I’ve watched the msm and blogosphere erupt over something one of my favorite US citizen crones, Helen Thomas, said, (Barbara Bush being one of my other most favorite plain-speaking, humor filled but serious champs).
Over the decades, I’ve also heard other media workers express extremely biased condemnations, unsupportable opinions and polarizing and ugly ideas, including what tortures and deaths people they disagree with should be forced to… but these comments occurred behind the scenes in the newsrooms, from reporters, grips and editors, and at the light tables.
Yet, none of these who rip off an barely imaginable death wish to punish others, are the ultimate policy makers. They are only the ones who tell many different kinds of stories. Across the vast terrain of media, there are some storytellers who tell factual and down to earth stories, gathered by eye witness, or by being primary investigator… others carry opinion and inquiry as their stock in trade… and others are as solid as sweet or nasty cotton candy spinning in the metal tub at the carnival.
We’ve been taught that it’s up to the listener to decide to take what is fair and just and to leave the rest… But, we also know from observation that one Vandal can recruit others with half truths or offhand premises, and that more rather than less discernment is warranted always when there are ‘warring’ factions, in depth review of history, before one decides what to decide… and what to commit to that is not simple knee-jerkdom.
Certainly it’s a new-news story of our times that in recent days, various ‘famous folk’ called ‘news’ conferences for themselves in order to memorialize the unleashing of their own personal atomic clouds of outrage over what a reporter (Miss Thomas) said in public about Palestine and Israel.
The reality is that she said aloud what many people–media workers and otherwise– say behind the scenes as well. Is the news really that Helen Thomas said this, or is the news that one reporter out of many holds this view?
That Helen Thomas has had her venue taken from her… will this silence the anti Israel or anti Palestine people? Behind the scenes? Publicly?
Thus, it seems the sudden flurry of press releases by various people affiliated, or not, with Helen Thomas, that sudden calling of ‘press conferences’ to decry and condemn Thomas’s remarks, is at least as noteworthy as what Thomas actually said.
You have to wonder, what exactly is being protected, when ‘famous people’ who have plenty of venue to begin with, rush to condemn, first making sure cameras are on, and newspapers have been alerted to their pronouncements.
Here, see Miss Thomas’s remarks, all of them, only this time without edits, rather in full context of the whole filmed affair initiated by the Rabbi. Who edited the film to show only the ‘go back to Poland et al’ remark, is a question, an important one, yet to be answered. Both the edited and unedited version are up at YouTube.
Listen to the female voice in the background seemingly saying ‘You are one’, presumably meaning Miss Thomas is an Arab, and note the Rabbi first asking if Miss Thomas speaks Arabic. Note she includes America as a place where Jews can ‘go back to.’
I dont overlook the effect of the words she apologized for afterward…for this reason…
my own immigrant and war refugee family has so very often been told to ‘go back where you came from.’ It is not a new thing to such as us. It is old. And we have some understanding of why and how people come to say such things.
Helen Thomas has had a long and exceedingly balabusta life at times (Yiddish for aggressive, getting the job done, sidetracking the superficial). I’d rather with regard to her also, given her apology, not do as she referenced Israel doing to Palestine: divide her away from her long lived-in land of ‘front row ceremonial chair of the elder’ at Presidential press conferences. I’d rather not embargo flow of understanding to her. I’d rather not go on television to accuse her of accusing others, but rather find a decent way to live and let live without the patronizing ‘we wish you well,’ or the even more insincere, ‘I really like her, but.’
I’d rather take time to consider for a time something we all already know: that many journos carry biases– some you might like just fine, some you might loathe to the grave… but those journos haven’t had an open mike and an unguarded moment… yet.
CODA
Miss Thomas is of Lebanese Arabic heritage, the history of which is rich in superb accomplishments, and sorrowful in being harmed and over-run by others, and fierce in fighting as well.