{"id":3772,"date":"2008-08-18T05:19:53","date_gmt":"2008-08-18T13:19:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=3772"},"modified":"2008-08-18T05:19:53","modified_gmt":"2008-08-18T13:19:53","slug":"one-sided-portrait-of-helen-thomas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=3772","title":{"rendered":"One Sided Portrait Of Helen Thomas"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tom Shales writes<\/a>:<\/p>\n

"Thank You, Mr. President," an engaging HBO documentary about the career of journalist Helen Thomas, is a fine little film as far as it goes. It goes only as far as 38 minutes, actually — quite short for a biographical project. HBO<\/a> calls it a "documentary short," but did it start out that way? One can’t help wondering if the film was shortened in the final edit to obscure a blemish or two on Thomas’s celebrated career — the documentary equivalent of cosmetic surgery.<\/p>\n

…What’s disappointing about Thomas, and troubling about the film, is her stridency in criticizing Israel and defending its enemies. Other than a passing reference to Thomas’s parents as having been Syrian immigrants, the film never hints at Thomas’s anti-Israeli rhetoric. In her writings, she’s already dismissed both John McCain<\/a> and Barack Obama<\/a> as being friendly to Israel and hostile to the Palestinians, "so the Israelis have no worries about the November election."<\/p>\n

Especially during the current administration, her "questions" at press briefings have been more like tirades, on one occasion prompting Tony Snow<\/a>, the late journalist who was then press secretary, to respond, "Well, thank you for the Hezbollah<\/a> view." This would have been a pertinent and amusing clip to include in the film. Not for nothing was Thomas recently hailed as "the epitome of journalistic integrity for over 57 years" — by the Arab American News.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tom Shales writes: "Thank You, Mr. President," an engaging HBO documentary about the career of journalist Helen Thomas, is a fine little film as far as it goes. It goes only as far as 38 minutes, actually — quite short … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[37,20,117],"tags":[30239,11381,11378,10069,11379,11380],"class_list":["post-3772","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-israel","category-journalism","category-tv","tag-barack-obama","tag-biographical-project","tag-hbo-documentary","tag-john-mccain-and-barack-obama","tag-syrian-immigrants","tag-tom-shales"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3772","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3772"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3772\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3772"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3772"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3772"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}