Helen Thomas Slams Bush at Newspaper's Summer Social
By E&P Staff
Published: August 03, 2004
NEW YORK So what happens when a small weekly newspaper invites journalism legend Helen Thomas to its annual summer social? It gets an earful, that's for sure.
Thomas, for example, said that President Bush's "philosophy is simple, black and white, good and evil, with us or against us, dead or alive. He is messianic...To preemptively attack Iraq was a sorry chapter in our history."
It happened in Virginia at the Falls Church News-Press' annual summer social. A crowd of over 200 filled a church sanctuary down the hall from the News-Press where the event was centered, the largest attendance of any of the events held since 1991.
"We are despised throughout the world for our muscular foreign policy and because we lost our halo, the greatness of our country that others aspired to," Thomas told the audience, who munched on catered pizza from the local Ledo Restaurant.
She also said that John Kerry still had not "defined himself." Other highlights of her talk, according to a transcript released by the newspaper:
* "Both the president and Britain's prime minister say [the Iraq war] was worth it all to get one man. Of course the U.S. expects much more: access to Iraqi oil, big business and permanent military bases, a foothold in the Middle East, the neoconservatives' agenda."
* "What I am saying tonight is that somehow we have to recover our honor. Our ideals. Our humanity."
* "It's interesting about investigating committees and commissions today. They see no evil, no one is to blame. It's the institution that's at fault. So the Senate Intelligence panel found the CIA falsely clocking Iraq's ability, but no pressure from the White House to slant the report. And now 9/11! No one is at fault for the misreading of the clues, it was just a lack of imagination on the part of the leaders, the commission said."
Thomas also offered her take on some of the nine presidents she covered and what they thought of the press:
"Kennedy said I'm reading more and enjoying it less. What LBJ said is unprintable. Nixon looked up when a pool of reporters and cameramen came into the cabinet room and said it's only coincidental that we're talking about pollution when the press walks in.
"When President Reagan was told that a press helicopter had been fired on at the Honduran border, he said, 'There's some good in everyone.' "
And she added, "apropos of nothing," that when Al Neuharth, founder of USA Today, interviewed Fidel Castro a couple of years ago, he asked Castro, "What's the difference between your democracy and ours?" and Castro replied, "I don't have to answer questions from Helen Thomas."
She also recalled the day on Air Force One when reporters asked President Kennedy what would happen if the aircraft crashed. "I know one thing," he said. "Your name will just be a footnote."
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