There, there…
Reporter Helen Thomas takes on doe-eyed White House Press Secretary Dana Perino:
“Oh, Helen! *dabbing eyes with handkerchief* How could you say such awful things! The United States of America, k, killing Iraqis? What a horrible thing to say! I just don’t understand…do you want the terrorists to win? Don’t you care about liberty and freedom? This is all so upsetting, I think I need a lie down.”
Crooks and Liars have the transcript here. This bit was particularly interesting:
“Helen, I find it really unfortunate that you use your front row position bestowed upon you by your colleagues to make such statements. This is. It is an honor and a privilege to be in the briefing room, and to suggest that we, at the United States, are killing innocent people is just absurd and very offensive.” [my emph.]
That’s called “access”, and it explains, at least in part, why most of the other journalists in the room would never dream of confronting power so directly as did Helen Thomas above.
Filed under: Iraq, Media, News and politics, US | 4 Comments
Tags: big meany liars, Dana Perino, Helen Thomas
-
Subscribe to The Heathlander feed
-
Site Meter
bless
you’re right, it’s a great illustration of the access filter
Yeh, I think Helen herself is able to get away with it (for now, at least) because she’s become a sort of house figure – she’s patronised and fobbed off, but she’s too much of a celebrity in her own right to be booted out. But for the rest of the nameless hacks, I imagine the pressure to stick within certain boundaries for fear of losing access is quite considerable.
Well as everyone knows, in Iraq – a warzone in which we are ‘engaged’ in a ‘theatre’ of conflict – there are no victims. No, everyone who is against us is a terrorist, and everyone else is, well, mostly dead.
We’re going to release the innocent Iraqs from the bounds of extremism if we have to kill every last one of them in the process.
Spoken like a true patriot!