Thomas’s better side

Opinion: June 14, 2010 at 12:00a.m.

Los Angeles Times: Blunt, irascible, argumentative. Those words have long been used to describe Helen Thomas, the grande dame of the White House press corps, particularly in recent years as her questions became less and less coherent. Now, a career spanning 10 presidencies and nearly half a century has come to an end.

After decades as a reporter for United Press International, Thomas had become a columnist for Hearst Corp. She was known as a liberal and as a critic of Israel, and certainly could have contributed to a healthy debate about Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories or U.S. policy in the Mideast. But that’s not what she did in a short videotaped interview in which she said that Jews should “get the hell out of Palestine” and “go home” to Poland and Germany. Whatever her intentions, the remarks were deeply offensive to Jews, who heard her to be saying they should return to countries that exterminated their families. Last Monday, Thomas issued an apology and resigned.

It is a sad finale for someone who helped break barriers for women journalists at the center of American power largely through determination and hard work. UPI assigned Thomas to John F. Kennedy’s presidential campaign — to cover his beautiful wife. When Kennedy won, Thomas went to the White House and reportedly dared her bosses to remove her from the job. They didn’t. She was the first woman to serve as White House bureau chief for a wire service and the only woman journalist to accompany President Nixon on his historic trip to China.

A photograph of Thomas in her heyday shows the petite reporter, notebook in hand, chasing long-legged President Gerald R. Ford down the tarmac to an airplane — a picture of her doggedness. It would be unfortunate if Thomas were remembered for an offensive remark and not for her decades shattering glass ceilings.