- President Bush's decision to nominate Condoleezza Rice
received widespread praise from both Democrats and Republicans.
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- But longtime White House Bureau Chief Helen Thomas, now
a syndicated columnist with Hearst, had nothing but contempt for Rice's
nomination. The feisty 84-year-old reporter who started at the White House
during the Kennedy administration had some unkind words to describe Bush
and Condi.
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- NewsMax bumped into Thomas in the lobby of New York's
Waldorf-Astoria as she waited for a lunch date.
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- Asked about the election result, the sharp-tongued reporter
simply put her hand on her face and said, "My God, the man is a fascist
-- a fascist, I tell you."
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- She warned that Bush's victory will mean one thing: more
war. She expects Iran to be next.
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- But surely Thomas, a female reporter who succeeded decades
ago in a "man's world," had some empathy about Condi's appointment.
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- As we suggested the notion, a look of horror came over
Thomas' face.
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- "I tell you, the women is a monster, a monster,
a monster," she kept saying.
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- Asked why she was so angry with Condi, Thomas explained
that the national security adviser had lied about the Iraq war and "thousands
had died."
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- Thomas, to her credit, has asked tough questions of both
Democrat and Republican presidents during her long tenure in the White
House press corps, but some of her anger seemed more personal.
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- For decades, Thomas held the privileged front-row seat
in the pressroom and usually got to ask the first question. Now she says
she is back in the last row and "Bush is afraid to take my questions."
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- Fair enough, but the venom for Condi?
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- When NewsMax referred to some of Condi's positive achievements,
Thomas kept interjecting "monster" to describe her. "The
lady is a goddamn liar," Thomas said, adding that such prevaricators
were commonplace in the Bush White House.
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- Nor was Thomas impressed that Condi, an African-American
woman, had risen from segregated Alabama to become the most powerful woman
in the nation.
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- Thomas rejected that, too, claiming that Condi's family
had opposed Dr. Martin Luther King and that she and her folks had not supported
the civil rights movement. In fact, Thomas then made the bizarre claim
that Condi's family wouldn't even patronize black-owned stores.
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- Thomas had little substantiation for any of these allegations.
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- Nor for some very vague allegations about the Bush family,
which she said would "stop at nothing" to deal with its enemies.
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- Michael Moore, please call Helen Thomas. She is ready
to help with your next movie!
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