Posted on 07/07/2010 8:30:59 AM PDT by Titus Quinctius Cincinnatus
Isn't it amazing how one fifteen-second-sound byte can bring a career to a grinding halt? I'm sure Helen Thomas is reflecting on that point even now. Gone are Helen Thomas's days of being a highly-respected news reporter. Now, her name is a byword for anti-Semitism and anti-Israeli sentiment. When asked her opinion of Israel, Thomas said, "Tell them to get the hell out of Palestine. Remember, these people [Palestinians] are occupied. And it's their land. It's not German, it's not Poland's." Then, when asked where the Jews living in Israel should go, she replied, "They could go home. Poland, Germany, and America, and everywhere else."
POOF. There went Thomas's job.
While I agree that Thomas's statement was inflammatory, insensitive, and just plain ignorant, I don't think she should have been forced to resign. After all, the freedom of speech doesn't come with the right to be comfortable. In other words, the fact that you're uncomfortable doesn't trump my free speech. Thomas made people uncomfortable, but that doesn't mean her speech should be punished....
(Excerpt) Read more at renewamerica.com ...
I dislike this argument.
Free speech does not mean free from consequence. One is free to say what one wishes, but must accept the consequences of such speech. In this case, the consequence is to be known for the inflammatory and anti-semitic commentary.
You don’t get to do what you want without the world responding.
Helen simply made the mistake of allowing what she REALLY believes to slip out!! Leftists can’t AFFORD that. Unless, of course, they’re in congress or the Whitey House.
Of course, it all depends on whose ox is being gored..
It’s very rare for a liberal to suffer any consequences for hateful words. However, normal people get fired for saying innocent words that are twisted into hate speech. Macaca.
I’m glad this hateful anti-American witch got fired. Normal people suffer worse consequences.
Just curious....did Jamie Freeze write a similar article for Don Imus?
She was not out of a job for the one statement.
It was the straw that broke the camel’s back.
She has an extreme nasty liberal bias problem. It finally took her down. It took way too long, but it took her down.
It’s like saying a man gets life in prison for shaking down a passerby for his wallet under California’s Three Strikes law. No, he doesn’t. He gets life in prison for being a habitual criminal. He no doubt committed hundreds if not thousands of crimes before that one. You just get to a point.
Live by PC, die by PC.
It is a free country. Thomas was free not to resign. Her company was free to refuse to continue distributing her stories. We're free to condemn her for the hate-filled troll that she is. Jamie Freeze is free to defend her. Isn't it nice when everything works out as it should?
The "soundbite" was as indefensible as Robert Byrd's continued use of the n-word (with the excuse that "there are white n*****rs too").
I didn't see Helen Thomas as a "highly-respected news reporter". She was a bitter liberal hag. She was not respectful of President Bush and others as well.
Dan Rather and Walter Cronkite were formerly "respected" until their true personas were revealed.
A journalist can be a jerk personally and still a good journalist, but when a journalist distorts reality and even fabricates "evidence" out of whole cloth to turn a war or an election, and the public becomes aware of it, they are disgraced.
No, it doesn’t have anything to do with whose ox is getting gored. Coulter is a critic and commentator, Thomas was a REPORTER who is supposed to be neutral.
Good riddance to a disgusting (almost) human being.
Helen Thomas was a glittering jewel of colossal ignorance and a true illustration of the competency (or lack thereof) of our bottom of the SAT barrel “journalists”.
Highly respected journalist ?
Helen Thomas journalistic integrity is to respectable journalism, as fart jokes are to humor
Just keep in mind that her ideological enemies didn’t fire her. Her friends fired her.
Good to keep in mind from time to time.
The Hollywood blacklists? Hollywood blacklisting their pals.
Trent Lott, pick up the white courtesy phone.
Sure as hell does.
Ditto
Imus, Jimmy The Greek, Earl Butz, Rush on MNF . . . where were you then?
What’s a “muslim country”?
One that is heavily settled with muslims? Or one that exists under Islamic theocratic rule?
It certainly isn’t a “historic” designation to describe lands where Mohammed lived and travelled. Indonesia is a “muslim country” by both definitions above (muslim majority with theocratic rule).
Not every “muslim” in a muslim nation is muslim by choice. There isn’t freedom of religion everywhere in this world. There are penalties for following other faiths, prohibitions on converting away from Islam, and in some a prohibition on religious texts and gathering to worship.
Helen said that the Jews had no right to live in Israel, that they’d come from other countries and should go back to them. Of course, there were Jews and Christians in the Middle East before Mohammed and his followers converted people by the sword.
I disagree with Ann Coulter’s call for forcibly converting people in muslim countries to Christianity, but they should be permitted to follow ANY faith and not held under the thumb of the cult of a dead warlord.
With regards to the korans at Gitmo, I think we should have informed the radical muslims imprisoned there that they would be permitted access to korans, however they should also have been informed that they have the opportunity to look at the religious texts of other faiths. Explain that in the West they have a freedom of religion, that such things are beyond the laws of man.
Great name and I agree with your example ,George Allen came to my mind first too.
The old witch got away with shooting off her mouth without consequences for so long she thought she was bullet proof. Don’t expect sympathy.
Maybe, if nothing else, Helen’s unfortunate lack of poise forced the journalistic community remember its charter.
By definition, journalists must at least APPEAR unbiased. No one has the expectation that they are bloodless mannequins… so we all know they must have views of their own.
That said, journalists more than any other people, MUST keep their own views to themselves. What good are they as professionals if they superimpose their views and opinions on the facts?
Think of it:
• Generals must not mouth THEIR personal politics while holding command
• Soldiers in all ranks are counseled to never publicly state personal politics
• Professors must not preach personal politics in the classroom (but THIS group routinely disregards this rule with impunity)
• Employers are held to particular standards in that personal politics are NOT a condition of employment or of retaining employment once hired
• Priests/preachers cannot and should not bring personal politics to the pulpit
Why is it that Americans so willingly and even gladly tolerate overt and extreme bias from the profession which represents the primary and, for some, the only source of continuous information on the world, politics, economics, education, society, etc.?
Why do we as Americans so vigilantly and dutifully safeguard the freedom of the press for this tribe of wholly subjective, disreputable and unscrupulous entertainment wannabe’s who have long since gratuitously squandered our confidence and compromised their contract with America… and continue to do so with each word they write or speak?
What was a noble profession is now a national joke. If I want news, the MSM is the last place I’ll look.
What does any of that have to do with the price of wheat in China?
The editorial writer saw a double standard between the “bigotry” of Ann Coulter and of Helen Thomas. Said it was hypocritical and that Helen Thomas had been a “RESPECTED” journalist whereas Ann Coulter has always been a controversial pundit.
Get real. Helen was like everyone else in that business - in the opiniontainment industry.
And it goes back a long way. Edward R. Murrow took down McCarthy. Go read early 1800's newspapers and see how onesided they were.
Tell me when and where, in America's history, journalists were unbiased?????
Hellen Thomas has, by her statements, shown America and the world exactly what she is... she is nothing but an evil, Anti-Semitic witch who hates the Jews and who hates Israel and wants to see Israel destroyed/no longer exists and who wants the Jews dead!
Her statement: "Let the Jews return to Poland, let them return to Germany." = Translation: LET THE JEWS RETURN TO THE OVENS, LET THEM DIE!
As I said, Hellen Thomas is free to say what ever she likes. She has, and in doing so is now deservidly suffering the consequences of her statements because, even in our dumbed down society, words still mean something.
Because of what she has said (no one forced her to say it or put the words into her vile mouth), Hellen Thomas will be forever remembered as the Anti-Semitic hag who wants Jews dead and Israel destroyed. This is now, and will forever be her legacy.
They’re both in the opiniontainment business.
Those days were gone about the time they invented moveable type.
Right… and these people don’t even make a pretense at impartiality. This has always the case and what I mean is that NOW it is even MORE deliberate and brazen.
Is it a code of behavior at ‘journalism school’ that being professional = being Liberal?
Do they take an oath to always and in every way, work to subvert the two party system.
Churchill was right: ‘America has a two party system and a one party media.’
Jamie probably forgot that Coulter did lose her gig over at National Review over it.
But responding to Jamie's larger argument, I would say that yes, I essentially agreed with Coulter's remarks (written, you'll remember, in the aftermath of 911 and the death of her close friend). And I disagree with Thomas's remarks.
Coulter called for the invasion of the countries that attacked us. I agreed. She called for the death of the leaders of the attacks, and again I agreed. She called for the conversion of the muslim world to Christianity as the only real solution to Islam's notoriously bloody borders. Might be impolite to say but again I agree. She's right. Islam in the modern age is returning to its expansionist roots and is notoriously and sometimes viciously intolerant of other faiths.
Why did her friends fire her? I don't know. I wouldn't have, obviously. My best explanation is her explanation. The kids at National Review are girly men. Funny, I still read her and I don't often read them.
Thomas? She just said what most of the Left thinks. So why she would be fired escapes me, except that her friends didn't want their beliefs exposed so openly to a public that by and large doesn't agree.
I never read her and I don't often read them either. Firing her was a business decision. Was it right? Depends on the demographic you're trying to reach. If you are going for the anti-semite pro-jihadist Left, then she's a good addition to your stable of writers.
This may describes himself as a law student. It scares me that he might actually defend people in court. He apparently does not realize that the our speech should be free from interference by the government, whereas Thomas was working for a private employer. He behavior reduced her qualifications for the job, which requires, in particular, objectivity and credibility. She demonstrated gross lack of objectivity, hence lost credibility and therefore the ability to do her job. Freedom of speech is absolutely irrelevant.
What should be explained instead is why a person of such ignorance and intellectual laziness is so full of himself as to admonish others ("conservatives should have been the first to..")
Before the Left took over our culture and cleansed it of constitutional thinking and behavior, this author’s premise would have been right.
Americans used to behave as if the constitution was precious to us in that whether we agreed with people or not, we would protect their right to speak their minds. The courts were the same. Above all, educational institutions and Universities were the same.
We understood that the oppression of raw power would never win an argument or debate and it is anti-freedom. There was a consensus in society that insane expressions of free speech called for more voices of sane free speech.
When arguing about segregation racists would say their piece and then more would say the opposite and eventually the segregationists lost. That is, after they used systematic oppression against those who did not agree with them just like the politically correct do today. Segregationists were leftists, too. Leftists are now and always have been anti-constitutionalists.
What slamed the rights of Helen Thomas has been used to slam the rights most recently of those Climatologists who disagreed with the warmers. It is used to tell people to shut up about things the elite find inconvient to discuss or change. Like the hate doctrines of diversity...like reverse discrimination...like the unequal application of civil rights laws (like voting rights laws) used against white Americans by Obama’s racists. People not long ago were shouted down for getting uppity with femenazis. And on and on.
Going on a witch hunt against Thomas precluded a debate about what she said and so nothing is settled. She’s gone but there are still plently of people who agree with her - that Jews have no right to be in the Middle East. Getting rid of Thomas did not solve anything. We would have been better served with a debate about who these people are (and what they truly think) that want Jews pushed into the sea.
Like David Horowitz demonstrated with that Arab woman at the University who finally admitted she wants all Jews dead! Suddenly the Arab bigot looked real and clear. Had David not bothered and just shut her down, this would not have been achieved. That is what should have happened to Thomas. Her hate speech should have called for more speech of the opposite.
link to a related thread:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2548385/posts
quoting:
Personally, the rabbi was surprised at the venomous emails he received and attacks in the media against him. After all, he didn’t take Helen Thomas’s words out of context and he didn’t suggest or urge that she be fired or resign.
Clearly angry, he said, “They want to make me out to be a racist—how dare they! How silly is that? How stupid of them, how buffoonish of them to call themselves journalists and not use the luxury of this beautiful media of [the] Internet in a responsible fashion.”
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.