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Her image soured as she got older, but she was a real outspoken advocate of freedom of the press and equality for the press corps. Thomas was also the first woman to join the White House Correspondents' Association, and served as White House correspondent for United Press International (UPI) for 39 years. (She then moved to Hearst, where she became a columnist with increasingly open political views, though she retained her prime spot at White House press briefings.) She covered every president from Kennedy to Obama. She was the only woman who traveled with Richard Nixon on his trip to China. She was the one who ended every presidential press conference by saying, on behalf of her fellow journalists, "Thank you, Mr. President."Thomas became known for her tough, relentless questioning of presidents and press secretaries. It was not an uncommon sight to see a president repeatedly saying, "Helen?Helen?Helen," as he tried to get a word in edgewise. She became a special foe of the Bush administration, whose policies she openly loathed. President Bush famously refused to call on her at press conferences for years at a time, perhaps due to exchanges like this one, as described by the AP:
In March 2005, she confronted Bush with the proposition that "your decision to invade Iraq has caused the deaths of thousands of Americans and Iraqis" and every justification for the attack proved false."Why did you really want to go to war?" she demanded. When Bush began explaining his rationale, she interjected: "They didn't do anything to you, or to our country." "Excuse me for a second," Bush replied. "They did. The Taliban provided safe haven for al-Qaeda. That's where al-Qaeda trained." "I'm talking about Iraq," she said...
Thomas was at the forefront of women's achievements in journalism. She was one of the first female reporters to break out of the White House "women's beat" ? the soft stories about presidents' kids, wives, their teas and their hairdos ? and cover the hard news on an equal footing with men.She became the first female White House bureau chief for a wire service when UPI named her to the position in 1974. She was also the first female officer at the National Press Club, where women had once been barred as members and she had to fight for admission into the 1959 luncheon speech where Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev warned: "We will bury you." The belligerent Khrushchev was an unlikely ally in one sense. He had refused to speak at any Washington venue that excluded women, she said. Thomas fought, too, for a more open presidency, resisting all moves by a succession of administrations to restrict press access. "People will never know how hard it is to get information," Thomas told an interviewer, "especially if it's locked up behind official doors where, if politicians had their way, they'd stamp TOP SECRET on the color of the walls.".. Her big break came after the 1960 election that sent Kennedy to the White House, and landed Thomas her first assignment related to the presidency. She was sent to Palm Beach, Fla., to cover the vacation of the president-elect and his family. JFK's successor, Lyndon Johnson, complained that he learned of his daughter Luci's engagement from Thomas's story. Bigger and better assignments would follow for Thomas, among them President Richard M. Nixon's breakthrough trip to China in 1972. When the Watergate scandal began consuming Nixon's presidency, Martha Mitchell, the notoriously unguarded wife of the attorney general, would call Thomas late at night to unload her frustrations at what she saw as the betrayal of her husband John by the president's men...
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/0...n_3628151.html
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Wasn't her big sin saying something critical about Israel and the Palestinians?
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Wasn't her big sin saying something critical about Israel and the Palestinians? Without looking it up, I'm sure it was something critical about Israel in regards to Palestine. she's Lebanese.The reason I didn't belabor it is, it's still relatively minor compared to her career and significance. I mean leveraging Kruschev to get over the ban of women reporters at that meeting in 1959? 1959! Come on, the woman's career is historic. I remember Martha Mitchells bathroom phone calls during Watergate, that was huge.
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Yah, I didn't care too much about the comment on Israel. She probably shouldn't have said it, but she deserves to be remebered for who she really was and what she really did.
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Wasn't her big sin saying something critical about Israel and the Palestinians? Her big sin was she was an old fart who felt like the rest of the reporters and whitehouse staff owed her something because she had been there since the Taft administration.I couldn't stand her.
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Her big sin was she was an old fart who felt like the rest of the reporters and whitehouse staff owed her something because she had been there since the Taft administration.I couldn't stand her. Indeed. She might have been something better earlier on, but as Ray mentioned she really ruined her own reputation later on.
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It can really suck / be sad to see a person in decline due to age.
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It can really suck / be sad to see a person in decline due to age. Not so much in MO. The alternative is to die early or decline due to something besides age. Ask RA if he would rather decline due to age or have been dead for 10 years. At his age and he is not the man he once was (guessing here RA) but he is alive and kicking trying to do what he wants as best he can.
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Indeed. She might have been something better earlier on, but as Ray mentioned she really ruined her own reputation later on. Well, at a late age she really soured her reputation with Israel comments. However, I thought she was kind of an ahole for a long time, me being old enough to remember.Nevertheless, historically, she is a tremendous figure for pushing against the soft soap Presidential press BS approach (Jay Carney included) and pushing against discrimination against women journalists in hard news. It's often the unlikeable people who are more significant in dealing with the powerful, probably because they don't care about being liked which often leads to the butt smooching we expect.
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Not so much in MO. The alternative is to die early or decline due to something besides age. Ask RA if he would rather decline due to age or have been dead for 10 years. At his age and he is not the man he once was (guessing here RA) but he is alive and kicking trying to do what he wants as best he can. True enough. But when I say in decline, I'm not talking about some Cialis commercial.
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