WASHINGTON — I first saw her escorted into the White House briefing room by an assistant. She sat in the middle of the front row, a pecking-ordered place of honor that hasn’t changed in decades.
“Did you see Helen Thomas?” a seasoned CBS cameraman leaned over and asked me, knowing it was my first time at the White House. I nodded and stretched to peer her way from my position in the back.
- Born in 1920
- She started her career at United Press International in 1943.
- Ladies Home Journal named her “Woman of the Year” in 1975.
- She became a columnist for Hearst News Service in 2000.
- Nine Speakers, Inc. dropped her as a client June 6 because of anti-Semitic comments she made outside a White House Jewish heritage event.
- She retired, under fire, June 7.
She’s a lipsticked journalism icon who veterans point out and visitors photograph. But Thomas’s anti-Semitic comments after a Jewish heritage function at the White House on May 27 when she was asked by the website RabbiLive.Com if she had any thoughts on Israel — her reply: Jews should “get the hell out of Palestine” and “go home” to Poland and Germany — indicate that while there might be more room to carry a controversial opinion as a journalist in the 21st century, there’s no space for bigotry. Not even for front-and-center matriarchs.
I could barely see the crown of her brown hair above the horizon of chairs when Press Secretary Robert Gibbs called on her the day Adm. Thad Allen was in town sharing concerns about the oil spill crisis.
“Do you have a question, Helen?” Gibbs said in the soft manner grandsons typically reserve for their grandmas, a rare tone taken by press officials when addressing reporters. It warmed my cold journalist heart.
Her pen-and-paper presence in the briefing room lined with HD cameras, a flat screen television, bloggers, tweeters and video editors called to mind a journalism of yesteryear. In a place and profession that represent the foundation of U.S. democracy, the anachronism paradoxically fit.
It was a few days later, at another oil spill news conference, that Thomas was again given the chance to speak. With his presidency under fire because of the crisis, President Barack Obama asked Thomas if she had a question. Of course she did.
One of six journalists selected to speak to the president at his first press conference in almost a year, Thomas asked about Afghanistan. She requested not to be fed any “bullshit.”
Obama smiled graciously and handled her with the same care as Gibbs. Again, as a reporter used to a degree of abuse, I found it reassuring and sweet. But also a little unsettling, particularly when she interrupted his attempted answer to her off-topic question.
But no one was grinning after Thomas spoke Sunday. And now, with commencement speeches and her column canceled, this wordsmith has been relegated to silence.
Last week this rookie White House reporter’s opinion would have been somewhat different than today. Perhaps I had stars in my eyes, but I thought she was someone I should emulate, perhaps. Now it only seems that a retirement should have happened sooner. Indeed, it is unfortunate that after 67 years of reporting, five books and an incalculable number of questions and words later, this is what people will remember.
If I make it to octogenarian status I do expect to have some opinions. I can only hope they are sound and that when I share them, people smile, not only because I am old, but also because I’m not wrong. But mostly, looking forward 60 years, I just hope to be retired by then.
Natalie Bailey is available to take over Helen Thomas’s seat June 19 when she graduates from Northwestern University with her master’s in journalism. She wrote this opinion piece for Washington Reporting 2.0, an occasional column about the experience of reporting