Presidents don't often make news at news conferences any more. Washington is so adversarial and scripted, administrations are so cocooned, and journalists so lazy that White House press briefings are no longer edge-of-your-seat events.
So to make headlines at such affairs, chief executives are often left to devices such as showing up unannounced, as President Obama did yesterday. We cats are not criticizing this. His comments on Trayvon Martin were not only necessary, they were even more thrilling and thought-provoking than they might otherwise have been, because we did not know they were coming.
Kind of ironic, then, that the day after this remarkable occurrence, journalist Helen Thomas dies. Many, many times in days more quaint, it was Helen Thomas who asked the questions that forced Presidents to make news. The Washington Post lists several of them in its Thomas obit today, and to our vast regret the Post (a shadow of its former self, we might add) does not also print the answers those Presidents gave.
We cats have written about Helen Thomas twice before. Three years ago, we blasted her for the Gaza comments that ended her distinguished career. In 2008, we said that she was one of only a handful of journalists who deserved the wall-to-wall obits that Tim Russert got when he died. We'd write both posts all over again — word for word.
We're sorry that the obits we're reading today have that awful paragraph about what Helen said in 2010. But even if she hadn't messed up so badly, we're pretty sure she won't receive plaudits of Russertesque proportion in death. Although she was brilliant, fearless and barrier-breaking, she was 92, a woman, and not pretty enough to be on TV. And she doesn't have a not-ready-for-primetime son who's being promoted and protected by MSNBC.
2 comments:
I don't know about your news casters, ours out here were all emotionally aghast over a President "getting personal"....I know Helen Thomas would have laughed, cause I did.
So did our household cats; but I am pretty sure they are anarchists just like the woozles (ferrets).
The times they have a-changed. We cats know that Helen Thomas understood that when a President speaks, the world listens; otherwise, she wouldn't have asked so many probing questions. And we're also pretty sure that, had she been at the White House on Friday, like her colleagues she would have been so quiet you could hear a pin drop. Except for us cats, of course... We can hear a can of tuna opening a mile away.
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