What constitutes journalism

That certainly isn't a question.

I'm not going to defend Helen Thomas' offensive remarks -- any more than I spend any time defending Pat Buchanan's offensive remarks...

...that there are too many Jews on the Supreme Court
...that Hitler has been poorly served by historians.
...that Half of the survivors of the Holocaust overstate their suffering and are unreliable witnesses.
...about how a Latino woman couldn't possibly have graduated top of her class at Princeton.
...that gays are bent on "satanism" and "suicide".
...that the massacre of 67 black South Africans was just a bit of whites mistreating a couple of black people.
...that Martin Luther King was a "fraud" and a "demagogue"
...that women are just not endowed with the capability to compete in a capitalist economy.

But guess what? Pat is still a member of the Village in good standing -- able to pontificate at will, whenever MSNBC breaks open his glass booth.

But 90 plus year old Helen Thomas gets the boot...because she's just not practicing in the proper village way, whatever that is. But apparently, below is the proper way to commit journalism!



[cross-posted at Firedoglake]