Helen Thomas has retired after saying something hateful in public. Perhaps she should have already retired, since she undoubtedly knows that saying that Palestinians should have been able to keep their country is the quickest way possible to get the boot from polite society. We just adore Israel. They're special like us and they were given their own country to control and expand like us and God likes them best like us. And if there are people already there, obviously God wanted them to leave because otherwise he wouldn't have given away their land.
For eight years Helen Thomas sat in the audience of the White House briefing room and asked the questions none of the other cowardly, sycophantic White House Press Corps had the courage to ask. Like a slightly larger Jiminy Cricket, she was the voice of conscience the administration and their lackeys were trying to ignore. Thomas was nearly the only public voice who questioned authority and they literally had to banish her from sight and refuse to hear her voice. Since she was alone it was easy for the government and Villagers to ostracize her. The right--well, they would have burned her at the stake if they could have gotten away with it.
Thank you.
ReplyDeleteI love Helen Thomas. She was the last, the very last, honest reporter covering the White House.
Now the pther "reporters" can concentrate on the truly important issues facing Americans: Paul McCartney and Obama's failure to be emotive...enough.
Yes, it was a wrong and terrible thing to say. But she's done so many good things as well, and always supported the powerless.
ReplyDeleteWe did the same thing--we took Native American land and shoved them off into oblivion to suffer outside of sight. If a Native American said to me, Go back to Ireland (or Wales or Germany or England), I'd understand and think that they had some justification for feeling that way.
Everyone has some degree of cultural baggage on this matter - particularly Jews. Feeling that, for the first time in millenia we actually have a place to go to once our Liberal or Conservative patrons decide they don't like us very much any more. We're quite loath to give that up. Though it would also help if the American media and political establishment didn't act as if Likud was Israel's only party...
ReplyDeleteObviously, the solution is not to eliminate Israel or Palestine--it's to eliminate religion. Just think how much time and money and lives we'd save!
ReplyDeleteWe could get rid of the pope and religious wars and church services and priests and crucifixes and pogroms and honor killings and shaming and Inquisitions and sexual guilt. We'd still find reasons to kill each other of course, but at least they wouldn't be "holy" ones.