Helen Thomas

[TypeO]

Ha! See? You said 'Colour'! Even if you did spell it wrongly

I'm beginning to question whether English is YOUR first language. lulz.

Your repeated attempts to bait me into a heated response have been masterful, no doubt.

But even a Master baiter such as yourself will not cause me to come close to losing my cool on this subject.

Seriously, though (and all my silly, blatant double entendre aside), I choose to view your response as an attempt to move beyond our head-butting over the propriety of each other's remarks, and I am willing to do the same.

I still feel your original comments were pretty harsh, but everyone has their opinions.

Hi 'Tripmender'

I don't think you can say that he spelt it wrongly, why? because,

1. He lives in America.

2. America is the Son of England, because they speak English as a First Language.

3. Because of "2" America is acting like a spoilt teenager, and as such America is trying to break out in to the world and carve a place for itself, and just like a spoilt teenager America will try to create a New Language of its own so as to show an Individualism to the people that it comes in too contact with and its surrounding neighbours.

4. I have no objection to Americans doing this, just as i have no objection to my once teenage sons creating another form of English, derived from their surroundings and their contact with today's fashion and music, it it just as Einstein said, a matter of Relativity, and just as much a form of Evolution as anything Darwin proposed.

5. I come from the East End of London, i speak a dialect of English called Cockney, England is full of these colloquial dialects, EG Scouse, Geordie, Brummie, Mancunian, and many others, we also have Australian, New Zealand, South African, Rhodesian, Canadian and of course American, all forms in one way or another of English, and what a wonderful world it makes, i can take the piss out of the way so many different people abuse MY language, and they can all do the same to me.

6. England has given the World a language that anyone, from any background, any creed or any country can use and change without exception or rebuke and for the most part it allows us all as a World Community to converse and communicate with each other, and that's what makes US GREAT. And if someone tries to put a slant to how something is expressed it only makes the Whole a little bigger. America is doing nothing wrong in creating something that is unique to Her, we all do it all the time, here's too all you Doodles and Rebels.

Sorry for going off topic, I'll be back on topic in just a mo, fanks for ya time y'all.

Regards, Danny

And in what's a fairly routine occurrence, BigDan once again takes the not-necessarily-coveted-but-nonetheless-well-deserved WTF Award for this thread (at least so far).

[redrum]

Little Ilsa

[BIGDAN]

And in what's a fairly routine occurrence, BigDan once again takes the not-necessarily-coveted-but-nonetheless-well-deserved WTF Award for this thread (at least so far).

'TypeO' why thank you kindly, i was not looking for any award or to be recognised in any way, you make me feel so humble, i was just attempting to bring some well deserved humour as well as some cultural history and fact to a thread that was heading for a showdown between your dear self, Atlas and Tripmender, and we all don't want to see that again do we? And by the way i think that the Red is much more suited to you than that horrendous Pink colour in your posts, good show old bean.

Regards, Danny

PS, If you wouldn't mind old chum? i would prefer it if you would spell my name using all capitals in the future (BIGDAN), just to avoid confusion you understand? Cheers.

[Tripmender]

I'm beginning to question whether English is YOUR first language. lulz.

An accurate practitioner of the English language (whether American English or English English) would know the difference between an adjective and an adverb, and when to use them.

Compare:

1: 'Even if you did spell it wrongly': here, 'wrongly' referes to a verb ('spell'). Hence it is correct to use an adverb ('wrongly'), and it would be incorrect to use an adjective ('wrong').

2: 'Even if your spelling was wrong': here, 'wrong' refers to a noun ('spelling'). Hence it is correct to use an adjective ('wrong'), and it would be incorrect to use an adverb ('wrongly').

Hate to come down all Grammar Nazi on you, bro, but since you've accused me of being a REAL Nazi, I felt it was the least you deserved. Plus you might learn something, and not show yourself up so much in intelligent company in the future.

Shall we now let it lie? I'm fine either way.

[Atlas]

Nobody said anything about religion. A cursory scan of history books/records of victors will place Jews in the area for millennia. The assumption on your part that I meant anything religious opens up your privileging your position as someone supposedly neutral because he wasn't brought up in J-C-I environment, as if anyone in that scenario would share your view or couldn't be slanted. Or as if people who did grow up in such environments cannot be reasonable. Sorry but I don't buy the neutrality given your penchant for seeing Jewish involvement in so many conspiracies.

You want a list of the Aryan names of kings from that region circa 1350 BCE?

The problem with what she said was two-fold: one, it was a gross generalization (ALL Jews should get the hell out of the area - not calling for the government to stop the inhumane mistreatment of Palestinians, etc.) and in saying so exposing the blatant bias (they should go back to where they came from - Germany, Poland - even though these two nations among others told their Jewish citizens to go back where they came from ie/ the area that is now called Israel. In other words, even enemies knew where they were from -- funny isn't it?)

"I didn't, and do not even today for understandable reasons, wish to reveal from October 1928, the two largest regular contributors to the Nazi Party were the general managers of two of the largest Berlin banks, both of Jewish faith and one of them the leader of Zionism in Germany." ~ Dr. Heinrich Brüning (German Chancellor before Hitler) to Churchill in 1949

[Atlas]

Little Ilsa

Another victors' lynching. Commie-skin lampshades and all.

[Atlas]

Aaaahhhh, we finally reach common ground on opiates

Unfortunately it's not all fun 'n games, I gots a wicked abscessed molar.

Gotta find a dentist to write me a script for cephalexin, or all the painkillers in the world won't help.

Now, if they should happen to kick in a small script of vicodin or even percocets, all the better.

And if it's an especially good day, that script might be for mepergans, amirite?

Seems I remember you mentioning that before.

Nice.

To be sure, I love women of all ethnicities.

But I do have a certain... aaahh, weakness... for women of color.

You should see the Indian woman teaching my network monitoring class. Hot and smart, both in the same package - and she's sober!

[Atlas]

An accurate practitioner of the English language (whether American English or English English) would know the difference between an adjective and an adverb, and when to use them.

Compare:

1: 'Even if you did spell it wrongly': here, 'wrongly' referes to a verb ('spell'). Hence it is correct to use an adverb ('wrongly'), and it would be incorrect to use an adjective ('wrong').

2: 'Even if your spelling was wrong': here, 'wrong' refers to a noun ('spelling'). Hence it is correct to use an adjective ('wrong'), and it would be incorrect to use an adverb ('wrongly').

Hate to come down all Grammar Nazi on you, bro, but since you've accused me of being a REAL Nazi, I felt it was the least you deserved. Plus you might learn something, and not show yourself up so much in intelligent company in the future.

Shall we now let it lie? I'm fine either way.

I hope this doesn't mean I need to prissy up my usage just to suit some snooty rightpudlian.

[Tripmender]

I hope this doesn't mean I need to prissy up my usage just to suit some snooty rightpudlian.

Of course not, Atlas - not unless, like Typo, you plan to criticise my grammar (wrongly, as it happened).

[TypeO]

Shall we now let it lie? I'm fine either way.

That was pretty much the point of that post - letting it go.

And I wasn't actually referring to the proper grammar of your statement as much as the choice of words.

"Wrongly" is just so clumsy as opposed to, say, "incorrectly".

But even that was just a goof, not an attempt to escalate.

So yeah, I'm good.

Now, as for the discussion itself...

I really just found it somewhat odd that someone living in Great Britain - a country that is literally being overwhelmed by Islam / Middle-Easterners - would be so unapologetically anti-Israel.

I am hardly a Zionist or Israel apologist, but I simply see Israel as doing what is necessary for their survival.

And I'm not entirely in disagreement with the idea presented in this thread of coexistence for Israelis and Palestinians.

I know it's just a goofy movie, but I think a lot of the attitudes portrayed in the Adam Sandler movie You Don't Mess With The Zohan are probably not that far off the mark, as far as the average Israeli or Palestinian.

As with so many things, it's a relatively small fringe of extremists - on both sides - who fuel the active hate and uncompromising attitudes. The vast majority on both sides are more than likely no more intolerant of each other than most other typical racial or ethnic frictions.

But the amount of compromise required on both sides is borderline untenable.

Much like many of the clashes on this board.

I keed, I keed.

[planted]

So reporters shouldn't have opinions? The problem is not that Helen Thomas expressed a biased opinion. It is that she expressed the "wrong" bias. American media is pathologically biased.

Reporters can absolutely have opinions. On the OP-ED pages. Oh, so now you want to change the subject by saying the "American media is pathologically biased"? DUH..... (And, yes, I do believe she should be singled out and held to a higher standard because of her position. I'm an old fart that way. ) Sorry, I thought this was about Helen Thomas.

Why can't you admit she was wrong? If you have, forgive me, but I haven't read it here yet.

BTW, anyone know if she still has a valid driver's license? ahaa

[Atlas]

Reporters can absolutely have opinions. On the OP-ED pages. Oh, so now you want to change the subject by saying the "American media is pathologically biased"? DUH..... (And, yes, I do believe she should be singled out and held to a higher standard because of her position. I'm an old fart that way. ) Sorry, I thought this was about Helen Thomas.

Why can't you admit she was wrong? If you have, forgive me, but I haven't read it here yet.

BTW, anyone know if she still has a valid driver's license? ahaa

I'm not sure she was wrong in sentiment. I don't believe she really meant what she said. She was just trying to expose one absurdity with another. She could have said "nuke Iran" and there would not be the least hubbub except it would have been quite out of character for her.

Do you know what AIPAC is?

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2894821400057137878

.

[Patrycja]

You want a list of the Aryan names of kings from that region circa 1350 BCE?

As tends to happen with some of your responses, no idea what you're on about. If there's a reasoned response on the horizon, I'd gladly hear it. But the silly cryptic responses, well, don't do a good job of hiding the bias.

"I didn't, and do not even today for understandable reasons, wish to reveal from October 1928, the two largest regular contributors to the Nazi Party were the general managers of two of the largest Berlin banks, both of Jewish faith and one of them the leader of Zionism in Germany." ~ Dr. Heinrich Brüning (German Chancellor before Hitler) to Churchill in 1949

That's right. Pick and choose exceptions to make it like they prove your rule. That you can't admit to Thomas's sentiment being gravely inappropriate and just plain wrong and guessing at what you think she meant (always a legitimate tactic ) just shows your slant. But anyway, I suppose there's nothing more to discuss if you don't address holes pointed out in your position and just want to defend it, regardless of how unreasonable it is....

[Atlas]

That's right. Pick and choose exceptions to make it like they prove your rule. That you can't admit to Thomas's sentiment being gravely inappropriate and just plain wrong and guessing at what you think she meant (always a legitimate tactic ) just shows your slant. But anyway, I suppose there's nothing more to discuss if you don't address holes pointed out in your position and just want to defend it, regardless of how unreasonable it is....

She said she didn't really mean it.

[cryingbluerain]

[Patrycja]

She said she didn't really mean it.

And you said you don't disagree with her original comment. This despite sound reasoning why she was wrong. And you ignored comments about the quote you included. Again...oh well...

[Patrycja]

Yikes! LOL

[Tripmender]

I really just found it somewhat odd that someone living in Great Britain - a country that is literally being overwhelmed by Islam / Middle-Easterners - would be so unapologetically anti-Israel.

I am hardly a Zionist or Israel apologist, but I simply see Israel as doing what is necessary for their survival.

And I'm not entirely in disagreement with the idea presented in this thread of coexistence for Israelis and Palestinians.

I know it's just a goofy movie, but I think a lot of the attitudes portrayed in the Adam Sandler movie You Don't Mess With The Zohan are probably not that far off the mark, as far as the average Israeli or Palestinian.

As with so many things, it's a relatively small fringe of extremists - on both sides - who fuel the active hate and uncompromising attitudes. The vast majority on both sides are more than likely no more intolerant of each other than most other typical racial or ethnic frictions.

But the amount of compromise required on both sides is borderline untenable.

I wouldn't say we're being 'literally overwhelmed' by Muslims in the UK. There has been a significant, hitherto relatively non-militant Muslim element to our population for many years. I don't have the stats on recent growth in the UK Muslim population, but I suspect it's not significant.

What has changed, however, is that unlike their parents, the 2nd/3rd generation British Muslims no longer feel obliged to keep their mouths shut - rightly, in my view - in the face of the horrors visited upon their brothers in Palestine and elsewhere in the Middle East, predominantly by the US and Israel. Much in the same way, incidentally, as the Zionist lobby has a significant - excessive, some might say - voice in US politics, except they've had that voice for decades, and it appears to be getting louder and more offensive.

You say that Israel is 'doing what is necessary for their survival.' Would that include constant further land-grabs, piracy, murder of non-Palestinians, Mossad assassinations outside Israel, indiscriminate bombing/starvation/bulldozing of Palestinians and their property? What about their policy of 'nuclear ambiguity'? Why have they needed to possess nukes for over 40 years, and where is the empirical evidence to suggest that their regime is any more 'fit' to possess a nuclear deterrent than, say, Iran? Moreover, Iran knows that if it nuked Israel, it would be obliterated by the US. What do you think the US would do if Israel nuked Iran?

At the end of the day, Israel effectively has carte blanche from the US to act egregiously against whoever it chooses, wherever it chooses, without fear of punishment or even overt rebuke. Clearly the situation in the Middle East has worsened significantly over the past decade. For better or worse, only the US is capable of engineering change. That it chooses to sit idly by in complicity is a savage indictment of its morality, and a clear indication of its true motives and sympathies.

Oh, and GB's not a country, BTW.

[Atlas]

And you said you don't disagree with her original comment. This despite sound reasoning why she was wrong. And you ignored comments about the quote you included. Again...oh well...

I simply said I don't think she said anything wrong. Clearly, since I expressed a different opinion from hers in that very context, I was not saying that I agree with her stated opinion.

[Atlas]

She borrow that from JP?

[redrum]

She really is an anti-Semite. Any conservative had said that and you'd never hear the end of it. Hypocrite basterds with their typical double standard.

[Atlas]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/11/AR2010061105355.html

When you get to be 89 years old and still working hard at a demanding and important job with the temperature going through the roof, see if you might get a little cranky.

Why we'll miss Helen Thomas

By Jon Ward

Sunday, June 13, 2010; B04

I ran into Helen Thomas a few minutes after she asked President Obama a question about Afghanistan during the last White House press conference she'd ever attend. She was clearly in distress. It was May 27 and oppressively hot, and Helen, 89 years old, was hanging onto the arm of another reporter for help as she walked in her slow shuffle along the White House's North Lawn driveway.

I fished an umbrella out of my backpack to help shade Helen from the brutal sun and handed it to the reporter with her. I then walked to 17th Street to hail a cab to take her home.

"You're an absolute angel," Helen said to me a few minutes later, as she sat down in the cab. I closed the door.

It wasn't until a few days ago, after the world learned of her comments that Israel should "get the hell out of Palestine" and that Jews should return to Poland and Germany, that it hit me. It was between the time that I saw her struggling in the sun and when she finally sat down in the cab -- precisely while I was hailing the taxi for her -- that she had run into Rabbi David Nesenoff, who asked her the question that doomed her career: "Any comments on Israel?"

The fact that Helen Thomas said what she did under pretty severe physical duress hardly excuses her offensive, anti-Semitic remarks, and the fact that she appeared to put her health in jeopardy simply by showing up for a press conference on a hot day was just one more sign that it was probably well past time for her to retire. In the aftermath of the outcry against her and her resignation, current and former White House reporters I spoke to agreed that Thomas no longer belonged in the modern White House press corps -- because of her age, in part, but also because of how she blurred the line between reporting and opinion.

"Helen had always been a tough, no-nonsense interrogator of presidents and press secretaries," said Ann Compton, who has reported on the past six presidents for ABC News. "About a decade ago, when she shed her role as reporter and began a career at Hearst as an opinion columnist, Helen's questions began to cross the line into advocacy."

I'd often had similar thoughts as I watched Thomas do her thing from the front row of the White House briefing room, but I never felt I had much of a right to say anything about a woman who, whatever her views, was a legend to journalists and feminists. But now, as her departure sparks a battle over which news organization will squat on that coveted real estate, I can't help but wonder: As zany and obvious as Thomas's journalism-turned-advocacy had become, is there something the White House press corps could learn from her attitude? In particular, are we too deferential to the Obama White House and press secretary Robert Gibbs?

A couple of incidents come to mind. At a briefing just one week after Obama's inauguration, for example, only two reporters pressed Gibbs for details about the president's knowledge of a drone strike in Pakistan -- the first military action of the new administration -- and they received no backing from colleagues in the room when he refused to discuss it. And more recently, in the June 3 briefing, Gibbs faced only a few scattered questions on the announcement by Colorado Senate candidate Andrew Romanoff that a top White House official had dangled three job possibilities in front of him should he drop his challenge to the incumbent Democrat, Michael Bennet.

I went to almost every briefing from the spring of 2007, when I started covering the Bush administration for the Washington Times, until last fall, when I took my current job. I now go only occasionally, finding the sessions largely futile. The benefit of not being there every day is that when I do show up, I care a lot less about asking an impertinent question that might irritate Gibbs. The downside is that Gibbs has not called on me since I moved to my new employer.

After Thomas's resignation, I asked a number of White House reporters whether they think the briefings are dynamic and tough enough on Gibbs. Fox News's Major Garrett, who along with ABC's Jake Tapper asks some of the best questions at the briefings, admitted that until the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico became a major story, the White House press corps (himself included) had often failed to adequately hold Gibbs's feet to the fire.

"There had long been an unnecessary deference and sort of delicacy and decorum about waiting to be called upon, and rigidly adhering to what is essentially a manufactured process that Robert sought to achieve at the very beginning," Garrett said. He added that the dynamic of the press room works best when reporters are free to follow up and really push the press secretary, but "that has been extremely rare, for whatever reason."

Garrett said things have improved in recent weeks, particularly with the press corps's willingness to challenge Gibbs's statements on the oil spill, and other White House correspondents I spoke to agreed.

Still, Jon Stewart of "The Daily Show" -- America's most popular press critic -- used the occasion of Thomas's retirement last week to ridicule the softball questions that White House reporters ask press secretaries. "Are you journalists, or are you rushing a sorority?" Stewart asked.

Thomas shared this adversarial mentality, captured in her final question to Obama: "Mr. President, when are you going to get out of Afghanistan? Why are we continuing to kill and die there? What is the real excuse? And don't give us this Bushism, if we don't go there, they'll all come here."

It was a continuation of her persistent questions to President George W. Bush and his press secretaries on the Iraq war. "Two million Iraqis have fled their country as refugees. Two million more are displaced. Thousands and thousands are dead. Don't you understand, you brought the al-Qaeda into Iraq," she berated Bush at a press conference in July 2007.

Few reporters, if any, could get away with the kind of belligerence that Thomas displayed toward presidents and press secretaries on a regular basis. Even President John Kennedy once joked that "Helen would be a nice girl if she'd ever get rid of that pad and pencil."

As one White House reporter put it to me, there are some journalists who work on pick-ax crews, hammering away at the administration with tough articles that pull no punches and go after shortcomings and possible wrongdoing, and then there are the clean-up crews, who pick through the resulting rubble and explain and put into context the president's actions.

We need them both. Helen Thomas, no doubt, was a proud member of the pick-ax crew. "What the hell do they think we are, puppets?" she said of the White House a year ago. ". . . They are our public servants. We pay them."

Jon Ward is a senior reporter for the Daily Caller. He covered the George W. Bush and Obama White House for the Washington Times.

http://www.google.com/search?q=lebanon+cluster+bombs

http://www.google.com/search?q=lebanon+helen-thomas

[Atlas]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CdXjbLqz1P8

[planted]

I'm not sure she was wrong in sentiment. I don't believe she really meant what she said. She was just trying to expose one absurdity with another. She could have said "nuke Iran" and there would not be the least hubbub except it would have been quite out of character for her.

Do you know what AIPAC is?

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2894821400057137878

.

Well, you are apparently, not evidently, gifted with the ability to read her mind.

Cool!

The rest of us are stuck with her own words.

Peace.

[Anjin-san]

Hi all,

Say what you mean and mean what you say.

Shall we get back to what Helen said to the Rabbi?

KB