St. Helen

I've been struggling, as perhaps many of us have, to process and deal with the ongoing stonewalling and obstruction of the law in connection with the obvious criminality that is increasingly becoming the trademark of the Bush "white " house. The dickhead has obviously spotted and exploited major weaknesses in the system, at least when there are enablers in the legislative branch (limp-wristed Dems and Joe Lieberman, we know where you live and will be not voted for!), not to mention the media, formerly counted on to ask tough questions and resist sycophantism. These days Helen Thomas is out there pretty much on her own from what I can tell.

Speaking of which, Mr. Greenwald found an opportunity to interview the very same Ms. Thomas, a truly admirable character in the Fourth Estate these days. One of the incredible percs of being an avid blogospheric is to have access to this sort of stuff. On the offchance you are not out there with quite the same zeal as I, let me share. And, yes, that is my dungbeetle stand-in for the dickubus, rolling his shit endlessly.

But try this for folks on a higher plane, interested in actually pursuing the proper aims of the USA, being true patriots, and not merely in it for personal gain like the present swine:

Last Thursday, I wrote about an acrimonious exchange at the White House press gaggle between Helen Thomas and Tony Snow regarding the number of Iraqis who have been killed during the war. Thomas relentlessly challenged the administration's tactic of labelling everyone killed in Iraq a "terrorist," and demanded to know how many Iraqi civilians had been killed during the four-year-and-counting war. Snow claimed he did not know the answer because the U.S does not "track" that information.

About that exchange, I wrote: "It is unnecessary to identify the reporter asking these questions because there is really only one White House correspondent who would." Several commenters suggested an interview with Thomas, and following up on those suggestions, I interviewed Thomas this morning regarding the state of modern journalism, the Bush administration and related issues.

Following is a verbatim transcript of that interview, edited solely for length:

GG: You have covered every President since John Kennedy. I wanted to ask if you could identify how the White House press corps has changed over time, if it has, and what differences are there in terms of how journalists cover presidents?

HT: Well, that's a big order. But I do think that in the good olden days, reporters were really straight reporters. I worked for a wire service, UPI, for 57 years, and I covered the White House for UPI from the 70s onto Bush, and then became a columnist. So I certainly know both sides.

As a wire service reporter, I played it straight, with the facts, which is absolutely required of a wire service reporter. But that doesn't mean I bowed out of the human race. I permitted myself to think, to care, to believe, but it didn't get in my copy.

I did think that tough questions were always very important. With Kennedy, we knew he enjoyed the banter with the press, and he had the first live televised news conferences. And it made a big difference in terms of really capturing the imagination of the public. It was the first time they really saw reporters in action, they saw a witty president that was able to dodge questions as deftly as anyone, and he had great eloquence. That was the first time the American people really became interested in presidential news conferences.

And then Johnson had a love-hate relationship with the press. He couldn't live without us, and yet at the same time, he thought we were hurting him every day. The words "credibility gap" were created in that era.

With Nixon, that is when news management and manipulation really began. Now, every president wants to put his best foot forward, and always be able to manage and manipulate news coverage.

All presidential candidates, especially, vow to run an open administration. But they step foot in the Oval Office and the Iron Curtain slams down. Suddenly, all information that I think belongs in the public domain becomes their private preserve.

The manipulation of the press has become greater and greater. This is the most secretive administration I have ever covered. And they're all secretive.

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