The Helen: Give me that old-time Great Society

One of the most telling thing about Helen Thomas is her take on the U.S. presidents. She's covered eight of them in her 57 years of reportage--which, I guess, just proves the point that age doesn't always equate with wisdom.

Probably her kindest words have been for Lyndon Johnson, whom she called "terrific." That Great Society stuff was the cat's meow. She lauds Jimmy Carter for human rights and a few other things, while skipping over that business with the Iran hostage crisis. Reagan, of course, was charming but uncompassionate. Bush-41 was right on in his actions to "moderate" the Reagan revolution. Clinton: "His heart's in the right place." Bush-43: Don't ask.

So, there you have it. The Helen: A knee-jerk liberal in the classic sense. Helen herself overtly embraces the "L" word while disavowing any such entity as "L" bias.

"A liberal bias?" she said a few years ago on C-SPAN. "I don't know what a liberal bias is. Do you mean we care about the poor, the sick and the maimed? Do we care whether people are being shot every day on the streets of America? If that's liberal, so be it. I think it's everything that's good in life, that we do care."

[Inset sound file of Barbra Steisand singing "Feelings."]

If you feel, as I do, that retirement for The Helen is way over due, there's something you can do about that: Helen Thomas can be reached at the e-mail address hthomas@hearstdc.com.