is one to be respected, then how come the Repubs were walking all over Clinton?

Oh, that's right. Republicans are our overlords with Bibles in one hand and guns in the other, and yet somehow are so damn sensitive that if you question them they need their big fat friends on the radio to save them. And since I just wrote this, they probably need a group hug to get over it.

 

[mumblethrax]

There was an interesting theory presented WNYC's On the Media this past weekend that Thomas' questions are being answered after three year of marginalization in order to make the president look moderate and reasonable in comparison.

Here's a link to the show in question, if anyone is interested: http://www.onthemedia.org/otm032406.html

Scroll down to the "Calling on Helen" section and click on the audio link.

 

[pgwenthold]

It's not accidental. Every single time someone asks him about the reasons for invading Iraq, he starts off talking about 9/11 and al-Qaeda. He never directly says Iraq was involved, but he always groups the two together. It's actually a pretty nifty propaganda technique; he never directly associates them, rather, he mentions them in the same breath and lets people make the association for themselves. This way he can stand back and say "I never said Iraq was involved in 9/11," while still making the association every time he talks about it.

One time, he actually said that he was "careful" to not say that Iraq was responsible for 9/11.

IOW, he knows he is pushing the limit and has to tip-toe to make sure that he doesn't go over the line.

OTOH, he has never been careful to not link the attack of Iraq with 9/11. He does that all the time, including when he answered her question.

Just listen to his answer. What was the real reason to attack Iraq? Terrorists, Taliban, Afghanastan, 9/11. And "I thought Iraq was a threat." Which had nothing to do with 9/11 terrorists, the Taliban, or Afghanastan, but it was important to mention it anyway.

The stupid thing is, there IS an answer to her question, that does not require such obfuscation. He could have said,

The events on 9/11 taught us that we can't sit back and be passive in defending ourselves, and we had to be more aggressive in being preemptive. We thought Iraq posed a significant enough risk to our security that it was important to depose them before they had the opportunity and wherewithall to attack us.

Now, there are aspects in there that are debatable, particularly the part about Iraq posing a significant enough risk to our security, and are they the only ones that do, but that is a question of where we draw the line, not whether it should be drawn (and I don't think the part about having to be more aggressive in being preemptive is all that debatable). Yet, there is no mention of the Taliban or 9/11.

I think that would have been a perfectly acceptable answer to her question. I don't agree with it, but then again, I don't have access to all the information the president had, so it makes it really hard to dispute at that point. Most importantly, unlike the answer he gave, it is not one giant non-sequitor.

 

[Upchurch]

Which of the definitions of "haven" above do you believe applies to "those who want to attack the US."?

I was thinking more of in terms of "a place that is beneficial"



eta: Haven: a place offering favorable opportunities or conditions

 

[grunion]

If a president doesn't want to take questions, he shouldn't have press conferences. And if he doesn't want to take tough, even unfairly loaded questions, he shouldn't call on reporters he knows are utterly hostile to him.

To put it in context, Helen Thomas has traditionally held the honor of getting the first question at every White House press conference. Since the ascendency of Bush II, as she has used that privilege to ask questions that didn't align with the President's talking points of the day, he hasn't called on her in several months, and she has been relegated to the back of the press room.

To shore up his disasterous poll numbers and combat the appearance that he was hiding away, and largely at the prompting of the conservative media, the White House last week decided to risk a Week Of Communications where the President would appeal to the Sympathy and Good Nature of the American People by showing us that he is just up there doing his best and he can't help that he's surrounded by a bunch of incompetents that feed him bad information. This all in advance of what's anticipated to be some staff shake-ups in the coming days (of which I see Andrew Card was the firswt casualty today).

So he had to call on her. It was a calculated risk. And his lapdogs on FOX et al are doing their bit to minimize the damage by attacking the question rather than examining the extreme vapidity of the answer.

 

[Dcdrac]

Hmmm.... if that's disrespectful I hope USA politicians never have to face a Newsnight interview!

Actually what does it matter if she was "disrespectful" or not? A journalist's job is not to be respectful but to find out information, to reveal information, to investigate, to ask questions they think need answering.

I have always noticed US politicians or their reps look very uncomfortable when on Newsnight

 

[corplinx]

[parse=double negatives]

You can find one thing untrue in this?

[/parse]

right?

Sorry for my butchery of the english language Upchurch but my verbage did have a point. Helen claimed that all reasons were "untrue" so I was referring to that. I asked if he could find one true thing in the many paragraphs of reasoning for the Iraqi war. If he were to look for one untrue thing, that would be too easy a task.

 

[brodski]

Frankly, I like the way the British House of Commons does things. Addressing the Prime Minister: "Will the government acknowledge that its abject failure to adopt a policy of shooting Welshmen has been a catastrophic and unalloyed failure from beginning to end, and that if this government had even the tiniest scintilla of integrity, it would resign, en masse, in disgrace?"

My thoughts exactly, US politicians seem to get a very easy ride.
Although please note, that there are certain things that one member of Parliament (MP) can't accuse another MP of doing (lying is the most obvious example), so the question asked by the Helen Thomas could not have been asked to Tony Blair by another MP in the house. However all MP's know how to accuse a member of lying without using the forbidden words the phrase "economical with the truth" was coined for this purpose.

And as for the UK media, well Darat already linked to newsnight ("Did you ask him to resign!" ), we also have the "today" programme, where any politician brave enough to go on will have heir honesty, integrity and intellectual rigor questioned, then they will be patronized to death, and usually have half of their sentences cut off mid stream.

So from that point of view, Helen Thomas was epitomizing polite political dialogue.

 

[corplinx]

So he had to call on her. It was a calculated risk. And his lapdogs on FOX et al are doing their bit to minimize the damage by attacking the question rather than examining the extreme vapidity of the answer.

Yes, Roger Ailes probably ordered them all to attack Helen for suggesting we went to war for oil and zionism. They wouldn't have thought that was newsworthy otherwise.

 

[Upchurch]

Sorry for my butchery of the english language Upchurch but my verbage did have a point. Helen claimed that all reasons were "untrue" so I was referring to that. I asked if he could find one true thing in the many paragraphs of reasoning for the Iraqi war. If he were to look for one untrue thing, that would be too easy a task.

I dig. I just stumbled over that one a couple of times and I wanted to understand what you were asking.

 

[TragicMonkey]

Call me a pragmatist, but three years in does it matter why we invaded Iraq anymore? Shouldn't the focus be on what we're doing there now, and how much longer we should be doing it?

Seems to me like standing around in a burning house, arguing over how the fire started.

 

[BPSCG]

I was thinking more of in terms of "a place that is beneficial"

How is Iraq a beneficial place to those who want to attack the U.S.?

If you were to argue that Syria is a haven, or Iran, or even Germany, I wouldn't dispute that. But can you name a place where someone who wants to attack the U.S. is more likely to get killed than in Iraq? Can you name a place where more people who want to attack the U.S. are killed every day than Iraq?

How does that make Iraq a beneficial place?

 

[corplinx]

Call me a pragmatist, but three years in does it matter why we invaded Iraq anymore? Shouldn't the focus be on what we're doing there now, and how much longer we should be doing it?

Seems to me like standing around in a burning house, arguing over how the fire started.

Its an election year. Duh.

 

[Zbu]

Call me a pragmatist, but three years in does it matter why we invaded Iraq anymore? Shouldn't the focus be on what we're doing there now, and how much longer we should be doing it?

Seems to me like standing around in a burning house, arguing over how the fire started.

Right now it just seems we're spinning our wheels until the other shoe drops and we got screaming into another Depression or enough Republicans get voted out. Nothing is going to change until 2009.

 

[Upchurch]

How is Iraq a beneficial place to those who want to attack the U.S.?

If you were to argue that Syria is a haven, or Iran, or even Germany, I wouldn't dispute that. But can you name a place where someone who wants to attack the U.S. is more likely to get killed than in Iraq? Can you name a place where more people who want to attack the U.S. are killed every day than Iraq?

How does that make Iraq a beneficial place?

Because it is much easier to kill an American (or more) every single day in Iraq than it is anywhere else in the world. And you can bet that every American death and every American mis-step is spun as a victory over the US itself.

 

[TragicMonkey]

Its an election year. Duh.

It didn't work last election when it was fresh, why would it work now?

I would have thought corruption would be a better election issue. But then, I guess the corrupt ones would prefer not to focus on that!

 

[Complexity]

I think the question should be "Did she give him less respect than he is due?"

Bush is a lying puddle of rat splooge.

He is due absolutely no respect.

I wish real journalists were allowed to ask him questions.

'Tis a pity I get the government that my neighbors deserve.

 

[Manny]

To put it in context, Helen Thomas has traditionally held the honor of getting the first question at every White House press conference. Since the ascendency of Bush II, as she has used that privilege to ask questions that didn't align with the President's talking points of the day, he hasn't called on her in several months, and she has been relegated to the back of the press room.

Actually, she never had that honor during the Bush presidency, having resigned her wire service job in 2000 when UPI was purchased by affiliates of Rev. Moon. Her new status among the White House press pool accurately reflects her change from a partisan wire service reporter whose stories were carried daily by hundreds of newspapers to an even more highly partisan opinion columnist with very limited circulation. Indeed, it is only as a recognition of tradition that she gets press pool status at all (along with a few other old-time whackos like Les Kinsolving).

To shore up his disasterous poll numbers and combat the appearance that he was hiding away, and largely at the prompting of the conservative media, the White House last week decided to risk a Week Of Communications where the President would appeal to the Sympathy and Good Nature of the American People by showing us that he is just up there doing his best and he can't help that he's surrounded by a bunch of incompetents that feed him bad information.

Actually, the story around Washington is just what the President said -- he was charmed by a recent performance she gave at the Gridiron Club.

The Gridiron Club, Darat, is a social club for Washington journalists and high officials. It's traditionally kind of a "neutral zone" where people who attack each other all day let down their hair. It's traditional at Gridiron functions for people to attack themselves. Bush was on video at one looking under the couch cushions looking for WMD and Clinton made Monica Lewinsky jokes, for example.

 

[Tricky]

As usual, Doonsbury is relevant,

 

[daredelvis]

Indeed, it is only as a recognition of tradition that she gets press pool status at all (along with a few other old-time whackos like Les Kinsolving).

...and Jeff Gannon.

Daredelvis