Helen Thomas Retires After Controversial Remarks

[SanDiegoBuffGuy]

We will miss you.

More here:

http://content.usatoday.com/communities/ondeadline/post/2010/06/veteran-white-house-reporter-helen-thomas-retires-following-controversial-remarks/1

[Bruce Dazzling]

We will miss you.

More here:

http://content.usatoday.com/communities/ondeadline/post/2010/06/veteran-white-house-reporter-helen-thomas-retires-following-controversial-remarks/1

By this standard, I'm certain that Wolf Blitzer will retire posthaste.

[Jeff]

Meanwhile, Glenn Beck gets away with endorsing the work of a Nazi sympathizer and Pat Buchanan's treated like an elder statesman.

This isn't about the Jews, it's about the Left.

[nathan28]

Meanwhile, Glenn Beck gets away with endorsing the work of a Nazi sympathizer and Pat Buchanan's treated like an elder statesman.

This isn't about the Jews, it's about the Left.

Even more cross-posting!

What Elizabeth was witnessing was the aftermath of Communism. The Soviet Jews had torn down Russian churches.

I'm finding a strong correlation between strong anti-communism sentiment and antisemitism. Why is that?

[Bruce Dazzling]

Meanwhile, Glenn Beck gets away with endorsing the work of a Nazi sympathizer and Pat Buchanan's treated like an elder statesman.

This isn't about the Jews, it's about the Left.

Glenn Beck is an idiotic rabble rouser. Not just by nature, but it also happens to be his job description. It's the part he plays for the corporate control system.

Endorsing a Nazi is very easy to paint as loony, and as I said above, Beck is a useful loony idiot who helps the corporate control system by allowing them to villify, by association, a lot of the genuine dissent associated with the Tea Party movement****. That is why he gets away with endorsing a Nazi.

Helen Thomas, on the other hand, was the last remaining White House reporter who dared to ask difficult questions that challenged the corporate control system.

The Helen Thomas statement in quesion simply showed a bias regarding ONE international issue. And it wasn't even a statement that was intended for public consumption, and yet, she has now been completely silenced, and the there's no one left in the White House press corp to challenge their increasingly propagandish message.

The reason I brought up Wolf Blitzer is beacuse of his obvious pro-Israel stance on the very issue that Thomas was just outed on. It's very well known among people who pay attention that Blitzer is a former AIPAC attack dog (my language), and yet, he is allowed to cover stories on a nightly basis that are directly impacted by his bias, and as far as I've ever seen/heard, he has never made his heavy bias, or his former position, known to his viewers.

That's my point.

What, exacty, did you mean by saying that this is "about the Left," Jeff?

****Footnote: I'm NOT endorsing the Tea Party, as such, I'm just saying that they ARE representing a lot of people's anger at being dispossessed by the corporotacracy, and as such, are marginalized at every turn.

[Jeff]

What, exacty, did you mean by saying that this is "about the Left," Jeff?

Because demagogues on the American Right are daily saying much worse without vilification and job loss, and one voice on the American Left always seems one too many.

I'm NOT endorsing the Tea Party, as such, I'm just saying that they ARE representing a lot of people's anger at being dispossessed by the corporotacracy, and as such, are marginalized at every turn.

And patriotic, know-nothing populism is a channel of dissent dug by the Corps of Engineers.

[nathan28]

I'm NOT endorsing the Tea Party, as such, I'm just saying that they ARE representing a lot of people's anger at being dispossessed by the corporotacracy, and as such, are marginalized at every turn.

And patriotic, know-nothing populism is a channel of dissent dug by the Corps of Engineers.

http://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/LearningNothing.html

...The “common sense”— unschooled instincts imparted by upbringing and inherited ideology—of people in this country is individualist and self-reliant. You see rage expressed through polls and in the media, but, like I said, it’s mostly formless. Sometimes it’s directed at bankers, but sometimes it’s directed at immigrants and the government.

...It’s usually petit bourgeois, directed against both the rich and the poor, often against urbanity—in both senses, the citified and the intellectually polished—and against bigness itself. It often posits a virtuous past of a competitive, self-reliant small-scale capitalism that has been usurped by corporate internationalists, and assumes that even if such a thing had ever existed, it would be desirable to return to that insular world.

...The U.S. reminds me in many ways of a startup company that’s grown so big that it needs a serious overhaul but is incapable of the necessary transformation. In the corporate example, you frequently see that the founders don’t want to turn things over to professional managers. They want to keep running the show on instinct and animal spirits. But those aren’t working anymore.

So too the U.S. The dog-eat-dog model of social Darwinism worked well (on its own terms) while the U.S. was growing rapidly in the 19th and early 20th centuries, but since growth slowed down in the 1970s, we’ve been in need of a rethink of the old model. But we’re incapable of it. Instead, we’ve tried ever more reckless applications of debt to keep things going.

[Bruce Dazzling]

What, exacty, did you mean by saying that this is "about the Left," Jeff?

Because demagogues on the American Right are daily saying much worse without vilification and job loss, and one voice on the American Left always seems one too many.

I'm NOT endorsing the Tea Party, as such, I'm just saying that they ARE representing a lot of people's anger at being dispossessed by the corporotacracy, and as such, are marginalized at every turn.

And patriotic, know-nothing populism is a channel of dissent dug by the Corps of Engineers.

Agreed, and as I said, and as Jeff quoted, I am NOT endorsing the Tea Party, as it is now obviously a product of Dick Armey type, far right wing, partisan idiocy.

The point I was trying to make in the post you quoted, Jeff, is that the Tea Party is being used by the corporate power structure as a catch-all for the labeling of ANY anti-corporatists as loony ticks, and I was specifically speaking to Glenn Beck's role in that labeling, which is super useful to the corporate power structure.

Further, the first Tea Party rallies (before they were coopted by the GOP and Dick Armey) contained lots of people who were angry about the banking bailouts, the multiple illegal wars of aggression, the outsourcing of jobs, and a general feeling of not being represented by either the Dems or the Repugs. I was at the first rally in NYC, and trust me, there were lots of progressives there, who at this point, would no longer go anywhere near the Tea Party, and again, Glenn Beck and his ilk have done a tremendous job of ensuring that well-informed progressives will continue to be islands unto themselves in a sea of two-party corporatism.

I hope I'm making myself clear here, because I'm at work and typing in a hurry, but I didn't want there to be any doubt as to my position of non-support for the Tea Party as it is currently constructed.

I'm agreeing that Glenn Beck is a destructive asshole, and that the Tea Party is, for the most part, a collection of destructive assholes, even though some of their anger at the current power structure is justified. But more to my original point, I'm saying that Beck is paid to be the exact type of destructive asshole that he is, so that he can rouse the rabble that is the Tea Party, and THAT is why he is allowed to endorse Nazi sympathizers.

[alwyn]

God bless you Helen Thomas. You had more cojones than all the other idiots in the room combined. It is 'good' that the WH press corps is now thoroughly insulated from the truth.

what I find 'hysterical' is the way everyone is touting 'anti-semite'....like the Palestinians aren't Semitic too....and bringing out the holocaust again...like Germany still puts people into ovens. At least Germany evolved...god knows what goes on in Israeli prisons....

Helen was unique, America will not know another like her for a long time.

[elfismiles]

...patriotic, know-nothing populism is a channel of dissent dug by the Corps of Engineers.

Suddenly I'm thinking of Katrina busted Levees.

[stefano]

Well all I've read is the article in the OP, but that was a fucked-up thing to say.

[barracuda]

[norton ash]

Oh, Helen.

My ma's gone off her head too, and many geezers I know who used to be tactful now shoot their mouths off regularly.

[Col. Quisp]

So did Estelle Getty's character on Golden Girls. Maybe Ms. Thomas has had a stroke.

[alwyn]

http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2010/06/ ... n-filters/


OMG, the world is standing on its head. This is from fox news

IN essence, Fox is saying, give the old lady a break!