It was said that she was a ‘trailblazer’ (do I smell journalistic cliche?), and perhaps as one of the early women in the WH press corps she was. But what great stories did she break throughout her career? She may have been good at grandstanding in the WH press room and at hectoring presidents- which are NOT the same things as asking relevant, incisive, to-the-point questions- but where was she during the breaking of the Pentagon Papers? Where was she when Woodward/Bernstein, Dan Rather, and others were opening up the Watergate story? Where was she in the ’60s when so many print and broadcast journalists were covering the civil rights movement, the Vietnam war, and the massive protest movement back home that that war spawned?

More to the point, Helen Thomas, who was always quick to blame Israel for all troubles in the Middle East, and to tell Jews exactly where to go- back to Poland and Germany, in the words of the oh-so-wise, ‘trailblazing’ sage Helen Thomas- began her journalistic career during and toward the end of World War II. Where was Helen Thomas when the enormity of the Holocaust was being exposed by Europe-based journalists? Where was Helen Thomas, so quick and so voluminous in her unceasing and persistent condemnations of Israel, when all Jews of millennias-old communities in Arab nations from Morocco to Iraq and Syria were being expelled from those nations in ‘revenge’ for the establishment and existence of Israel? Where was Helen Thomas, when all the debates about Muslims in Arab and Muslim nations, and about Muslim-Christian conflict in places like Egypt, to mention that there are no Jews in any of those places any more?

Answer: she was invisible. Nowhere to be seen. Unlike the great ‘inquiring’ journalist this ridiculous and one-sided hagiographic article portrayed her as, Helen Thomas had no journalistic curiosity. No, she had certainties, opinions, and ‘convictions,’ all conventional left-liberal ones, and not an ounce of investigative journalistic curiosity or investigative initiative in her long and mediocre career as a wire-service shill. Quick to condemn Israel for its ‘oppression’ of Palestinians (in a nation where 20% of the population is Arab and there are Arab members of
the Knesset) and to tell the Jews exactly where they can go; silent
about Muslim oppression (including of other Muslims) and bigotry.

I’ll leave to others the displays of grief and hagiography over her passing. I know exactly who and what Helen Thomas was. She was blessed with a long life. It is exceedingly difficult for me to mourn her.

Wayne Buscombe

Here in the U.S. Midwest, a steamy and (intermittently) stormy day. Weather was blessedly cool at the end of June and through most of the Independence Day holiday. Now it looks like the summer heat and humidity, punctuated by ravaging rains, have returned, not unlike the weather that categorized the generally unbearable summers of 2011 and 2012. But enough about the weather.

The news is the same. In Egypt, as in Syria, there is increasing polarization and bloodshed, with no reasonable person of generally liberal and pluralist outlook having anyone in the fight to side with (“with whom to side”; I was taught in school to cringe at ending sentences with prepositions). The MB is ghastly; Al Nour (the Salafists who are more extreme than the MB, if that is possible) are worse; the military and its secularist backers used extralegal means to unseat a terrible regime and more violence against the pro-Morsi demonstrators. The Syrian situation, which has seemingly been dragging on forever, continues in the same gruesome vein. The Alawite (“an offshoot of the Shi’ite branch of Islam” as all good NYT readers are aware) regime of Assad and its supporters have maintained power by mass murder; the rebels arrayed against it are increasingly dominated by Salafist/pro-Al Qaeda extremists.

All of which bodes ill for Israel, which I will deal with at length in the next post. To summarize my view about Israel: It is long past time to cut a deal and make a peace agreement with the Palestinians and eliminate the Arab/Muslim pretext/excuse for focusing hatred on Israel and the Jews. A deal would mean about 90-95% of the West Bank, with appropriate land swaps, to the Palestinians; Jewish settlers would have the choice of resettlement or taking their chances with a Palestinian national regime. It would probably also mean a bifurcation of Jerusalem. In return for which, no automatic right of return for Palestinians to pre-1967 Israel and a closely monitored peace agreement with the Palestinians under the microscope for bellicose words/actions (including anti-Semitic stereotypes and “Islamist/martyrist” rhetoric in their media and educational materials). I’m not saying it’s great, or necessarily just according to (my idea of) what is fair, but it’s the best solution around. I’m frustrated that Israel is sitting fat and happy and thinking the status quo will last forever, and doing nothing. That way lies future disaster.

Wayne Buscombe

In general, I agree with the agenda of liberals and those left-of-center, including increased govt. action to reduce income inequality, rebuild decaying infrastructure, spending on public education, regulating and limiting the size and role of the financial sector in the economy, regulating possession of guns, and universalizing access to health care, and increasing the social stability of the broad middle class. I also agree with live-and-let-live with regard to sexuality and partnering, abortion, birth control, and the possession and use of illicit drugs- with appropriate regulation and taxation of the latter. Having said that, I need to add that, while I agree with this agenda for the most part, I dislike most liberals and leftists of my acquaintance and mostly like conservatives and those right-of-center, because I find the former to be self-righteous and smug, imbued with belief in their own moral and intellectual superiority, and narrow-minded in that they rarely read or tolerate exposure to viewpoints with which they don’t already agree, while I find the latter in general to be more open-minded, less sure of themselves, and more tolerant and open to listening to and reading opinions opposed to their own. In short, I agree with liberals while disliking them personally and disagree with conservatives while liking them personally.

Completely off-topic to this (except insofar as she lives in a world-view shroud of received and unquestioned left-liberal opinion, like so many tenured members of the mainstream media): what is the deal with Manohla Dargis? She has to be one of the worst and most banal movie critics out there. She is of the school that believes that, if one piles up (multisyllabic) adjectives and adverbs in her movie reviews, then she is displaying intelligence, erudition, and perspicacious views about the work of art in question. Witness her review in today’s NYT: “Mesmerizing, mysterious, willfully perverse, the Mexican movie ‘Post Tenebras Lux’ opens with two scenes, one realistic, the other fantastical…a cacophonous, stunning sequence…” The two excerpts of her review separated by the first ellipsis represent the beginnings of the first two paragraphs of her article. It is a measure of the degree to which she has nothing interesting or original to say about any movie she reviews that she relies on this type of ‘writing.’ It should be pointed that most of the rest of her review, and of her reviews in general, consist of a combination of labored exposition of the film in question (like a not-too-bright sixth grader reviewing a novel for English class), statements of the obvious, and cliches. It is a measure of the depths to which the NYT has sunk in recent years that she has held (along with the marginally more competent A.O. Scott) the title of co-chief film reviewer. I admit to personal animus in her case: I was a fan of the much more creative and entertaining Elvis Mitchell, who was bumped from the Times to make room for Ms. Dargis and her egregious struggles with the language and with cinematic and artistic. When she retires, it is almost certain that, like the pedestrian-prose-purveying retired NYT dance critic Anna Kisselgoff, Ms. Dargis’s prose and reviews will be forgotten and almost never quoted. At least Kisselgoff wasn’t pretentious and full of herself.

Wayne Buscombe

This is the first blog post for waynebuscombe.com. I will be commenting on current affairs and offering my ideas about them, and sometimes about issues in arts and culture. My name is Wayne Buscombe and I am a middle-aged heterosexual white male, U.S.-born and -raised, and have lived in this country my entire life, residing currently in the American Midwest.

Wayne Buscombe