Think Progress (6/7/10) claims Sarah Palin’s criticism of the press regarding Helen Thomas is wrong, but I can’t even figure out what she’s trying to say. Here’s Palin’s Twitter statement:
Helen Thomas press pals condone racism? Heaven forbid “esteemed” press corps represent society’s enlightened elite; Rest of us choose truth.
“Enlightened elite” would seem to be sarcasm–Palin does not actually think the “elite” is “enlightened”–but so would “Heaven forbid,” suggesting that she thinks the press corps actually should represent this non-enlightened elite. I honestly can’t puzzle out her intended message.
As for Thomas’ statement itself, the message was all too clear: It was a call for ethnic cleansing, and she was right to apologize for it. It’s a sad way to end an admirable career. I would note, though, along with Glenn Greenwald, that the acceptability of calls for ethnic cleansing in the U.S. corporate media depends on which ethnicity is to be cleansed.
I think putting in a comma fixes it: “Heaven forbid, the ‘esteemed’ press corps represent society’s ‘enlightened’ elite.”
Jim, I don’t think that was Thomas’ intent at all. I’d refer you to Paul Jay’s comments on the context of her remarks.
I wish, rather than apologizing for the remarks themselves, she’d have apologized to anyone who sincerely mistook them for anti-Semitism, but also had clarified them along Jay’s lines.
But she didn’t, and so you’re right that it was a sad end to her career, to, as Jay put it, “apologiz[e] to the apologists.”
I don’t lionize her – I think it’s a mistake to put anyone on a pedestal – but she did have the chutzpah to ask tough questions when no one else around her would, didn’t she?
Not often enough, and not on the range of issues necessary, but she at least displayed a sense of what journalism’s supposed to be about.
So let’s not jump on the haters’ bandwagon on this. If you haven’t read Jay’s piece, please do, and post your thoughts on it.
IN DEFENSE OF HELEN THOMAS – on apologizing to apologists
by Paul Jay
http://communities.canada.com/shareit/blogs/reality/archive/2010/06/07/in-defense-of-helen-thomas.aspx
The Gatekeepers of Granola-Land never can & never will understand Gov. Palin; but, to her millions of fans & followers in real America, her words are crystal clear.
Perhaps she meant “condemn” instead of “condone”; that plus the comma would make a coherent statement, though not an accurate one–as Think Progress points out.
Palin glamorizes ignorance of the world around you and stupidity, and makes people who educate themselves the villains.
Her minions like this because they pretty much think the same thing, and like their complex problems reduced to simple slogans that they can understand.
Dumbing down the country like this serves nobody. Ignorance is not a virtue, even though many claim it is. Putting dumb ignorant people into government leads to results like we see today, massive unemployment and massive debt.
We should encourage our citizens to educate themselves and we should not be glamorizing willful ignorance and willful stupidity.
“Stan Parker Says:
June 7th, 2010 at 5:52 pm
The Gatekeepers of Granola-Land never can & never will understand Gov. Palin; but, to her millions of fans & followers in real America, her words are crystal clear.”
So Stan, assuming you are a fan/follower, what exactly do her words mean? I’m no fan and I don’t get it.
Thanks.
FAIR, stop wussing out over the Helen Thomas incident and get the facts. Her comments were taken completely out of context and did not constitute a statement in favor of “ethnic cleansing,” which is a very lame assessment on the part of your website, which usually makes
pretty astute judgments about how the news is reported. And why are you focusing on Sarah Palin’s lame tweeting rather than considering
how much corporate media attention is given to Thomas’ comments versus the lame, biased coverage of the flotilla massacre. My confidence in the credibility of your site as a “fair” critical examination of the mass media has been damaged.
Jim, I think Sonny puts it very well.
I wanted to add this to the intel, from DEMOCRACY NOW!:
Veteran White House Reporter Helen Thomas Retires After Israel Remarks
http://www.democracynow.org/2010/6/8/veteran_white_house_reporter_helen_thomas
While I appreciate Abourezk’s and Jay’s defense of her comments, I’d really like to hear directly from her, wouldn’t you? I thought the statement she put out was pretty weak, and I’d like her to display the same gumption she’s shown in the White House press room in dealing with this shit.
I hope she will, soon.
Sarah Palin Saying: I have been to 57 States http://youtu.be/OrsBKGpwi58
Sarah Palin Saying: I have been 2 57 States http://youtu.be/OrsBKGpwi58
Sarah Palin Saying: I have been to 57 States http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EpGH02DtIws
This is a very sad moment in the history of US mass media. They blow up and remove from context the comments of one of this country’s most prominent Arab-Americans (and one of its veteran journalists).
Then they fall for the President’s campaign to remove here: fundamentally an act of the most obscene censorship, like what they do in dictatorships. And finally, they use it to obscure the shameful “propaganda machine” character of our major media coverage of an incident in which Israel invaded a ship in International waters, killed a bunch of unarmed people on that ship and then lied about what happened and doctored video to support that lie. Some tv stations are still playing the doctored or heavily edited video for god’s sake! This, while the rest of the world is reporting what really happened. This is the worst I’ve seen in a very long time.
And Brother Obama needs to hang his head in shame.
Thank heaven for the alternative sources and blogs and the Internet we use to deliver them. Thank heaven they can’t just throw up the lies without being challenged any more.
Agreed.
The second sentence, I would submit, is literally unreadable–if the point of reading is to derive meaning at least. You have to suppress at least one of the phrases in order to make any sense of the sentence whatsoever.
If you eliminated the “Heaven forbid,” then it would be fairly straightforward sarcasm. Clearly, Palin doesn’t believe the press corps should be esteemed, and clearly she doesn’t believe the people she disses as “elites” are enlightened. But restore the “Heaven forbid,” and everything gets murky.
You only start a statement with “Heaven forbid” when you are going to go on and lament that something good doesn’t happen more frequently. For example, I might say “Heaven forbid Republicans vote for a bill that helps people making less than a million dollars a year.”
Even without knowing my politics, anyone who heard me say this would surely have no doubt that a) I think Republicans rarely vote for such bills and b) I think such bills are good things.
But what of Palin’s statement? Can we infer that she believes the press corps do NOT usually represent society’s elite but that they should? That would be absurd. It would be like me saying “Heaven forbid Americans drive big gas-guzzling SUVs.”
The only possible non-nonsensical reading of Palin’s sentence would involve taking the “esteemed” that qualifies the “press Corp” as sarcastic; taking the “enlightened” that qualifies the elite” straight; and taking those “elite” to refer not to effete east-cost liberals but, rather, to “real Americans” like Sarah Palin.
That interpretation might work. Just as long as you don’t read the last sentence fragment (“Rest of us choose truth”), which negates it.
only one question is truly relevent heading into the midterms. who is a very welcome endorsement (Palin), who is a pahriah, although the president is coming, i REALLY have to be somewhere else, anywhere else, just keep him away from a photo op my opponent can use to tie me to oBowMao
What intrigues me is we are not hearing alot of outrage over these comments from the left, yet when someone from the right calls to stop the illegal crossing of our borders, they are called racists. So we aren’t racist if we say Jews should go back to Germany but we are if we think illegal border crossers should go back to where they came from?
I’ve been re-reading Thomas’ comments, and I can see where a case can be made for either interpretation – she may be referring to historic Palestine, or to just the settler areas. Again, someone should ask her, don’t you think?
But regardless, if a Native American were to say that colonial descendents should “get the hell off our land”, would we be calling that “stupid” or a call for “ethnic cleansing”? Wouldn’t that be legitimate anger at centuries of oppression?
There is a difference, in that Jews have been in historic Palestine for millenia. That doesn’t in any way justify Israeli actions over the last sixty-plus years, but it is a factor that must be considered.
As I said, the only just solution is one state open to all, with justice and respect.
How to get there? Someone’s god only knows.
But we have to try, don’t we?
In regard to Israel getting out of Gaza, she is on the right track as for the Jews going bck to ……
She fails to realize that many Jewas once lived in harmoney with Muslims and Arabs not to mention Persians for hundreds of years and are indiginous to the area. Also, we could point to the real fact that the overall condition of Gaza and the Palestinian people are extremely dire when it comes to basic services. Have we forgotten so quickly the overkill responses by Israel to even the smallest affront and the toll it takes upon the civilian population. How many times have we heard the call for back to the 67 borders. Yet Israel continue to expand building with the intent to never relinques the title to land as part of Israel
The two state resolution is well on the way down the tubes if Israel continues on with it policy of Genocide
I don’t think Helen was saying anything wrong at all. She was clearly referring to the occupied territories, distinguishing between Israel and Palestine, and she never said that anybody should forcibly remove the settlers–but she was saying that they were where they were after a REAL process of ethnic cleansing, and should go back to where they came from. I agree heartily, and even think the “international community” should negotiate and maybe even force their exit from land they illegally occupy. At the moment the IC is busily protecting the Israelis from any repercussions from their latest international crimes and protecting them as they pursue a slow genocide process in Gaza and further ethnic cleansing operations in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, and threaten Iran.
Ed, what do you think of the feasibility of one state?
South Africa’s experience with it, so to speak, has been pretty dismal from a moral standpoint, don’t you think? So even if it were to come to pass, it would likely only be the first step in a very long process.
Given all that, how to you feel about advocating for one?
I bet you my you know what that Israel will never permit a two state solution.
What do you think? Five years, ten years? How much will you bet. This whole thing is bullshit, and everyone knows it. If the world community can’t grow up and become adult enough to tell the truth when it comes to difficult facts, and uncomfortable truths what hope have we. When we will we learn, and how come those who should most be able to articulate and acknowledge right and wrong become turned around. Hate & oppression is wrong and will not lead to anything of value.
Come on people
No justice No peace.
If you were a member of a Palestinian family, community, neighborhood, what would you have done?
What would you do?
Do you really expect people to just surrender their dignity?
If there is a one hundred years from now how do you think the conflict will be viewed from that distance?
I would add that if the Palestinian non violence could catch on it would have the best chance of moving things forward constructively. I am confident that non violence would garner support around the world.
I think it is chilling that someone should lose their job after a distinguished career for making a few intemperate remarks. She is not an elected official, and is in no position to put her opinions into practice. Pat Buchanan, Rush Limbaugh, Pat Robertson, to mention only a few, have all made similar intemperate statements and they continue to appear in the media. Opinions such as hers should be condemned, but it is wrong to silence her for having offensive opinions. They are part of living in a free society.
Sarah Palin is an idiot, so I don’t always expect to understand the pollution spewing out of her mouth. However, I understand the venom coming out of Jim Naureckas’s own text.
It is a stretch to label Helen Thomas’s wish for Jews to leave Israel “ethnic cleansing.” She wasn’t calling for all their throats to be slit (though I doubt she’d lose sleep over that, either).
I agree with virtually everything Fair.org writes and I’m so happy you’re around to set the record straight and enlighten us against corporate media propaganda. However, you are sometimes just as alarmist as the people you criticize. I understand that you all work for Fair because you’re passionate about getting the truth out, but you should make more of an effort to reign yourselves in or your hard-earned credibility could devolve very quickly. There was another story on Fair a few months ago with a major gaff in a story in which someone’s opportunistic brother should have clearly been criticized in the article and wasn’t (wish I could remember the subject), an obvious show of favoratism toward the subject of the article. Hypocrisy is just as disgusting when practiced by liberals as it is by conservatives because in both cases you assume we’re stupid enough to not see such slight of hand. I didn’t bother to comment then because someone else had already scolded the writer.
One thing I heard about the Helen Thomas story was some CNN talking head comparing the Jews in Israel to blacks in America. The voluntary migration of an ethnic group in the few years following WWII is hardly comparable to the enslavement forced and relocation of untold thousands of individuals over the course of three centuries. Yes, the holocaust was undoubtedly the most horrible ethnic cleansing in history, but when it was over no one forced Jews to flee Europe to the Middle East, the U.S. and elsewhere, though who can blame them for wanting to get the hell out of there?
As far as Helen Thomas’s solution, does that mean she’s willing to pack up and go back to Lebanon where her parents came from? I doubt it. Though to be fair to Native Americans (for lack of a better nomenclature) we should all probably go back to where we or our ancestor came from, though I think they’d have to cut me into four or five pieces in order to properly relocate me. I’m not sure; I can’t afford the DNA test to find exactly where I come from.
Kevin: “Dumbing down the country like this serves nobody” is not true – it serves Palin and her ilk very, very well. (And not all of them are Republicans.)
Is anyone cataloguing the loopy things this woman says? It might be wise to recall this before the nation decides whether our nuclear codes ought to be handed to someone who reads talking points from her palm.
Thomas’ statement advocated “ethnic cleansing”? Please, FAIR, I thought you pretended to be fair! Sorry, but it isn’t the Palestinians engaging in ethnic cleaning, it’s the Israelis. Palestinians have every right to resist the occupation of their land.
Israel is an artificial political entity imposed on Palestine by the British and French after the collapse of the Ottoman’s in response to pressure from organized Zionism and in behalf of Jewish exceptionalism. Israeli is, in fact, an illegitimate rogue state now largely supported by U.S. arms and money. And, of course, even the slightest criticism of Israeli occupation and military action is instantly (and falsely) labeled as anti-Semitic. But I realized long ago that any attempt at realistic comment about Israel is impossible in this country.
In his reading of both Palin and Thomas, Jim Naureckas seems intentionally to complicate the simple in order to attack the individuals in question. Palin uses a common type of fluid grammar to express mockery and employs key words common among her supporters. Only someone wanting to misread it on spurious grounds of “bad grammar” could torture it out. Helen Thomas’s remark about European settlers leaving Palestine and returning to the states they migrated from likewise can only mean anti-Semitic ethnic cleansing if you want it to and force it to. May the redoubtable Ms Helen Thomas enjoy her well-earned retirement.
Ironically, since there is evidence that many of the oldest Palestinean churches are built on the remains of Jewish synagogues, this suggests that as many as a third of the Jewish population in Palestine converted to Christianity (probably after Constantine made Christianity legal) and that later about 70% of these Jewish Christians later converted to Islam (when it became economically and socially advantageous to identify as an Arab), it seems obvious that the Palestineans ultimately have the same Jewish ethnic roots as the Jews who came to Palestine as Zionists. In fact, I think we can justly assume that Jesus of Nazareth probably looked more like a swarthy Patestinean, then the fair skinned Eastern Europe Jew. In short this is a family struggle about who gets the inheritance of Abraham between groups that probably have equal came in terms of ethnic identity.
Americans like to play Cowboy and Indians in the question of Israel/Palestine. Obviously Americans can symphasize more readily with the foreign invader who forces out the indigent peoples, since we did the same thing with the native Americans.
And why scapegoat the Patestineans for the Nazi genocide of European Jewry? The fault for that lies with European contrivance and American indifference.
Are we really discussing and disseminating a quick aside from Sarah as if it is some secret script?And are we really weighing the words of a 90+ year old woman anymore than we would do when Grandma( who has lost her “filter”)say’s something stupid at the dinner table?
Lets get back on board, and discuss the stupidity that flows from our young presidents mouth everyday.
Who cares what she has to say? She’s proven over and over again that she’s an idiot. The right wing prefers its leaders like that – let THEM try to parse it. The less attention she gets, the better.
As to characterizing Thomas’ comments as “ethnic cleansing”; That’s straight out of left field. Ethnic cleansing is done by FORCE (as the Israelis do to the Palestinians, for example). Thomas did not advocate that. Naurekas is putting words in her mouth. Palestinians sit decade after decade in refugee camps while Jews from Europe and the U.S. occupy their confiscated land. That’s what Thomas is protesting, and she has nothing to apologize for.
thomas’ comment wasn’t a call for ethnic cleansing at all. israel has been an a**hole to Palestinians for decades. one rock thrown at them warrants bullbozings and arrests. she was sick of it.
I don’t think Thomas was calling for ethnic cleansing, but her words were definitely inappropriate and revealed a prejudice. Having said that, I will miss her journalistic expertise. She asks the questions every other journalist should be asking and doesn’t back down when the questions are dodged.
Jim- Oh stop. Helen Thomas is one of the best. She said what a lot of people thought when they heard that 9 people were killed in the flotilla by Israeli commandos. This was the context she made her comment in. It wasn’t racism and it wasn’t a call for ethnic cleansing. It’s going overboard for FAIR to employ you to say it was. You are engaging in the very smearing you would like to decode Sarah’s statement as doing.
The world is witnessing an ironic happening of monumental proportions: in 1948 the United Nations created the State of Israel out of Arab lands: approximately 1,000,000 Arabs or non-Jewish people lived in this region alongside about 500,000 Jews. The UN did not call for a plebiscite to determine how many indigenous people preferred to be ruled by a theocracy; the UN made an arbitrary decision and won the approval of those nations who voted for this grave injustice by a guilt-ridden West. (Anti-Semiticism had been rampant in the Western world.)
A minute religious group numbering in the millions in a world population of billions of religious followers established a Jewish state, a theocracy: any Jew in the world, if that person but move to Israel, is entitled to full rights of citizenship in Israel, yet Palestinians living in Gaza cannot return to ancestral homes they established as far back as the 14th Century. These former residents of Palestine are declared persona non grata by the present government of Israel.
If you wish to learn more about the number one patron of Israel, read “The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy” by Mearsheimer and Walt. But as Marc Anthony said in Julius Caesar, “If you have tears, prepare to shed them now.”
Helen Thomas, indeed the emporer has no clothes! Truth to power.
Frank Walter
If one listens to the entire “Go back to Poland and Germany” video recording clip, one sees and hears that the octogenarian does not hear the interruption by the rabbi, who in doing so places words and meanings into the octogenarian’s mouth that she neither said nor intended. Obviously from the whole context Thomas is talking about new immigrants to the Holy Land, who have arrived from Poland and Germany since the Gaza invasion, who have not moved to Israel proper, but instead onto Israeli-occupied Palestinian lands of East Jerusalem and the West Bank.
It is rather these new immigrants to occupied Palestine, who Thomas is obviously saying should go back to Germany and Poland, if Israel proper does not have Lebensraum for them. Too intent on trying to get her to say something more controversial than she is actually saying, the rabbi is patently not listening to Thomas and clearly has no interest in listening to what it is she has to say. In one way or another he is intent on cutting her off, and has the chutzpah to do it, even if she is an old lady.
Too many people have only heard in all of this only what they wanted to hear, especially at the suggestion of people such as Ari Fleischer. She was a thorn in his side, and he apparently wanted to get back at her for demanding the truth from him as W’s lying and dissembling press secretary. Of course, Ari was just doing his job. But in his most recent crusade against her, he presented his own slanted version of what Thomas said to his fellow members of the press corps and media. He gave either a deliberately or recklessly false impression of Thomas as an angry anti-Jewish, anti-Israeli, anti-Hebrew culture person, who is so inept and senile that she has no clue what she is saying or is suddenly expressing some long-held irrational Anti-Israeli-immigrant hostilities because of her mental infirmity and newly revealed bad character.
It is Fleischer who needs to apologize to Thomas. She was speaking neither of Jewish immigrants to Israel proper nor of Jewish immigrants in general. Whe was speaking quite specifically of the new arrivals from Poland and Germany who landed not in Iasrael but in occupied Palestine of the West Bank and East Jerusalen. She has not lost her marbles. She is quite sane. She sees the Palestinian viewpoint as a person of Arab background, and grasps the fragility of the entire situation quite handily, her age notwithstanding.
I have little doubt that her reputation has been butchered by another effective Anti-Defamation League-backed campaign to smear and defame yet another of the Israeli government’s many silenced critics and disapprovers by crying “anti-Semite!” as if these loving and patient critics of Israel actually were full of hatred for Israel, when it is clear that they are simply appalled to see their friend and loved one behaving like a reprobate.
However, as an Arab, Ms. Thomas is indeed a Semite, a descendant of Noah’s son Shem, and she is not a hater of Israelis, of Jews, of Hebrews or of Zionists nor is she a self-hater. Once one sees the full implications of Palestinian-displacing objectives of many kinds of Zionism, however, it is difficult to see how any informed person who can think, could also approve of them.
The only thing Ms. Palin has going for her is that she looks like Tina Fey.