CRAZY AUNT IN THE BASEMENT*

James Joyner | Thursday, March 13, 2003

CRAZY AUNT IN THE BASEMENT*: Slate’s Jack Shafer has a damning piece on Helen Thomas:

While Bush dislikes Thomas, he and his news managers are still savvy enough to recognize her usefulness to the administration. When Fleischer changed the seating chart in the briefing room last year, he could have exiled Thomas to the back row. Instead, he kept her down front, where he uses her as his foil, addressing her liberally by first name so other White House officials reading the transcript can chuckle to themselves—We’re safe! It’s another a question from that wacky Helen Thomas. When Fleischer calls on her, he hopes she’ll heckle him and savage Bush with her eccentric, combative, accusatory, and unreasonably phrased questions—because they’re so easily evaded. “We will temporarily suspend the Q & A portion of today’s briefing to bring you this advocacy minute,” Fleischer responded to a line of Thomas questioning at the Feb. 26 press briefing. The moment of comic relief lifts Fleischer and soils Thomas.

One would think.

*Note: John Lemon and I mentally linked Thomas with Ross Perot’s famous “crazy aunt in the basement,” demonstrating once again that great minds think alike.

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