And
when I came to the room with shoes, nothing but empty shoes, I broke
down," wrote Jeff Jarvis of his epipany at the Holocaust Museum in
DC a few years back. We blogged about it in "The
city upon a hill shines through" and "The timeless hysteria of the history-challenged
multitudes."
"Good job! Being deleted is a sure sign that you've hit someone in
the twelve ring," Michael Hasenstab twittered Ruth Anne Adams this
morning in response to Ruth Anne's shocking tweet about ABC Senior White
House Correspondent Jake Tapper. Michael and Ruth Anne, regular purveyors
of wise and witty twitter banter, had stopped laughing. The
precipitating event was Helen Thomas's "coming out party." Here's Ruth Anne re
"Tappy":
He's another hack. Not worth my time. His true
colors came out with that exchange and his deletion of his @ reply to my
Q.
We were shocked because Tapper has seemed that rare thing, a member
of the "legacy media" whose work is "fair, balanced and unafraid," his
newsy, breezy tweets a follower's delight. Only this morning we'd
retweeted in approval:
JAKE "FEET-TO-FIRE" TAPPER SCORES! RT @:
Allen Has Ordered 'Uninhibited Access' to
Oil Spill Operations
But Tapper's apparent failure to sanction fellow White House
Correspondent
Thomas had exposed his left flank, and Adams wasn't holding her fire. A
few snippets from their earlier thrust and parry:
Jake Tapper: For those asking, it's
not my role to "condemn" comments, whether by pols or reporters.
and if i do it for one person, it opens a door. Thx
Ruth Anne Adams: Is there a journo equivalent of a locker room
whereby people are ostracized?
Tapper: i could start...but i would never stop! That
isn't my job. My job is to bring you the news fairly and impartially.
Adams: If I had an anti-Semitic
co-worker,you can bet I'd complain to HR. Certainly, I'd distance
myself. Don't feign neutrality, Jake … Sometimes, silence is seen as
approval. Feel free
to disagree … Helen Thomas is the news. You also serve in an
editorial position. You're skirting this cowardly … You know what,
Taptap? You don't owe me an explanaton. My esteem-o-meter for you registers zero now.
In his defense, responding to twitterer srbryson,
Tapper asks rhetorically:
and my job as a WH correspondent means I'm
supposed to condemn every reporter who says something i find offensive?
Not EVERY reporter who says something you find offensive, sir, but we
would sincerely ask you to consider Jeanette Pryor's sobering words in "Helen Thomas and the Definitive Answer to Why the First
Holocaust Happened" at David Horowitz's NewsRealBlog:
Helen Thomas is a
perpetrator. Perpetrator, because the most important aspect of the War
Against Israel is the War to erode American support for Israel, the War
for public opinion …
Certainly, the White House Press
Corps is full of those who have thus reacted to the Nazi Holocaust. And
yet, they will sit down to dinner with Helen Thomas. They will
continue to say, “Good Morning,” to her, and will treat her like an icon
worthy of respect. She will stoop in her throne in the Press Corps
galley. She will not be shunned in the halls of the White House, and
senators and representatives will still curry her favor or, at the very
worst, attribute her rant to notorious spunk.
This is why the Holocaust happened.
And then they came for the free press …
Cross-posted at Riehl World View and Liberty Pundits.
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