WTF Was She Thinking?

I confess that I enjoyed the marvel of watching Helen Thomas unravel today with some of my colleagues @ work via her frank statements back in May about Palestine on RabbiLIVE.com. And here’s the rub.

She came across as some sweet little old Yenta fresh off the shtetl hoping to shock and charm the local Rabbi in one felled swoop. But she’s none of those things. She’s rather a seasoned reporter and columnist who was characterized by one of her colleagues in this way, “Cranky was her modus operandi. And it worked,” said Charles Bierbauer, who was CNN’s White House correspondent for nine years. By cranky he must have meant undaunted. And that’s the Helen Thomas that I most fondly recall.

Yet there comes a time, when undaunted moves past even brazen to achieve a new level of ignorance. And that’s Helen’s crime. The most experienced member of her elite circle said something that was utterly ignorant, and thus inexcusable: Toxic even.

Her retirement on one level is a shame, and on another more profound plane the only descent response to an unexcusible lapse in judgment from a well-decorated professional who ought to have known better than express such opinions while on line to participate in an event honoring Jewish contributions to the United States.

Dismissed from such obligations, it will be interesting to see what she comes up with now. I am waiting with bated breath.