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| Helen Thomas, pioneering journalist, dies at 92 - Los Angeles Times Posted: 20 Jul 2013 08:46 AM PDT Helen Thomas, the tenacious and feisty dean of the White House press corps who covered 10 presidents and was a trailblazer for female journalists, has died. She was 92. Thomas, who was a syndicated columnist for Hearst News Service after spending most of her career as a reporter for United Press International, died early Saturday at her apartment in Washington. Her friend Muriel Dobbin, a longtime Baltimore Sun reporter, said Thomas had been in declining health for some time and had recently been hospitalized. In May 2010, Thomas was forced to give up her column after making anti-Israel remarks in a short videotaped interview. Days later she apologized for saying that Jews should "get the hell out of Palestine" and "go home," but she couldn't escape the controversy and resigned from Hearst. In 2011 Thomas began writing a column for the weekly Falls Church (Va.) News-Press. "She's not bigoted or racist or anti-Semitic," owner-editor Nicholas Benton told the Norfolk Virginian-Pilot when Thomas was hired. "She has her differences about foreign policy, but you're allowed that." She covered every administration from John F. Kennedy to Barack Obama, and, as Gerald R. Ford put it, practiced "a fine blend of journalism and acupuncture." As the senior correspondent at the White House, it fell to Thomas to end presidential press conferences with the declaration, "Thank you, Mr. President." Perhaps her most lasting achievement as a journalist was to shatter the glass ceiling in the press room. She was the first woman to serve as White House bureau chief for a wire service — UPI — and the first female officer of three Washington institutions that defined press power: the National Press Club, the White House Correspondents' Assn. and the Gridiron. Thomas had a reputation for asking questions with an edge and was so vociferous in her criticism of the war in Iraq that for three years President George W. Bush never called on her. When he finally did, she rose and said, "You're going to be sorry," before launching into a tirade-turned-question about the war. She broke news — Lyndon Johnson was enraged when Thomas reported his daughter Luci's engagement before Patrick Nugent had asked LBJ's permission. She made history as the only female journalist to accompany President Nixon on his historic trip to China. She made foes — "I'm persona non grata," she said of her relationship with George W. Bush. But when she left the UPI news service to become a columnist, the White House Correspondents Assn. decreed that she should still sit in the front row during press briefings, explaining that she was "the dean of the White House press corps." Born Aug. 4, 1920, in Winchester, Ky., where her parents had moved after arriving at Ellis Island from Lebanon in 1903, Thomas was the seventh of nine children, all encouraged to express opinions — and to go to college. Growing up in Detroit, she discovered journalism on the Eastern High School newspaper, and enrolled in Wayne University (now Wayne State University), where she earned money working in the college library and at her brother's gas station. She devoted the rest of her spare time to the student newspaper. Earning a bachelor's degree in English in 1942, she headed to Washington. It was wartime, and with men in the service women were getting career chances once unheard of in the workplace. She worked briefly as a copy girl at the gritty Washington Daily News. When she was laid off, she headed to the National Press Building, where she knocked on doors until United Press, later UPI, hired her for $24 a week to write copy for radio broadcasters. She held the job for 12 years. She got her break in 1956, when UPI gave her a beat covering the Justice Department. Finally, when she was 40, UPI sent Helen Thomas to the White House to cover the stylish first lady, Jackie Kennedy. It was a mismatch from the start. Joining forces with the Associated Press' Fran Lewine, the two staked out the Georgetown house where the Kennedys lived before the inauguration, ditto at Georgetown University hospital when John Kennedy Jr. was born and shadowed Jackie on her shopping trips. The first lady called them her "harpies" and once tried to lose them by complaining to the Secret Service that "two strange-looking Spanish women" were trailing her. In her 1975 book "Dateline: White House," Thomas wrote that Jackie Kennedy even asked the president to get her news organization to transfer Thomas overseas. By then, Thomas had worked her way onto the men's side of White House coverage, clamoring to end gender discrimination at the National Press Club where foreign dignitaries and other visiting notables spoke to reporters and often made news. She, Lewine, Elsie Carper of the Washington Post and others lobbied the State Department — which was complicit in booking foreign leaders at the club — and embassies. Change came to the tradition-bound club reluctantly. In 1956, the club deigned to allow women to sit in the balcony without asking questions or eating lunch. Thomas called the balcony "purdah," referring to the Hindi and Muslim practice of shielding women from strangers. In 1959, visiting Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev refused to speak at the Press Club unless women were allowed to cover his speech. The club allowed a one-time only exception: 30 female reporters could sit on the main floor, eat lunch and cover the address, during which Khrushchev told the West, "We will bury you." Finally, in 1971, the club opened its doors to women. Thomas was its first female member. Similar stories applied to the other two organizations. The White House Correspondents Assn. black-tie dinner was not open to women until 1962, when Kennedy, at Thomas' prodding, threatened not to attend unless women were allowed in. Thomas and Lewine broke through the Gridiron's male-only policy in 1974, when they attracted big-name guests to a counter-gridiron party that stole the original's thunder. The next year, they were in. By then Thomas was a fixture in Washington, and at the White House. She was named UPI's Washington Bureau Chief in 1974. She liked to get to work early, starting the day at 5:30 a.m. with the newspapers and some coffee, parking herself outside the press secretary's office by 8 a.m. "to see if I could buttonhole them early." She liked routine, often dining at Lebanese restaurant Mama Ayesha's in Washington's Adams-Morgan neighborhood. She worked for UPI from more than half a century, until 2000, when the news service was sold to Rev. Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church. She quit, and went to work as a columnist for Hearst, trading in her reporter's dictated facts for the opinions that had long dominated her thinking — and her family tradition. ""I wrote dull copy because I was afraid even a verb would sound pejorative or judgmental," she said in a 2004 interview with Progressive magazine. "But now I go for broke." After 57 years of playing it straight, she could say it out loud. "I was a liberal the day I was born, and I will be until the day I die." At 51, Thomas married a colleague, Douglas Cornell. Four years later he was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease, and she cared for him until his death in 1982 with help from a sister who was a nurse. Choosing a career over family in an era when most women left the workplace to raise children, Thomas called her romance and marriage "the most unexpected and wonderful thing that ever happened to me." She was the author of several memoirs, including "Dateline: White House" and "Thanks for the Memories, Mr. President." Neuman is a former Times staff writer. |
| Obama: Trayvon Martin 'Could Have Been Me' - Wall Street Journal Posted: 20 Jul 2013 09:01 AM PDT Six days after a Florida jury acquitted a Hispanic man in the shooting death of an African-American teen, President Barack Obama made his first extensive comments on the case, speaking in personal terms about his own experience of being black in America. " Trayvon Martin could have been me 35 years ago," the president said in the remarks, made Friday during a surprise appearance in the White House press room. Mr. Martin, a 17-year-old African-American, was shot and killed in Florida last year in a case that riveted millions of Americans and sparked debate over the state of race relations in the country. Saying he would leave arguments about the verdict to legal analysts, Mr. Obama didn't critique last Saturday's acquittal of George Zimmerman, the neighborhood watchman who faced various charges related to the killing. But he tried to explain the lens through which black Americans may see the case, saying that their own experiences and the country's history with race inform how many view what happened to Mr. Martin. "There are very few African-American men who haven't had the experience of walking across the street and hearing the locks click on the doors of cars," Mr. Obama said. "That happens to me—at least before I was a senator." The remarks, delivered without a teleprompter, were a striking example of America's first black president seeking to guide the country's thinking on race without inflaming racial tensions or undermining the judicial system. They also amounted to Mr. Obama's most pointed comments about race since his 2008 presidential campaign. Mr. Obama issued a brief statement the day after the Martin verdict was handed down. He urged calm and compassion, noting that "a jury has spoken." Missing, though, was any personal reflection from a president with a unique perspective on the matter. As the week wore on, the drumbeat from civil-rights groups asking Mr. Obama to speak out and take action continued. In recent days, the president had conversations with a number of people about this issue before offering a detailed reaction, White House spokesman Jay Carney said. Privately, the president had outlined ahead of time the gist of his remarks. "He knows what he thinks, and he knows what he feels, and he has not just in the past week, but for a good portion of his life, given a lot of thought to these issues," Mr. Carney said. The president spoke just before a series of planned weekend protests over the verdict. The president's comments won praise from Benjamin Todd Jealous, the president and chief executive of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, who called it a powerful moment. "That our president has been profiled should encourage all Americans to think deeply about both the depth of this problem and how our country moves beyond it," he said in a statement. Still, underscoring the tensions that continue to fester, Abigail Thernstrom, vice chairwoman of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights and an adjunct scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, said Mr. Obama's original statement on the case struck the right tone and that Friday's follow-up could have the unintended consequence of ratcheting up racial tension. "Mr. President, you said what should have been said: A verdict has been rendered," she said. "Leave it at that." In Friday's remarks, Mr. Obama appeared to be trying to use the megaphone of the White House to affect the national discussion, and particularly to infuse it with a greater appreciation of African-American viewpoints. He didn't propose any formal government reaction, and didn't weigh in on the decision his administration still has to make, which is whether to pursue a case against Mr. Zimmerman using federal civil rights laws. Mr. Obama did, however, propose an examination of state and local laws to consider whether some encourage altercations such as the one that took Mr. Martin's life. He said the Justice Department should work with local law enforcement to reduce mistrust in the system, and said that, in the long term, more needs to be done to support African-American boys. Mr. Obama questioned whether "stand your ground" laws in Florida and other states, which allow individuals to use reasonable force to defend themselves, are contributing to the peace and security communities want. Responding to calls to launch a national dialogue on race, Mr. Obama said such discussions often are more productive in churches and workplaces and within families. "I haven't seen that be particularly productive when politicians try to organize conversations," he said. "They end up being stilted and politicized, and folks are locked into the positions they already have." As president, Mr. Obama has taken a careful tack on racial issues, picking his spots carefully after delivering a detailed exploration of race in Philadelphia at a pivotal moment in his 2008 campaign. Then, he said that race is an issue the nation can't afford to ignore, noting that the country had yet to work through the complexities of the subject. "If we walk away now, if we simply retreat into our respective corners, we will never be able to come together and solve challenges like health care, or education, or the need to find good jobs for every American," he said. Since then, Mr. Obama has shied from sweeping speeches focused on race, saying in 2009, "I'm not somebody who believes that constantly talking about race somehow solves racial tensions." On Friday, Mr. Obama noted that African-Americans are disproportionately victims as well as perpetrators of violence. And while he called for soul-searching on matters of race, he said he sees signs of improvement. "Each successive generation seems to be making progress in changing attitudes when it comes to race," he said. "It doesn't mean that we're in a postracial society. It doesn't mean that racism is eliminated. But you know, when I talk to [daughters] Malia and Sasha and I listen to their friends and I see them interact, they're better than we are." Write to Colleen McCain Nelson at colleen.nelson@wsj.com A version of this article appeared July 19, 2013, on page A1 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Obama Speaks Frankly On Race. |
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