Alas, Poor Helen...

Woman charged with lewd act
and adultery when found
having sex on park picnic table.

Helen Thomas, just before her 90th birthday, said something she should not have said: “Israel should get out of Palestine,” and they should go back to Germany and Poland.” It is impossible to justify these remarks, and Helen, after almost 60 years of reporting, is now feeling the ire of most everyone. Forgotten are all of the marvelous moments of her work when she repeatedly (and mostly solely) challenged President after President on their behavior, mostly Foreign Policy. In the more recent years she alone has had the courage to ask the difficult questions, questions she must have known would not receive straighforward answers, but would at least bring issues out of the darkness and into the light. She has apologized for this recent unprecedented outburst and I am sure sincerely regrets it. I am not interested in defending her outburst, but merely in why it might have happened.

First of all, remember that Helen Thomas is of Lebanese descent, and as such has never been sympathetic toward Israel. Second, at almost 90 years of age, she has been alive since the very beginning of Israel as a nation. Third, this means she has personally witnessed what the Israelis have done to the Palestinians (and the Lebanese) over the years, a record of virtually unabashed racism, violence, and theft of land and water. Fourth, this has had to have left her with very little, if any, patience with Israeli colonialism and their repeated refusals to establish truly meaningful discourse with the Palestinians over their just claims to their own land and nation. Fifth, the result of this has to have been a high level of frustration over this seemingly never-ending problem. Sixth, frustration, as we know, leads to anger. I believe her angry outburst, although it used inappropriate language, actually said, “I’m mad as hell (at Israeli intransigence and racism), and I’m not going to take it anymore.” I believe she was entirely sincere and perfectly correct when she said there can never be peace until all parties are treated as equals. The most basic question is if Israel can bring itself to accept the Palestinians as equals, because up until now, in order to justify their treatment of the Palestinians, they have had to dehumanize them, consider them less than human, less than deserving, less than responsible or competent enough to negotiating a just peace. I cannot see how any thoughtful person would not believe the Israeli/U.S. treatment of the Palestinians has not been shameful in the extreme. Obama has just committed 400 million dollars for aid to these unfortunate and mistreated people, several more aid flotillas are in the works as I write this, perhaps this is a beginning, however small, of justice at last.

Well, so much, once again, for the conventional wisdom business. We have been hearing for months about the powerful anti-incumbent sentiment sweeping the country that would sweep out incumbents and replace them with new incumbents. However, as Rachel Maddow and Jon Stewart both pointed out this evening, out of 84 incumbents who were involved in political races yesterday, 82 won, one (1) was put into a runoff, and one lost, but not because he was an incumbent. How’s that for political prognostication? What does this really mean? I have no idea. Maybe it means voters are happy with the status quo, but somehow that seems unlikely. Maybe voters are afraid to change horses in the middle of a stream, even more unlikely. Personally, I think it means voters are too ignorant to know the difference and too lazy to want to find out so just took the easiest path and voted for the name they recognized.

You know how traumatic it is when you first learn that your idols have feet of clay, at least I assume you do because it has often happened to me. So it seems to be now with President Obama. Much to the dismay of many, they have learned that Obama does not leap tall buildings at a single bound, stops runaway locomotives, or catches bullets with his hands, nor does he change clothes in a phone booth or swim to the bottom of the ocean and plug oil leaks by using his laser-like vision. Even so, for many, this disaster is all Obama’s fault. I wish he’d get blamed for things that probably are his fault, like the absence of a public option or equivalent, or the escalation of the “war” in Afghanistan, and the failure to hold Bush/Cheney et al, accountable for their myriad war crimes. Some seem to think that if he fell to the ground, held his breath until he turned blue, and kicked and screamed, everything would be okay, seems a strange thing to want from your President.

LKBIQ:
The sign of an intelligent people is their ability to control emotions by the application of reason.
Marya Mannes

TILT:
Apparently all kittens are born blue-eyed with their ears folded down.