For your amusement >> Ann Coulter defends Jeff Gannon<<<

REPUBLICANS, BLOGGERS AND GAYS, OH MY!

By Ann Coulter

Wed Feb 23, 6:41 PM ET

In response to the public disgrace and ruin of New York Times editor Howell Raines, CBS anchor Dan Rather and CNN news director Eason Jordan, liberals are directing their fury at the blogs. Once derided as people sitting around their living rooms in pajamas, now obscure writers for unknown Web sites are coming under more intensive background checks than CIA agents.

The heretofore-unknown Jeff Gannon of the heretofore-unknown "Talon News" service was caught red-handed asking friendly questions at a White House press briefing. Now the media is hot on the trail of a gay escort service that Gannon may have run some years ago. Are we supposed to like gay people now, or hate them? Is there a Web site where I can go to and find out how the Democrats want me to feel about gay people on a moment-to-moment basis?

Liberals keep rolling out a scrolling series of attacks on Gannon for their Two Minutes Hate, but all their other charges against him fall apart after three seconds of scrutiny. Gannon's only offense is that he may be gay.

First, liberals claimed Gannon was a White House plant who received a press pass so that he could ask softball questions -- a perk reserved for New York Times reporters during the Clinton years. Their proof was that while "real" journalists (like Jayson Blair) were being denied press passes, Gannon had one, even though he writes for a Web site that no one has ever heard of -- but still big enough to be a target of liberal hatred! (By the way, if writing for a news organization with no viewers is grounds for being denied a press pass, why do MSNBC reporters have them?)

On the op-ed page of The New York Times, Maureen Dowd openly lied about the press pass, saying: "I was rejected for a White House press pass at the start of the Bush administration, but someone with an alias, a tax evasion problem and Internet pictures where he posed like the 'Barberini Faun' is credentialed?"

Press passes can't be that hard to come by if the White House allows that dyspeptic, old Helen Thomas to sit within yards of the president. Still, it would be suspicious if Dowd were denied a press pass while someone from "Talon News" got one, even if he is a better reporter.

But Dowd was talking about two different passes without telling her readers (a process now known in journalism schools as "Dowdification"). Gannon didn't have a permanent pass; he had only a daily pass. Almost anyone can get a daily pass -- even famed Times fantasist Maureen Dowd could have gotten one of those. A daily pass and a permanent pass are altogether different animals. The entire linchpin of Dowd's column was a lie. (And I'm sure the Times' public editor will get right on Dowd's deception.)

Finally, liberals expressed shock and dismay that Gannon's real name is "James Guckert." On MSNBC's "Hardball," Chris Matthews introduced the Gannon scandal this way: "Coming up, how did a fake news reporter from a right-wing Web site get inside the White House press briefings and presidential news conferences?"

Reporter David Shuster then gave a report on "the phony alias Guckert used to play journalist" -- as opposed to the real name Shuster uses to play journalist. (You can tell Schuster is a crackerjack journalist because he uses phrases like "phony alias.") With all the subtlety of a gay-bashing skinhead, Matthews spent the rest of the segment seeing how many times he could smear Gannon by mentioning "HotMilitaryStuds.com" and laughing.

Any day now, Matthews will devote entire shows to exposing Larry Zeigler, Gerald Riviera and Michael Weiner -- aka Larry King, Geraldo Rivera and Matthews' former MSNBC colleague Michael Savage. As a newspaper reporter, Wolf Blitzer has written under the names Ze'ev Blitzer and Ze'ev Barak. The greatest essayist of modern times was Eric Blair, aka George Orwell. The worst essayist of modern times is "TRB" of The New Republic.

Air America radio host and "Nanny" impersonator "Randi Rhodes" goes by a fake name, and she won't even tell people what her real last name is. (She says for "privacy reasons." That name must be a real doozy.) As Insideradio.com describes Rhodes, she refuses "to withhold anything from her listeners" and says conservatives "are less likely to share such things." How about sharing your name, Randi? We promise not to laugh.

Democrats in Congress actually demanded that an independent prosecutor investigate how Gannon got into White House press conferences while writing under an invented name. How did Gary Hartpence, Billy Blythe and John Kohn (Gary Hart, Bill Clinton (news - web sites) and John Kerry (news - web sites)) run for president under invented names? Admittedly, these men were not reporters for the prestigious "Talon News" service; they were merely Democrats running for president.

Liberals keep telling us the media isn't liberal, but in order to retaliate for the decimation of major news organizations like The New York Times, CBS News and CNN, all they can do is produce the scalp of an obscure writer for an unknown conservative Web page. And unlike Raines, Rather and Jordan, they can't even get Gannon for incompetence on the job. (Also unlike Raines, Rather and Jordan, Gannon has appeared on TV and given a series of creditable interviews in his own defense, proving our gays are more macho than their straights.)

Gannon didn't write about gays. No "hypocrisy" is being exposed. Liberals' hateful, frothing-at-the-mouth campaign against Gannon consists solely of their claim that he is gay.

Coulter lied and distorted to defend "Gannon," falsely attack Democrats and "liberal" media

Right-wing pundit Ann Coulter presented a raft of lies and distortions to defend former Talon News Washington bureau chief and White House correspondent Jeff Gannon (aka James D. Guckert) from Democrats and the "liberal media." Among the accusations in Coulter's February 24 nationally syndicated column were that the "liberal media" resorted to probing Gannon's private life after failing to "get Gannon for incompetence on the job"; that former Democratic presidential candidate Gary Hart, former President Bill Clinton, and Senator John Kerry all ran for office under "invented names"; and that New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd "openly lied" when writing about Gannon's White House press passes.

"Liberals keep rolling out a series of attacks on Gannon for their Two Minutes of Hate, but all their other charges against him fall apart after three seconds of scrutiny. Gannon's only offense is that he may be gay," Coulter wrote.

In a broadside against the "liberal media," Coulter falsely claimed that "they can't even get Gannon for incompetence on the job":

"Liberals keep telling us the media isn't liberal, but in order to retaliate for the decimation of major news organizations like the New York Times, CBS News and CNN, all they can do is produce the scalp of an obscure writer for an unknown conservative Web page. And unlike Raines, [CBS News anchor Dan] Rather and Jordan, they can't even get Gannon for incompetence on the job."

In fact, Media Matters for America has documented numerous instances of Gannon's incompetence: He lifted large portions of White House and Republican materials verbatim for his "news reports"; he reported a baseless, thoroughly disproven rumor of an extramarital affair between Kerry and an unnamed woman; and he used a fabricated quotation attributed to Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) to ask a softball question of George W. Bush.

Coulter proceeded to attack congressional Democrats for "demand[ing] that an independent prosecutor investigate how Gannon got into the White House under an invented name" and conflated Guckert/Gannon's use of a pseudonym to the "invented names" of various Democratic presidential candidates, asking: "How did Gary Hartpence, Billy Blythe and John Kohn (Gary Hart, Bill Clinton and John Kerry) run for president under invented names?" The truth is that neither Hart nor Clinton "invented" their names, and Kerry's name was never Kohn.

Hart's parents changed the family's last name from Hartpence to Hart in the late 1950s because, Hart said, it had been their original family name. Clinton was born William Jefferson Blythe IV after his deceased father, but in high school he assumed the last name of his stepfather, Roger Clinton, who had married his mother when Bill Clinton was 4 years old. The Associated Press reported on March 10, 1992, that Clinton's mother said that Roger Clinton loved Bill like a son. Kerry was born "John Forbes Kerry" and has never held the surname Kohn; his grandfather changed his name from Fritz Kohn to Frederick Kerry in 1901.

By contrast, James D. Guckert's name appears as such on his driver's license. He claims he uses "Jeff Gannon" because it is easier to spell and pronounce. He has provided no other reason for adopting the pseudonym.

Coulter also claimed that Dowd lied when the latter wrote in her February 17 column that "I was rejected for a White House press pass at the start of the Bush administration, but someone with an alias, a tax evasion problem and Internet pictures where he posed like the 'Barberini Faun' is credentialed to cover a White House that won a second term by mining homophobia and preaching family values?" Coulter insisted that Dowd "openly lied" by "talking about two different press passes without telling her readers." But regardless of what kind of pass Gannon used, the fact remains, as Dowd noted, that "n an era when security concerns are paramount," Gannon "could saunter into the West Wing every day under an assumed name while he was doing full-frontal advertising for stud services for $1,200 a weeke

— S.S.M.<a mediamatters.org/items/200502250002

Posted to the web on Friday February 25, 2005 at 11:04 AM EST

RE: Is Ann Coulter a Male Prostitute?

Is Ann Coulter a Male Prostitute?

February 25th, 2005 : Filed by ~A!

http://www.rawstory.com

Ok, so now that I have your attention….

Has anyone read this latest article by good old dragon lady? If nothing else, she’s good for a laugh. In this assorted amalgam of shit, Ann Coulter goes on and on about a myriad of things, saying that Guckert/Gannon is no worse than Randi Rhodes, who uses a pseudonym in place of her last name for privacy reasons.

>>Finally, liberals expressed shock and dismay that Gannon’s real name is “James Guckert.”

... Air America radio host and “Nanny” impersonator “Randi Rhodes” goes by a fake name, and she won’t even tell people what her real last name is. (She says for “privacy reasons.” That name must be a real doozy.) As Insideradio.com describes Rhodes, she refuses “to withhold anything from her listeners” and says conservatives “are less likely to share such things.” How about sharing your name, Randi? We promise not to laugh.<<

Ok, I’ll bite, you horrible fiendish cackling harpy. Randi Rhodes isn’t asking the president questions and holding herself out as an objective journalist. She’s a liberal radio personality, dipshit. She doesn’t have any responsibility to be objective any more than you do, you ideological prostitute for the coke-head presidency. Hmmm…. seems to me as if maybe someone (I won’t name names, but her initials are “that stupid bitch”) seems to have divorced themselves from reality.

And then, as if the comparison above weren’t a sad enough commentary from a drooling slop-monkey, Annie goes on to compare what she considers two journalists of equal integrity and ability:

>>On the op-ed page of The New York Times, Maureen Dowd openly lied about the press pass, saying: “I was rejected for a White House press pass at the start of the Bush administration, but someone with an alias, a tax evasion problem and Internet pictures where he posed like the ‘Barberini Faun’ is credentialed?”

Press passes can’t be that hard to come by if the White House allows that dyspeptic, old Helen Thomas to sit within yards of the president. Still, it would be suspicious if Dowd were denied a press pass while someone from “Talon News” got one, even if he is a better reporter.<<

So, let me get this straight: Jeff Gannon is a better reporter than Maureen Dowd? Why, because he ‘embraces’ the administration and she’s too smart to be taken in by the whole “We’re torturing people for human rights” shtick?

Coulter goes on to say that Dowd was lying about not getting a press pass, saying that Dowd applied for a permanent pass and Gannon/Guckert only applied for a day pass.

Yes. Every. Day. For. Two. Years. Hi, Ann? Yeah, this is reality. No, it’s okay, stay gone. We’re better off without you.

It’s no surprise to anyone that Ann Coulter’s a maniac. Many on the right see her as that evil cousin you keep under the stairs and only let out when you get burglarized, so they can chew the legs off the burglar. Glad she weighed in on this, though, I haven’t had a good, pitying laugh about Annie in a long time.

Oh, and as an aside, FOX News, is a bunch of assholes again. They wrote a piece about the whole CIA affair, in which they cite RawStory for all their hard work and diligent reporting. They also mentioned Talon ‘News’, and linked to their site. They did not, however, link to RawStory. Why not, I wonder? Why link to Talon, whose site is actually down while they’re on “hiatus”, and not RawStory, which gave them something to write about in the first place?

RE: Why Ann Coulter Is a Cunt, Part 385 (With a Side Note on the Right Wing Disarray Over Gannon/Guckert):

2/24/2005

Why Ann Coulter Is a Cunt, Part 385 (With a Side Note on the Right Wing Disarray Over Gannon/Guckert):

In her latest "column" (if by "column," you mean "the crayon-scratched doodles and scrawls of a conservative meat puppet"), Ann Coulter goes after the bad, bad liberals who demand answers over why the fuck an assfucker for hire with an assumed name was given a neverending series of day press passes to the White House despite having, first, no press background, no job with a press organization, and no discernible experience other than fucking men in the ass for money, and, later, shillling for a right wing news site fronting for GOPUSA.

Ann's in a tizzy, barely able to vomit out the first retch of hate before the second is choking her. Let's do away with this quickly before they become talking points for Scarborough, O'Reilly, and, later, the so-called "mainstream" media. Coulter defends Gannyguck by saying that "Gannon didn't write about gays." Well, no, actually, Gannyguck "wrote" quite a bit about gays, including an article saying that John Kerry might be considered "the first gay president" because of Kerry's support of gay rights. Not to mention the anti-gay marriage articles he compiled from press releases and such.

Coulter says that "liberals expressed shock and dismay that Gannon's real name is 'James Guckert.'" And, since Coulter never met a hyperbole that she wouldn't hump like it was Joe McCarthy's Commie-slammin' microphone and never met a fact that she couldn't manipulate, she compares Gannon getting into the White House under a fake name with this: "How did Gary Hartpence, Billy Blythe and John Kohn (Gary Hart, Bill Clinton and John Kerry) run for president under invented names?" Christ, this is so tedious, like trying to give an unlubricated Coulter head for hours without stabbing yourself on her hip bones.

Here we go: Gary Hart and Bill Clinton legally changed their names, Clinton doing it for his mother's sake after she re-married while he was still very young. John Kerry's grandfather changed his name from Kohn to Kerry to avoid anti-semitism in turn-of-the-century Austria. (The Rude Pundit uses Encarta's website here to demonstrate that even a fucking idiot could get the story straight.) So if Hart, Clinton, and Kerry had to show their driver's licenses, they would show their legal names. Please, don't let the right attempt to conflate this with having a fake name and access to power that so few others are allowed.

The right-wing media, though, doesn't know what the fuck to do with Gannyguck. They're stuck trying to downplay the prostitution angle by saying that it's Gannyguck's "private life." Fox "News" runs an editorial that calls Gannyguck's whoring "sexual peculiarities" and saying that it proves the left's intolerance. That's a fuckin' bizarro way to spin this: that liberals hate gay prostitutes. But over at the generally insane conservative World Net Daily, Joseph Farah is pissed about the White House's degradation of the press through the free admittance of a fake reporter to the press pool. (All this and more is available through your source for all things Gannyguck, AMERICAblog.)

Speaking of batshit insanity, the kind that stretches its spine trying to lick its own taint, rude Australian reader Wal C. wrote to that eminent right wing blog, Powerline, about Gannyguck. After quoting a Rude Pundit post on why Gannyguck matters, Wal C. wrote, "They've turned the White House into a whorehouse, and your incomprehensible defense of Guckert and the sleazy administration who utilized him is almost as despicable as the pathetic, moral-less morons you're defending."

The Powerline people are notoriously thin-skinned, especially considering that they proudly gave themselves the gayest pseudonyms in all of political blogdom: the Hindrocket and the Big Trunk, with handy phallic pictures of a thrusting rocket and an elephant holding his trunk erect. This is not to mention the demonic owl with its legs spread wide (the symbol of the writer known as the "Deacon"), as if saying, "Suck my wise owlish cock, fuckers. Please?"

The Hindrocket (which the Rude Pundit cannot type without giggling) wrote back to Wal C.: "Wal, you are so fucking stupid you don't even qualify as spam. Never try to communicate with us again. You are too dumb to participate in a rational conversation. You are a stupid fucking lefty; that's your problem, not ours. Get lost." It was signed "John H." (Frankly, this seems like Powerline's form letter to liberals, which is a charming notion.)

Yep, combativeness, defensiveness, and lashing out are sure signs that the adherents to an ideology are filled with doubt, self-loathing, and Nixonian paranoia, afraid of a time when their brand of hate doesn't rule the land.

// posted by Rude One @ 9:43 AM

rudepundit.blogspot.com/2005/02/why-ann-coulter-is-cunt-part-385-with.html

RE: Why Ann Coulter Is a Cunt, Part 385 (With a Side Note on the Right Wing Disarray Over Gannon/Guckert):

Now Ann Coulter is certainly someone without shame (or much integrity for that matter). I don't know how anyone can read her crap. Her face on the TV sends me to the clicker faster than and episode of Fear Factor.

RE: Why Ann Coulter Is a Cunt, Part 385 (With a Side Note on the Right Wing Disarray Over Gannon/Guckert):

Coulter is the only woman I've ever had a burning desire to bitch slap.

RE: >>>RACISTS FOR GANNON<<<

Racists for Gannon

by John in DC - 2/27/2005 01:43:00 AM

CrooksAndLiars.com informs us that Ann Coulter has just published a racist defense of Jeff Gannon.

This is what she wrote - which was then edited out by her syndicator who probably realized that racist attacks against Arabs probably aren't the most appropriate thing to publish if your name isn't David Duke. How does this woman even work in this country?

>>>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. Still, it would be suspicious if Dowd were denied a press pass while someone from "Talon News" got one, even if he is a better reporter.<<<

"Old Arab?" What the hell does that mean? Why does the GOP increasingly tie its party to vile, hateful, angry, bigoted people? Yet at the same time they think they're going to convince Latinos and blacks that they love people of color, really they do. Yeah, right. I can't wait to see the day that the mainstream of the GOP has to deal with an influx of Latinos and blacks in the party. That will be a day to remember.

http://www.americablog.org

RE: Why Ann Coulter Is a Cunt, Part 385 (With a Side Note on the Right Wing Disarray Over Gannon/Guckert):

>Ann Coulter goes after the bad, bad liberals who

>demand answers over why the fuck an assfucker for hire with an

>assumed name was given a neverending series of day press

>passes to the White House . .. .

Is there anyone else here - anyone at all - who sees the profound, pathetic irony of a person who HIMSELF is an "assfucker for hire" (more an ass-fuckee for hire, but that's beside the point) posting an article which contends that "assfuckers for hire" should not be allowed to get day passes to the White House, because - as everyone knows - there is nothing lower or more security-threatening than "assfuckers for hire"?

And is there anyone else - anyone at all - who sees the profound, pathetic irony that this view is being expressed, to great approval, in a forum devoted to "assfuckers for hire" and those who hire them?

It would be like going to a Morman church and having someone stand up and say that Mormans should never be credentialed for the White House and having the entire congregation stand up and cheer. Fucking bizarre.

Irony anyone? Hello? Any working brains out there?

RE: Why Ann Coulter Is a Cunt, Part 385 (With a Side Note on the Right Wing Disarray Over Gannon/Guckert):

>It would be like going to a Morman church and having someone

>stand up and say that Mormans

It's spelled "Mormon."

RE: Why Ann Coulter Is a Cunt, Part 385 (With a Side Note on the Right Wing Disarray Over Gannon/Guckert):

>It's spelled "Mormon."

Oh, my God!!! Can it be true??? Did Rick Munroe just make a post without cutting and pasting someone else's words from DailyKos or Americanblog or Barbra Streisand's site?

It looks like he did!! Congratulations, Rick!!!! I knew you could do it (not really, but I thought, maybe, if one day, you wake up and got a really good night's sleep and ate a hearty breakfast and skipped the Golden Girls episodes and concentrated hard, then you could). . .

Now, nobody would confuse what you wrote for anything substantive or interesting (after all, it's been known since the early days of Usenet boards that the hallmark of someone with nothing to say is someone who posts to correct the spelling errors of others).

But at least you wrote it on your own. And it's a great first baby step on the road to having what adults refer to as having a "mind of your own."

Congratulations, Rick!

RE: Why Ann Coulter Is a Cunt, Part 385 (With a Side Note on the Right Wing Disarray Over Gannon/Guckert):

>Oh, my God!!! Can it be true??? Did Rick Munroe just make a

>post without cutting and pasting someone else's words from

>DailyKos or Americanblog

It's AMERICAblog.

RE: >>>RACISTS FOR GANNON<<<

Universal Press Syndicate not the first to edit inflammatory Coulter columns

When Universal Press Syndicate (UPS), which syndicates right-wing pundit Ann Coulter's weekly columns, removed a race-based attack on Hearst Newspapers columnist and White House correspondent Helen Thomas from Coulter's February 24 column, it was not the first time nervous editors had cleaned up a Coulter column prior to publication. While the syndicate did not edit Coulter's reference to "oily Jews" in an October 20, 2004, column, at least two publications removed it before printing her column.

Prior to syndication on February 24, UPS replaced Coulter's reference to "that old Arab Helen Thomas" with "that dyspeptic, old Helen Thomas," as the weblog Crooks and Liars documented. Thomas's parents were Lebanese immigrants.

In her October 20, 2004, column, Coulter attacked Democrats as "crazy people" and wrote:

There's no consensus position, but the Democrats are pretty sure the real reason we went to Iraq was one of the following:

*Bush family's connections to the Saudis,

*Halliburton,

*the Carlyle Group,

*something about the Texas Rangers needing more left-handed pitching,

*the neoconservatives,

*the Straussians,

*oil,

*the Jews,

*oily Jews.

UPS syndicated this version of the column, and several websites, including the Heritage Foundation's Townhall.com, Jewish World Review, WorldNetDaily, and David Horowitz's FrontPageMag.com picked it up. But a Nexis search revealed only two newspapers -- the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review and The Calgary Sun -- that published the column, and both removed "oily Jews" before printing it. (Media Matters for America has documented the Tribune-Review's right-wing history.) Human Events Online, a right-wing online news site, also published the edited version.

USA Today commissioned Coulter to provide conservative commentary on the Democratic National Convention in July 2004, but the paper spiked her first column, which referred to the event as the "Spawn of Satan convention," and replaced Coulter with National Review Online editor-at-large Jonah Goldberg for the rest of the convention over what the executive editor described as "editorial differences." National Review also fired Coulter as a contributing editor in October 2001 after she wrote of Muslims: "We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity."

UPS has syndicated Coulter since 1999.

— S.S.M.

Posted to the web on Monday February 28, 2005 at 5:38 PM EST

RE: For your amusement >> Ann Coulter Talks Trash #20<<<

Coulter Talks Trash #20

[This is the 20th in a series of essays about Ann Coulter’s new best seller – How to Talk to a Liberal (If You Must): The World According to Ann Coulter. Subsequent essays will be published on http://www.Whoslying.org.]

http://www.whoslying.org/images/stories/tariqanne.jpg

The world laughed at Iraqi Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz when – as American troops seized Baghdad – he proclaimed Iraqi victory. Ann Coulter is the GOP’s Tariq Aziz.

From the universal to the particular, Coulter’s world is propagandistic. Her universal (liberalism = terrorism = treason) is as nonsensical as her particulars (people are safer in Baghdad than Washington, D.C.). (See “Ann Coulter’s Paradigm“ and “Capitol Under Attack.”)

But the propagandist knows how to skew fantasies into “facts” and conspiracies into “reality.” In our post-9/11 world, Coulter seized upon the Orwellian construct of perpetual warfare as a means to preserve power.

To read more, click here: http://www.whoslying.org

Last Updated ( Thursday, 24 February 2005 )

RE: >> Arab Bashing Reaches Low With Thomas Helen Slur<<<

Arab Bashing Reaches Low With Thomas Slur

Barbara Ferguson, Arab News

http://www.arabnews.com/?page=4§ion=0&article=59777&d=2&m=3&y=2005

WASHINGTON, 2 March 2005 — Arab bashing reached a new low in Washington last week when Ann Coulter, a loudmouthed, mean-spirited, pro-Bush columnist, decided to defend the White House press pass controversy over faux-reporter James Guckert (a.k.a. Jeff Gannon) by writing in her syndicated column: “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.”

Thomas, whose Hearst column is distributed by King Features Syndicate, is of Lebanese descent. The former United Press International reporter has been a journalist for nearly 60 years, and has covered every president since John F. Kennedy. She was the first female president of the White House Correspondents Association.

Even her syndicators realized the gaffe. When Coulter’s column was posted on Universal Press Syndicate’s (UPS) website, someone edited out the race-based slur “that old Arab Helen Thomas,” using instead: “that dyspeptic, old Helen Thomas.”

But the “old Arab” reference still appears the column posted on Coulter’s website: http://www.anncoulter.com/cgi-local/article.cgi

Coulter was, perhaps, taking a cue from the White House, which has slighted Thomas several times since 2003. During a televised news conference, President George W. Bush deliberately snubbed several reporters he ordinarily calls upon, including journalists from the Washington Post, Newsweek, and USA Today. But the most conspicuous recipient of the Bush freeze-out was Thomas, who has barbed and grilled every president since Kennedy and almost always gets to ask a question. Bush pointedly ignored her.

Bush then dealt Thomas a second slight. By custom, Thomas concludes White House press conferences at the president’s signal by saying, “Thank you, Mr. President.” Bush instead ended the conference with his own sign off, “Thank you for your questions,” and killed a decades-old White House custom. Lastly, she was removed from her front row seat, and delegated to a back seat in the press choir.

Is this treatment due to the fact that Thomas has been critical of the Bush administration? She has condemned the terror-fighting Patriot Act and slammed Bush’s domestic and international policies. She also called the Iraq war “a violation of international policy under any circumstance,” and said it is “immoral.”

But she has never been known to mince her words to any president.

There has been disappointingly little reaction in defense of their colleague by White House journalists.

In an article entitled “Lipstick Fascism,” James Wolcott, a Vanity Fair contributing editor, writes: “I wonder what would happen if a writer, say me, were to refer in a Vanity Fair column to ‘that old Jew Norman Podhoretz’ or, naughtier still, ‘that old Jewess Lucianne Goldberg.’

“Through the magic of exaggeration, I can just imagine the commotion. Daniel Pipes and David Horowitz would blow their respective lids...petitions would file in to Vanity Fair demanding that I be fired, or, for penance, be forced to tour Auschwitz with Prince Harry.

“Arabs of course are fair game on talk radio and the trash punditry, of which Ann Coulter is stringbean queen,” says Wolcott. “Presumably Helen Thomas’s very ancestry, about which I know nothing, makes her an incipient terrorist threat, though presumably commando call boy Jeff Gannon would have been coiled to pounce into action if the octogenarian made any sudden violent moves. Coulter’s typically crass wisecrack is the cartoonish version of the hostile profiling of Arabs and Muslims being conducted all over the neoconservative right, as typified by Michelle Malkin’s pioneer work to excuse the Japanese internment in order to justify the preemptive incarceration of Muslims and other suspicious elements.

“I’m sure this sort of thing doesn’t fluster them in the slightest. Conservatism and sadism have become indivisible,” writes Wolcott.