Helen Thomas, dead at 92.

"Thomas was the the first woman to join the White House Correspondents' Association, and the first woman to serve as its president. She was also the first female member of the Gridiron Club, Washington's historic press group."

ADDED: Clicking on my "Helen Thomas" tag, I can see things in a form not to be found in the obituaries:

1."'Everyone knows she is a nasty piece of work and has been a nasty piece of work for decades.'Jonah Goldberg tells us how he really feels about Helen Thomas..."

2. James Taranto calls "metaphor alert" on Helen Thomas, while using the "crazy old aunt in the attic" metaphor against her.

3. Helen, still on fire at 89: "Nixon didn’t try to do that. They couldn’t control [the media]. They didn’t try. What the hell do they think we are, puppets? They’re supposed to stay out of our business. They are our public servants. We pay them.... When you call the reporter the night before you know damn well what they are going to ask to control you. I’m not saying there has never been managed news before, but this is carried to fare-thee-well — for the town halls, for the press conferences. It’s blatant. They don’t give a damn if you know it or not. They ought to be hanging their heads in shame."

4. "Longtime White House scribe Helen Thomas caused more than a few eyebrows to perk up when video surfaced on Friday of her declaring that Jews should 'get the hell out of Palestine' and go back to Germany and Poland.'"

5. "At the Helengoyle Café" had this photoshop by Palladian (done after what you see at #4):

"White House on War Powers Deadline: 'Limited' US Role in Libya Means No Need to Get Congressional Authorization."

Jake Tapper reports:

“Since April 4,” the president wrote, “U.S. participation has consisted of: (1) non-kinetic support to the NATO-led operation, including intelligence, logistical support, and search and rescue assistance; (2) aircraft that have assisted in the suppression and destruction of air defenses in support of the no-fly zone; and (3) since April 23, precision strikes by unmanned aerial vehicles against a limited set of clearly defined targets in support of the NATO-led coalition's efforts.”

A senior administration official told ABC News that the letter is intended to describe “a narrow US effort that is intermittent and principally an effort to support to support the ongoing NATO-led and UN-authorized civilian support mission and no fly zone.”

“The US role is one of support,” the official said, “and the kinetic pieces of that are intermittent.”

Get it?

UPDATE: Jake Tapper emails:

i know you're not responsible for the folks who post to your site -- God knows i stopped reading my comments long ago -- but FYI, per your first commenter, I never defended Helen Thomas.

He's referring, apparently, to the second comment, from chickenlittle, who said: "Sorry but I lost a lot of respect for Jake Tapper when he defended that hag Helen Thomas."

At the Helengoyle Café...

... take a good look at what you've done.

(Thanks to Palladian for the image.)

"Everyone knows she is a nasty piece of work and has been a nasty piece of work for decades."

Jonah Goldberg tells us how he really feels about Helen Thomas:

And when I say a nasty piece of work, I don't simply mean her opinions on Israel. She's been full-spectrum awful. I've known a few people who knew her 40 years ago, and she was slimy then too...

Also, let's just get the liberal bias thing out of the way. If there was a right-winger who'd spouted so much bile, hate, and ideological agenda-driven nonsense in the White House briefing room for half a century it would be . . . oh wait, no such person would have ever been allowed to become a Washington "institution" in the first place. ..

Suddenly, all of these people and groups are stunned to discover that Helen Thomas is . . . Helen Thomas. Feh.

Helen Thomas...

... had enough of her yet?

Helen Thomas wants Robert Gibbs's conscience to bother him.

"Has the president given up on the public option?"



"Wow! Giggly giggle giggle," says Gibbs.

"Nixon didn’t try to do that. They couldn’t control [the media]. They didn’t try."

"What the hell do they think we are, puppets? They’re supposed to stay out of our business. They are our public servants. We pay them.... When you call the reporter the night before you know damn well what they are going to ask to control you. I’m not saying there has never been managed news before, but this is carried to fare-thee-well — for the town halls, for the press conferences. It’s blatant. They don’t give a damn if you know it or not. They ought to be hanging their heads in shame."

Said Helen Thomas. She's 89. And she's angry. Good!

Hot video (with Thomas butting in at 2:46):



Gibbs: "We've had this discussion ad nauseum." Thomas: "Of course you would, because you don't have any answers."

Wow, Gibbs's affability gets really annoying!

Live-blogging Obama's first press conference.

6:38: Starting soon. Think he'll get the hard questions? Think he'll use his boring professorial mode or his testy exasperated mode or might he attain true presidentiality?

7:02: He begins. If you don't believe we're in a crisis, you should talk to one person who's lost his job. Why would that be convincing? Only government can solve this problem. Money should go to the people most likely to spend it — not the wealthiest people, supposedly.

7:08: Failure to act "will only deepen" the crisis. That's less inflammatory that some of his recent statements.

7:10: Jennifer Loven asks him about his stronger earlier statement, that without action we may never recover. Do you think you risk losing credibility? No no no no no no. "You potentially create a negative spiral."

7:14: "That wasn't just some random number that I plucked out of.... uh" — he's thinking: can't say my ass — "out of a hat."

7:17: Iran. He's looking into it. "In the coming months, we will be looking for... openings...."

7:20: He's filibustering — using the boring professor mode.

7:23: "Everyone needs to be possessed with a sense of urgency." Let's be bipartisan: You must agree with me.

7:25: This isn't pork. There are no earmarks.

7:28: Is it so terrible to have a schoolhouse built in the 1850s? Let's see the school! You have to stop teaching when a train goes by. You get to hear a train go by. [ADDED: Don't liberals care about historical architecture?]

7:37: Jake Tapper asks how people are supposed to know if this economic plan is working — considering that earlier efforts haven't seemed to work. Obama talks about "creating or saving" 4 million jobs — huge difference between those 2 things! He talks a lot, but I don't feel that we got an answer (or that we could).

7:41: Will Obama let the press come photograph soldiers' coffins? He's looking into it. He'll get back to you later.

7:44: He's not going to let al Qaeda "act with impunity," but he has no details right now.

7:45: A reporter totally repeats Jake's question and Obama points it out. Embarrassing!

7:46: "I don't remember exactly what Joe was referring to." Laughter. "Not surprisingly."

7:47: "I have no idea" what Biden was talking about. "I really don't."

7:51: Helen Thomas gets her first shot at him. Does he know of anyone in the Middle East who's got nuclear weapons?

7:52: Huffington Post gets a question. What about Patrick Leahy's "truth and reconciliation commission" to investigate the "crimes" of the Bush administration? Will you rule out prosecutions? Come on, Barack. Just give us a nice upstanding "yes." [Sorry, I had "no" before, based on misreading the phrasing of the question.] Instead, we get the usual bullshit about how he hasn't "seen the proposals" and can't really "express an opinion" and he's got to look into it. Ugh! But his administration will do everything right. Fine. Good. Perfect. But the question is whether you will go in for this retribution against the prior administration? He does end with: "But my general orientation is let's get it right moving forward." Now, that is the right answer, and I think he knows it. It would have been presidential to take a stand against the Leahy effort. But that was not to be. A sadly missed opportunity.

7:58: "There's some ideological blockage there that needs to be cleared up." That's the characterization of the opposition to the stimulus. Makes those of us who are hesitant sound like some kind of disease. "But I am the eternal optimist... People respond to civility and rational argument... and that's the kind of leadership that I'm going to provide. Thank you guys!" Well, I respond to civility and rational argument, but I believe you just talked about me like I was some kind of disease!

8:00: He ends exactly on the button. We hear a stomp as he steps off the podium, and his walk back into the White House is noticeably different from Bush's. How can I describe the different feeling I get from that walk? You can object to this if you want. It's just my feeling. I think Bush would walk away in a ritual fashion that said: I am the President and I have accomplished what the President must do. Obama's walk said: I'm a man who has this job and now I've done it and I'm out of here.

Metaphor alert alert.

Best of the Web's James Taranto calls "metaphor alert" on Helen Thomas:

From a column by Helen Thomas, American journalism's crazy old aunt in the attic: "I have observed that whenever a major news outlet is stung with the label 'liberal' and feels the hot breath of ultra-right critics on its neck, it circles the wagons and hires yet another conservative commentator. Take PBS, for example. Running scared after giving [Bill] Moyers the spotlight over the years, PBS made amends by hiring two conservatives."

Stop smirking, James. Your expression "crazy old aunt in the attic" isn't very apt either. People may say "crazy old aunt," but the madwoman in the attic -- a character in "Jane Eyre" -- was most definitely not the aunt!

UPDATE: Since I've gotten a couple emails from people saying that "crazy old aunt in the attic" is an expression they've seen before, let me hazard to guess that if you've seen it before, it's because James Taranto has said it before -- about Helen Thomas. I'm standing by my position that it is a corruption. If you know the literary allusion that's being corrupted, it's quite annoying. You wouldn't accept the expression "the Mother Goose that laid the golden egg" or "he was buried in Harry Potter's field" or "I need to get my Donald Ducks in a row" or "you don't know Jack Sprat."

ANOTHER UPDATE: This post has spawned a lot of email! Okay. I did a NEXIS search of news sources, and came up with eleven uses of "crazy old aunt in the attic" older than two years ago. The oldest one was -- as several emailers suspected -- from Ross Perot. In 1992, he called the deficit "the crazy old aunt in the attic that no one wants to talk about." I still stand by my position that it is a corruption, adopted by those who aren't familiar with a literary character that they should be aware of. If James Taranto wants to appoint himself as a stickler for language usage, he ought to care. He shouldn't want to be the pot calling the kettle black. Or the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow calling the kettle black. Or the pot calling Ma and Pa Kettle ... oh, you get the idea.