that’s enough out of you, helen
“And I don’t sit around just talking to experts because this is a college seminar, we talk to these folks because they potentially have the best answers, so I know whose ass to kick.”
- Barack Obama, 6/7/10
uh huh. i’m sure the boys in the BP boardroom are shitting their pants in terror even as we speak.
seriously, i like barack and all, but when has he ever kicked anyone’s ass? not counting little old ladies, that is.
speaking of which, how sick is it that this is apparently the only event of obama’s presidency about which the white house has been moved to muster any kind of real official outrage from the press secretary’s podium?
overstatement? let’s do a little exercise. here’s the official white house statement on the freedom flotilla raid last week:
“The president affirmed the importance of finding better ways to provide humanitarian assistance to the people of Gaza without undermining Israel’s security,” the statement said. “He underscored the importance of a comprehensive peace agreement which establishes an independent, contiguous and viable Palestinian state as the way to resolve the overall situation and the United States’ continuing commitment to achieving that goal by working closely with Turkey, Israel and others with a stake in a more stable and secure Middle East.”
ouch! remember, that torrent of blistering rhetoric came in response to the murder of 11 peace activists by israeli commandos aboard a humanitarian aid convoy in international waters. when pressed for a statement on the actual killings and how they were actually, kind of, maybe a little bit, wrong, the best robert gibbs could do was to quote a UN security council statement that “deeply regrets the loss of life and injuries resulting from the use of force”, and then point out that the united states is technically a security council member. so, y’know. next question?
now, let’s hear gibbs’s take on the ouster of the most senior member of the WH press corps, maybe the last and most respected practitioner of what was once called journalism, who in an unguarded moment as a private citizen last week said some shit that was admittedly over the top, regarding a situation in the middle east that is clearly way, way over the top:
“Those remarks were offensive and reprehensible,” Gibbs said today during a press briefing. Thomas was absent from the front row seat reserved for her in the White House press room.
“She should and has apologized,” Gibbs continued. “Obviously, those remarks do not reflect the opinion, I assume, of most of the people in here and certainly not of the administration.”
if you didn’t already know, thomas apparently lost her shit during an argument she didn’t intend to be public and said something to the effect that the israelis should just get the hell out of palestine. not a very nice, or a very thoughtful, thing to say. certainly a goof worthy of a public apology. maybe even bad enough to justify hounding her out of the profession dan rather style, ending a trailblazing career of half a century — obama himself thinks so, calling thomas’s forced retirement “the right decision.” but on the “offensive and reprehensible” scale, can we agree that it’s hardly on par with state terrorism? can we get a little motherfucking perspective up in here?
for the cherry on top of this sundae of shame, we go back to that same white house press briefing from last week on the flotilla massacre, in which the administration was taken to task by one ornery correspondent for its appalling nonchalance about the killings:
Q The — our initial reaction to this flotilla massacre, deliberate massacre, an international crime, was pitiful. What do you mean you regret when something should be so strongly condemned? And if any other nation in the world had done it, we would have been up in arms. What is the sacrosanct, iron-clad relationship where a country that deliberately kills people and boycotts — and we aid and abet the boycott?
MR. GIBBS: Look, I think the initial reaction regretted the loss of life as we tried and still continue to try to gather the relevant –
Q Regret won’t bring them back.
MR. GIBBS: Nothing can bring them back, Helen. We know that for sure because I think if you could, that wouldn’t be up for debate. We are — we believe that a credible and transparent investigation has to look into the facts. And as I said earlier, we’re open to international participation in that investigation.
Q Why did you think of it so late?
MR. GIBBS: Why did we think of –
Q Why didn’t you initially condemn it?
MR. GIBBS: Again, I think the statements that were released speak directly to that.
who was that uppity reporter, you ask? the only muckraking bastard in the room asking the relevant question? well, let’s just say it was one 89-year-old whose crap robert gibbs doesn’t have to put up with any more.
and if you’ve managed to keep your lunch down through this entire post, congratulations — there may be a job open for you in the white house press corps.
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Yeah… good point. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised to find said point pretty much completely overlooked everywhere else; the same chattering classes that made Obama’s alleged need to emote more into an “issue” obviously are hardly likely to develop a sense of perspective now, all of a sudden.
Good night, Helen Thomas, wherever you are.
I’m still processing why it is that this story pisses me off so much. The bassackwards priorities are obviously part of it. Also the fact that I think anybody who has lived to be nearly 90, especially one who has distinguished herself to the degree that Helen Thomas has, has earned the right to damn well say what’s on her mind without being upbraided by the commissars of politeness, those tiny little Washington people whose capacity for legitimate moral outrage has atrophied into this totally alienated and priggish preoccupation with beltway manners and the nurturing of ancient grudges… gah. I need my blood pressure medicine.
Really, though, it’s the display of cowardice from the administration that makes me want to put my fist through something. They want you to think they’re post partisan and above it all, just trying to keep the peace and elevate the discourse and all that, which somebody has obviously persuaded the President categorically precludes taking any kind of principled stand on anything that matters… unless there’s an easy target handy, in which case they’re more than happy to pile on, because they think it costs them nothing.
It’s so infuriating because this is exactly the opposite of why I was moved to volunteer and proselytize and vote for the guy in the first place. Remember the Rev. Wright speech? That was the moment that made a believer out of me. Instead of doing the easy thing, which would’ve been to run like hell from Wright and the whole, long overdue dialogue on race and class he inadvertently catalyzed, Obama did the courageous thing, the smart thing, the difficult thing. And he reaped a huge political dividend as a result. That was almost exactly two years ago, but it might as well have been a lifetime. Why couldn’t the Thomas thing have been a similarly teachable moment, an occasion for the President to talk intelligently and act like a leader and initiate a discussion we desperately need to have?
From an excellent article by Peter Beinart in the NY Review of Books:
“But in Israel today, this humane, universalistic Zionism does not wield power. To the contrary, it is gasping for air. To understand how deeply antithetical its values are to those of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, it’s worth considering the case of Effi Eitam. Eitam, a charismatic ex–cabinet minister and war hero, has proposed ethnically cleansing Palestinians from the West Bank. “We’ll have to expel the overwhelming majority of West Bank Arabs from here and remove Israeli Arabs from [the] political system,” he declared in 2006. In 2008, Eitam merged his small Ahi Party into Netanyahu’s Likud. And for the 2009–2010 academic year, he is Netanyahu’s special emissary for overseas “campus engagement.” In that capacity, he visited a dozen American high schools and colleges last fall on the Israeli government’s behalf. The group that organized his tour was called “Caravan for Democracy.”
Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman once shared Eitam’s views. In his youth, he briefly joined Meir Kahane’s now banned Kach Party, which also advocated the expulsion of Arabs from Israeli soil. Now Lieberman’s position might be called “pre-expulsion.” He wants to revoke the citizenship of Israeli Arabs who won’t swear a loyalty oath to the Jewish state. He tried to prevent two Arab parties that opposed Israel’s 2008–2009 Gaza war from running candidates for the Knesset. He said Arab Knesset members who met with representatives of Hamas should be executed. He wants to jail Arabs who publicly mourn on Israeli Independence Day, and he hopes to permanently deny citizenship to Arabs from other countries who marry Arab citizens of Israel.”
You see, it’s okay to displace a group of people provided they are not rabid Zionists. Hell, it’s okay to commit genocide too.
Too bad for Israel the U.S. is a declining superpower. They can’t continue their asshole shenanigans forever.
Helen got a raw deal. The death of journalism continues unabated.
Today I did something I swore I’d never do — post the above as a diary on Kos. It was kind of an experiment to see which of two predictable responses would prevail: kneejerk Obamaphilia, or kneejerk don’t-you-dare-say-anything-bad-about-Israel-ism.
So far the Obamaphile camp has the edge, but there’s been a strong showing from the only-hardcore-Zionists-count-as-good-liberals crowd. Surprisingly strong, considering I wasn’t even really talking about Israel. Anyway, you’ll be glad to know the greater lefty blogosphere is as schizophrenic and bilious as ever.
Post-Obama, Dailykos has really gone down the drain. It’s filled with Obama fanboys and fangirls who, sadly, cannot write or think very clearly. I once thought mindless adulation of political leaders was a conservative trait. Present-day DK has disabused me of that notion.
You’re a brave man, Josh. I have to admit that something about the fever swamp dwellers on “our side” really disturbs me even more than the reactionary fruit bats. I’m not certain why. Maybe it’s that I sort of feel like “we” need to actually make more sense if there’s to be any hope, and when I hear self-destructive lunacy coming from both sides, it seems like I might as well not even bother.
[Note: My comment has nothing to do with Helen Thomas (who is clearly being unjustly shat upon by pretty much everybody), but it's not entirely off-topic.]
On Dailykos and the current lefty blogosphere rift:
My view is that the problem isn’t merely the proliferation of knee-jerk Obamaphiles (though they certainly are a problem), it’s the all-or-nothing polarization that dominates. There’s little room for nuance: you’re either a koolade-guzzling Obamabot or an Obama-hating firebagger. Only a very small number of users in the blogosphere actually belong in either of those categories, but the very second anybody says anything about Obama or the administration, good or bad, they’re immediately labelled as one or another.
I think that the vast majority of netroots denizens are appreciative of (and sometimes blindingly ecstatic about) the good things Obama has done, and disappointed (and sometimes blindingly enraged) about the bad things he’s done or the good things he hasn’t done. But thanks largely to the black/white nature of online discourse, and thanks also to our tendency toward tribalism (both the result of the online left’s development in the Bush-era crucible), we have the tendency to ratchet up our rhetoric to ludicrous levels, even when we don’t really disagree. Maybe we’re bored.
Have something nice to say about the President? Well, you’re gonna say it in such glowing terms that you’ll piss somebody off. Have something critical to say about him? You’re almost guaranteed to let that familiar Bush-era vitriol creep in. In both cases, somebody will feel you’ve crossed a line, and the next thing you know, you’re being called a fanboy/fangirl or being mocked for wanting a pony. Never mind what you really think; you’ve inadvertently dug yourself a hole, and there’s any number of people eager to push you into it and shovel in the dirt.
A related observation: both sides seem convinced that the other side is dominating the leftish blogs. It seems to me that the factions are actually pretty small (but very loud, much like our teabagging friends on the right), and the rest of us have more complicated views, but find ourselves sympathizing more with one side. And the next thing we know, we’re sucked into it as well.
I’d be tarred as an Obamabot on Firedoglake or OpenLeft or any number of places, and Mark and Josh (and maybe Matt) would be dismissed as firebaggers at Balloon Juice, Motley Moose, etc., but I’d wager that if we were to discuss our opinions while making an effort not to be hyperbolic, there’s very little we’d actually disagree on.
But that’s not gonna happen, because that’s not how the blogosphere works (which is why I can’t and won’t criticize Josh for going to DailyKos intending to stir up shit: y’know, trolling). And unlike the stickybuffalo cohort, nobody on the blogs knows the first thing about anybody else, so assuming the worst about somebody is par for the course. And that’s precisely why online activism is a fairy tale, and why we’ll continue to be the yipping terriers of the left-of-center for the foreseeable future. Why the hell should anybody pay attention to what we say when we’re all just in it for the satisfaction of being right, and venting our spleens while we’re at it?
Increasingly, I’m all about the lulz. Good on ya, Josh, for taking a pea shooter to that hornet’s nest over there.
This is the first I’ve even heard of the term “firebagger.” I lead such a sheltered life.
I would almost worry about losing my edge, except for 1) doubts about the value of what I’m missing and 2) doubts about ever having an edge in the first place. =)
I’ve only ever heard it at Balloon Juice, in reference to the FDL people and their compatriots. I think it came about as a result of Jane Hamsher’s ill-conceived alliance with Grover Fucking Norquist.
No edge is to be had on the blogosphere, I think!