The Reluctant Whore

The Huffington Post has an item about how White House Press Corp veteran Helen Thomas is back and while she’s looking frailer than ever, she’s still ready and raring to go which I find genuinely reassuring. Watching Helen Thomas lay into a press secretary or the president is just so relaxing. She does it with no fear whatsoever and words her questions with such clarity that there’s really no escape for the person being asked.

I read her book “Front Row at the White House” and her writing style is totally unevocative and comes across as stunted. I think that’s because she’s the quintessential journalist and has had every natural inclination to express herself emotionally through her writing squeezed out of her through her job. Having said that I think she was always meant to be a journalist though so it’s not like she would have been a fictional prose writer had she not fallen into journalism.

Even though she’d covered the last 7 presidents she was moved to the back of the room during the Bush presidency, probably in part because of how relentless she is with hard hitting questions that demand accountability and Bush didn’t like that. So now she’s back. Here she is talking with Tim Russert in 2007 about questioning the president:

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