Helen Thomas' Excellent Wisconsin Adventure

What can I say about Helen Thomas, White House press secretary heckler-in-chief?
From The Capital Times:

After 45 years of covering the White House, veteran journalist Helen Thomas says the profession she loves is no longer up to snuff.

"We've gone absolutely soft," Thomas said Friday at a meeting with reporters and editors at The Capital Times.

Thomas, 86, was in Wisconsin this weekend to give the keynote address at the Edgerton Book Festival.

Thomas said the Washington press corps failed to hold President George W. Bush and his administration accountable in the weeks leading up to the invasion of Iraq and in the years since.

It is "unconscionable" to fight a war where the factual basis for combat has never been articulated, said Thomas, who this summer published an indictment of the Washington press establishment in her most recent book, "Watchdogs of Democracy? The Waning Washington Press Corps and How It Has Failed the Public."

I think it's appropriate to show respect for one's elders.

Unfortunately, Helen Thomas makes that very difficult to do.

She's nuts. She makes no sense.

The case for war in Iraq was clearly articulated -- by President Bush, the administration, and the DEMOCRATS.

...In part, she said, reporters failed to ask probing questions because they feared they'd be accused of being unpatriotic or un-American.

"It was a sad day for journalism and our country," she said.

Oh, come on!

Reporters aren't hesitating to undermine the war now. Where did they get this sudden bravery?

They aren't hesitating to leak information that is detrimental to our national security and our troops while they're in harm's way.

Reporters like Thomas don't seem to mind subverting the government and being unpatriotic in 2006. It makes no sense to believe that they cared in 2003.

Thomas claims fears of being labeled unpatriotic caused journalists to clam up before the war in Iraq began. That's just stupid.

When did a Lefty journalist ever care about someone calling him or her unpatriotic? They wear that sort of thing as a badge of honor.

Still, Thomas remains an optimistic -- about her country and vocation.

"It's the greatest profession in the world," she said.

That should read "optimist."

"Thomas remains an optimist -- about her country and vocation."

Well, I'm glad she's feeling positive. Especially at her age, she should make the most of each day.

Thomas said reporters "got their sea legs back" with some good investigative reporting in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

"I think the press has come out of their coma," she said.

If the state of today's press is due to its emergence from a coma, I wish it would lapse back into one.

The coverage of Hurricane Katrina was abysmal.

The lib press reported rumors, not realities. Unverified reports were later dispelled, but the hysteria hampered rescue efforts and added to the suffering.

By any measure, the reporting was horrible.
Remember?

"The New Orleans Times-Picayune on Monday described inflated body counts, unverified "rapes," and unconfirmed sniper attacks as among examples of "scores of myths about the dome and Convention Center treated as fact by evacuees, the media and even some of New Orleans' top officials."

Indeed, Mayor C. Ray Nagin told a national television audience on "Oprah" three weeks ago of people "in that frickin' Superdome for five days watching dead bodies, watching hooligans killing people, raping people."

Journalists and officials who have reviewed the Katrina disaster blamed the inaccurate reporting in large measure on the breakdown of telephone service, which prevented dissemination of accurate reports to those most in need of the information. Race may have also played a factor.

The wild rumors filled the vacuum and seemed to gain credence with each retelling — that an infant's body had been found in a trash can, that sharks from Lake Pontchartrain were swimming through the business district, that hundreds of bodies had been stacked in the Superdome basement.

Is this really the type of reporting that Thomas wants to tout as the best that journalists have to offer?

I hope not.

I know she's 86-years-old, but her advanced age doesn't give her the right to misrepresent the truth and call garbage good journalism.