A Few Words on the Helen Thomas Situation
As you all know by now, the venerable journalism great Helen Thomas has retired after over 50 years in the field of journalism, most of those years spent covering various presidents. You also probably know WHY she retired; she made comments about Israel that included the words "Get the hell out of Palastine" and "Go back to Germany and Poland."
Now, I think we can ALL agree that saying "Go back to Germany and Poland" was VERY wrong of her. It was rude and uncalled for, and as a professional, Helen really should have known better. I've been a Helen Thomas fan since I was a little kid, and even I think she was wrong to say that. HOWEVER, the "Get the hell out of Palastine" comment was, in my opinion, not that big a deal, and here's why:
PEOPLE HAVE BEEN SAYING THAT TO ISRAEL FOR DECADES! I mean, why, all of a sudden, is it NOW such a faux pas to say that?!? Hell, Palastine's been saying it since its creation! She's only telling the truth about the situation!
Before we continue, I want to make something PERFECTLY CLEAR: I do understand that this is the only home some of these people have known, and it's really shitty to punish them for the behavior of their ancestors. But refusing to let people have land that they claimed as their own for years and years is EQUALLY as shitty. As an American, I should know something about that; after all, we did it (most notably) to the Native Americans for centuries and centuries. We know a little something about stealing land and killing people over it.
I have a few basic thoughts on this whole thing, which I posted in a comment on my friend strawberrysgirl's LiveJournal and will repeat here:
1) Helen Thomas is about 90 years old. If you can't say whatever the hell you want at 90, shoot me now, because I don't want to be 90 and not be able to say whatever the hell I want. If you make it to 90, in my opinion, you've EARNED the right to say whatever you want.
2) This is happening not only because she's a woman, but also because she's an ARAB woman. That's right, everyone is a racist bastard because they can't stand to see an Arab woman succeed for as long as she has. Her parents were Lebanese immigrants, so Helen is a first-generation Lebanese-American, which makes her long career even MORE amazing. Racism towards Arab-Americans didn't start with 9/11, folks. My grandpa told me some stories about how he had to deal with this bullshit when HE was a kid in the '20s and '30s, and it was JUST as bad then as it is now.
3) People who are making fun of her for this can, in the immortal words of Shirley MacLaine to Tom Skerrit in "Steel Magnolias," eat shit and die. She's is way cooler than they could ever hope to be, and they need to get to the fucking left...so I can shove them off a cliff.
I feel the need to explain the third item on that list further, because people are going to be wondering "WTF" when they see it. The following is an explanation, with all Tweets screencapped from Twitter.
I follow Rob Lowe on Twitter, and 99% of the time, he's pretty cool. Even makes West Wing jokes and such. But I saw something the other day that gave me pause:
I was shocked by this (he never showed any hint of RWNJery, unlike Adam Baldwin, who I eventually unfollowed after watching him totally pwn that asshole FakeJoeBiden), and replied:
Because, y'know, there IS a difference between those two. A MAJOR difference. (Sounds to me like somebody's still upset he got busted with underage girls at the Democratic National Convention way back when...Mom and I speculate that maybe Helen Thomas' employer printed some unflattering comments about that incident, and that's why he doesn't like her.)
Anyways, I'm going about my business on Twitter then, trying to calm down because it had been a REALLY shitty afternoon, and then I saw a Tweet from someone that Mr. Sourpuss Grumpyface had retweeted named Dawni2:
WAY TO BE A GROWN-UP, THERE, Dawni2! Well, I was still VERY upset about how shitty my afternoon had been, and it had just occured to me that there may have been some racism against Arab-Americans going on in the whole situation, so I got REALLY pissed off and replied:
Well, I got a reply from Dawni2 the next day:
Um, hey, Dawni2? WHEN SOMEONE AS FAMOUS AS ROB LOWE RETWEETS SOMETHING, PRETTY MUCH ALL HIS FOLLOWERS CAN SEE IT. THAT MEANS I COULD SEE IT TOO. IT WAS IN MY FEED, SO IT WAS SOMETHING I COULD REPLY TO. As I told Mom later, "Kinda hard to mind my own business when it shows up in my feed." I replied:
By the time she responded with the insults, it was the next day, and I was in a MUCH better mood. Hence the seemingly mellow-sounding response to her dickery.
Her response to me didn't piss me off, because:
1) In my 22 1/2 years of existence, I've been called WAY worse than a boring idiot. That actually made me laugh.
2) I freely admit that I lack brain cells most of the time.
3) There's a difference between "being silly" and "being a dick." I know the difference.
4) I was actually using Twitter to engage in an adult conversation about the situation. Dawni2 was using it to mock the personal style of a 90 year old woman. WHO doesn't have a life?
5) As previously stated, it's fair game for me to comment on if it shows up in my Twitter feed.
I do think that Helen Thomas needed to retire, but if she HAD to retire, it should NOT have been this way. A number of people I have spoken to have had the opportunity to meet Helen Thomas in person, and said that she was a lovely woman and very nice to them. My mother even had the opportunity, way back in the '70s when she was in college, to meet Helen Thomas at a speaking event at Pitt. My mother is not in the habit of sugarcoating things, for which me and Wendy have always been grateful, even if we didn't show it, and SHE said that Helen Thomas was nice and very willing to answer questions and speak to the students who came to hear what she had to say. That doesn't strike me as someone who should be forced out of a job for one controversial quote. If that was true, then those fuckers Beck, Limbaugh, Buchannan, and Erickson would be LONG GONE.
To summarize: Dick move, America. Best of luck to you, Helen. Sorry it had to end this way.