Helen Thomas, a member of the White House Press Corps who covered eleven presidents, beginning with Dwight D. Eisenhower in the late 1950’s, has retired effective immediately. The veteran news woman will be 90-years-old in August.
Thomas has had preferential treatment at every presidential news conference in the past five-plus decades — the only member of the press corps to have her own seat in the White House Briefing Room, and always called upon to ask a question.
She found herself embroiled in a firestorm on May 27, 2010, outside a White House Jewish heritage event. Rabbi David Nesenoff asked if Thomas had any comments on Israel. Thomas replied: “Tell them to get the hell out of Palestine. Remember, these people are occupied and it’s their land, it’s not German, it’s not Poland.” Asked where they should go, she replied: “They should go home to Poland, Germany, America and everywhere else.”
Thomas subsequently issued an apology on her personal web site. On June 6, Thomas was dropped by Nine Speakers, Inc. Thomas also received a rebuke from the White House, and was uninvited to give the commencement speech at Walt Whitman High School in Bethesda, Maryland.
Thomas tendered her immediate resignation from Hearst Newspapers and retired on June 7, 2010.
She covered Eisenhower in a limited capacity near the end of his time in office. Officially, she had the White House beat beginning in 1960 and covered John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George Herbert Walker Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama.
Photo gallery of Helen and all of her presidents below, and video of the controversial comments that led to her retirement:
Photos: WENN, PicApp, Screenshots