Saturday, January 07, 2006

Helen Thomas, Again

All those Bush Derangement Syndrome therapy sessions must be paying off for Helen Thomas. She manages to keep her snark and rage under control for the roughly 15 minutes it must have taken her to write this throw-away book review. The price of accomplishing that was to simply describe the book, not comment on it. Even so, I bet she had to have a drink and lie-down afterward.

It helps, of course, that the book is by a black American. Ron Christie served as special assistant to Bush before he left the White House in 2004. His new book is titled "Black in the White House," which, though not very original, is more clever than anything Helen has written for a long time.

So she's rolling along nicely simply repeating what Christie wrote, then she finally can't keep the bile in any longer:

Christie also said Bush was not fond of staffers who liked to "hang around in his presence." You had to have a reason to be there.

It appeared Christie stayed in good graces by speaking only when spoken to. He said that while the president "can be extremely hard on his staff if they are unprepared, Mr. Bush possesses a warmth and true love of people that the press has elected to largely ignore."


Where on earth did that highlighted (by me) sentence come from? It bears no connection to anything before or after. It has no connection to anything anywhere in the article, or anything except the need of people like Helen Thomas to paint any black Republican as some sort of crude racist caricature.

Something the rest of you can't see about this column is the title her column bears as it moved on the New York Times wire. I can see it, though:

FORMER BLACK AIDE PRAISES BUSH

"Former black aide" ... not "Black former aide" ... nice zinger, Helen. Hope you're proud.

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