Go On With Your Bad-Self-Helen Thomas!!!

[Jennifer]

C.J., Star Tribune
November 7, 2004

Now that President Bush has won reelection, maybe he'll feel secure enough to restore the First Lady of the Press to her front-row seat.

"No," predicted Helen Thomas on Friday when she keynoted the 9th Annual Women Venture Conference at the Minneapolis Convention Center. "He's still afraid of me. He can't take my questions. Mine are very simple."

One she'd love to ask: "Are you sorry you didn't go to war when you've sent [others] to die in Iraq?" Thomas said she asked former President Bill Clinton a similar question.

She gave the sold-out fundraiser for the organization -- which gives women and some men technical and emotional help in finding careers and starting businesses -- a rousing examination of our times and the presidents she has covered.

It was a poignant and sometimes humorous tongue-lashing as she connected Tuesday's election results and the direction of our, ah, morally preoccupied country.

Bush believes he knows the moral high ground on many subjects. "Apparently it is more moral to start an illegal war, invade a country, occupy a country that did nothing to us; kill thousands of people ... all based on falsehoods trumped up by President Bush and his hawk advisers," she said. "He told one falsehood after another to get us in a Vietnam-style quagmire. We have lost our moral compass. We used to be mankind's greatest hope; now we are despised around the world. ...

"Don't get me started," said Thomas, who lightened up after she had her say about what the Supreme Court will look like if Bush gets to make three appointments, and about the press, which she said is doing a "less than credible job; not that it's easy to get information from this most secretive of administrations." On a hopeful note, she said, the White House press corps seems to be "coming out of its coma."

When I asked her how it feels to be the scariest little old lady in America, as far as W. is concerned, she said, "I don't feel anything but sorry for him, if he can't take a tough question. He's the president of the United States."