Happy Birthday, Helen

Today in Winchester, Kentucky, in 1920 Helen Thomas was born. An Arab-American and a woman, she's forged a path few of any ethnicity or gender have followed. The longest-serving White House reporter, she has covered every president since Kennedy, first for UP and then UPI (until 2000), and then as a columnist. For 45 years she has covered them with "respect for the office but no awe for the man" - which, as you can imagine, has earned her the dislike of more than one of them. The current president felt "blindsided" by her first question ("Why don't you respect the wall of separation between church and state?") and their relationship didn't improve; he simply didn't call on her for a question for more than three years. When he finally did (in 2006), this is what she asked him: "Your decision to invade Iraq has caused the deaths of thousands of Americans and Iraqis, wounds of Americans and Iraqis for a lifetime. Every reason given, publicly at least, has turned out not to be true. My question is, why did you really want to go to war?" He didn't answer, saying only that he didn't accept the "premise" of the question. Since then, she's been asking questions again, but getting no real answers. (Which is what happens with this administration, of course).

I've read her most recent book, Watchdogs of Democracy?: The Waning Washington Press Corps and How It Has Failed the Public. It's pretty good - breezily written yet pulling no punches.

"I ask myself every day why the media have become so complacent, complicit and gullible. It all comes down to the 9/11 terrorist attacks that led to fear among reporters of being considered 'unpatriotic' or 'unAmerican'."

"When this war was obviously coming on, for two years we heard 'Saddam Hussein and 9/11'. Every reporter, rather than challenging it and saying [the 9/11 hijackers] were not Iraqis they were Saudis ... The press rolled over and printed it when they knew we were going to war and it could have been challenged."