Longevity Don't Mean a Thing: Helen Thomas and the Gores

Last week Helen Thomas, a legend amongst the president’s press corps, offered a public opinion about the Jews that blew her career out of the ball park.   When asked by a rabbi for a comment about Israel, she said they should “get the hell out of Palestine.”

“Where should they go?”
“Poland, Germany…”

She was fired yesterday, and her iconic, fifty-plus year career ended abruptly.  It was over.  Kaput.

John Stewart said they gave her empty chair to Elijah.

Yeah, we can joke about it, but as reporter Justin Quinn writes: her comments underscore what her readers already knew: that she’s an anti-Semite with a Palestinian agenda.

And this wasn’t her first time, or the tenth.  

But Thomas wasn't just your average hate-mongering reporter with a press pass. The very idea that she was part of the press corps with a front row seat to the president meant she represented the mainstream media.

Yeah, her mouth’s about as mainstream as Hamas and the late Yasser Arafat.

So maybe things will be a little saner around theWhite House, and it’ll be nice having Elijah for a change.   He’s a quiet man and keeps to himself.

But things haven’t gone any better in the romance department. Al and Tipper Gore announced that after forty years of marriage, they're separating.

Big surprise, and then what the hell.

Of course the media played that big smoochy kiss from the 2000 Democratic Convention ad nauseam.   Bill Mahr said he wished they’d find something else to run.   It was interfering with his erections.

And to make matters worse, Wall Street Journal columnist Jeffrey Zaslow reported that divorces amongst those married thirty to forty years are becoming routine.

“People are living longer… and are less willing to spend their last decades with someone who leaves them unfulfilled. … At the same time women are less dependent on husbands for financial support… and men have Viagra.”

Communication also breaks down over time.  In a British study it was found that those married one year talked forty minutes during an hour long dinner.  By twenty years, it’s 21 minutes, at 30, it’s down to 16, and at 50 years, it’s only 3 minutes.

Yeow!  Almost forty years for us, and we're still yakking!

When the Gores were making out during the 2000 convention, many of us wondered if something was wrong with our marriages, but psychiatrist Mark Goulston states: “Just as the truest form of philanthropy is to do it anonymously, the truest form of deep affection is to do it privately.”

But then I got to thinking about Mr. Inconvenient Truth.   How long can anyone listen to his repetitive, sleep-inducing, beyond boring monotone?  Viagra or not, who can get turned on?

I say, Tipper get out while you can.  It’ll only get better from here.