← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · Bardamu
Thread ID: 17213 | Posts: 3 | Started: 2005-03-10
2005-03-10 00:15 | User Profile
[url]http://www.freep.com/news/politics/thomas8e_20050308.htm[/url]
Insult of Thomas sparks protests
Congress, Arab group say comments racist
March 8, 2005
BY NIRAJ WARIKOO FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER
For most of Helen Thomas' 60-plus years in White House journalism, her Arab ethnicity never was an issue.
But according to political commentator Ann Coulter, the ancestry of the Detroit native makes her an "old Arab" and thus a security threat to President George W. Bush.
In a recent column, Coulter writes about the controversy over whether it's too easy to get media access to the White House.
"Press passes can't be that hard to come by if the White House allows that old Arab Helen Thomas to sit within yards of the president," wrote Coulter, who once argued the United States should invade Muslim countries and "convert them to Christianity."
Reached at her office in Washington on Monday, Thomas, 84, said she didn't want to comment specifically on Coulter's words.
Asked about her background, Thomas said: "I'm an American; I'm not hyphenated. But I was very lucky to grow up in two cultures."
Coulter's comments in her Feb. 23 column have sparked concern from metro Detroit's Arab-American communities and 26 U.S. members of Congress, led by U.S. Rep. John Dingell, a Dearborn Democrat. The representatives sent a letter of protest last week to Coulter's distributor, Universal Press Syndicate.
"Just as we would expect that similar slights against African Americans, Jews, or Hispanics would not be tolerated, equal disapproval should be shown toward these repeated slanders directed at Arab Americans," the letter said. It also said that despite facing increased discrimination since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, "loyal Arab Americans have made heroic contributions to our military, intelligence, and Homeland Security efforts."
Raised on Detroit's east side by Christian immigrants from Lebanon, Thomas graduated from Wayne State University and went on to become a pioneer for women in journalism.
As the White House correspondent for United Press International, she covered every U.S. president since John F. Kennedy and is considered the dean of the White House press corps. Thomas is now a columnist for Hearst Newspapers. She was in Detroit on Saturday for an event featuring student scholarships created in her name at Wayne State University.
After Coulter submitted her column to Universal Press Syndicate, an editor deleted the word "Arab" and rewrote it to read "dyspeptic, old Helen Thomas."
The syndicate distributes Coulter's column to about 100 newspapers, but the original version remains on Coulter's Web site, [url]www.anncoulter.com[/url]
A spokesman for Universal, Kathie Kerr, said Monday the editor removed the word Arab "because the column made its point without it." Coulter could not be reached for comment Monday.
In the past, Coulter has called for ethnic profiling and once said "My only regret with Timothy McVeigh is that he did not go to the New York Times building."
After her most recent comments, the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee said in a release last Tuesday that Coulter uses "outright racism in order to make otherwise unsubstantiated points."
Warren David, a Northville resident of Lebanese descent, said that Coulter's comments are part of a larger trend of increasing negative attitudes toward Arab Americans. David said of Thomas: "Even with her Anglicized name, she can't escape the racism."
2005-03-10 00:16 | User Profile
"Just as we would expect that similar slights against African Americans, Jews, or Hispanics would not be tolerated, ..."
Notice that Whites are not included in this. Typical.
2005-03-10 00:52 | User Profile
Bardamu.
So far no condemnation of Coulter from the ADL or the AJC. I'm not surprised. In the past they would have jumped on this because they regard Coulter as a Conservative and neither of these groups care for "racist" Conservatives.
However, now that the US is involve in a war primarily plotted by Jewish supremacists it is open season on Arabs quietly blessed by these groups. Anyone who understands anything about this knows well that if they really cared about "racism" they would be raising hell and the violaters would be punished by "respectable" people in some form or fashion.
So typical.