Rosie O'Donnell: Helen Thomas Wasn't Telling Jews 'Go Back to the Ovens,' So 'Sit and Spin,' Helen-Haters

On her XM/Sirius satellite radio show on Wednesday, Rosie O'Donnell defended the outrageous comments of Helen Thomas telling Jews to “get the hell out of Palestine” and go “home” to Germany and Poland. The Radio Equalizer blog has audio where O'Donnell seemed to acknowledge Richard Cohen's Washington Post column recalling that Jews who did return home after World War II were killed by the thousands.

She added, “But now I think in the year 2010, you know, what she was saying was not 'go back to the ovens”...What she was saying was, you know, the homeland was originally Palestinians, is what she was saying, and it's now occupied by Israel and that Palestinians should be afforded their civil and human rights.” O'Donnell thought comparing it to telling blacks to go back to Africa didn't work because “black people are not occupying a country.”

She was angrier on Thursday's show:

Fifty years as a journalist, and it comes down to some guy stickin' a camera in her face when she was by herself, crossin' the street with her 89-year-old lipstick on, and her whole life is over. I'm sorry, I don't buy the 'Helen Thomas sucks' parade. I'm not buyin' a ticket.”

...I feel like a Jew...I've been to Israel...My son had a bris, performed by a mohel...but [they can] still accuse me of anti-Semitism if I feel that Helen Thomas shouldn't be hung up by her ankles at 89 years old...

Fifty years...of actually being the Fourth Estate when there was one, of standing up and asking questions when women weren't even allowed in the room, to how many administrations, and it all comes down to 'let's throw Helen Thomas under the train'? Sit and spin, that's what I [say] to everyone. I'm so mad.

That's a rather crude middle-finger saying for radio. Also on Thursday's show, O'Donnell responded to conservative bloggers taking note of her comments about nationalizing BP and she didn't care whether you call it socialism or communism:

I'd just like to say for the record that I don't really believe in communism for the United States, and I don't really feel we should be a communist nation, nor do I think socialism would really work in the United States. However, I do believe the government should seize BP and all of its assets, and use...the money to help all the people that they're killing from this horrific act of gross negligence, criminal behavior. I think they should enforce the RICO statutes...Can you imagine after 9/11 if we said, 'OK, we're gonna let the terrorists clean up the 9/11 site'?...They're the ones who did it. They're environmental terrorists.

O'Donnell can't seem to tell the difference between corporate neglect and incompetence in BP's case and the maliciously plotted murder of 3,000 on 9/11. Certainly, the oil rig explosion and skill cost human lives, and a lot more lives of creatures on and under the sea. But the word “terrorism” implies acts committed intentionally to terrify, not accidents. Or is O'Donnell suggesting BP did all of this on purpose?

She also responded emotionally at criticism from conservative talk radio, without ever identifying which host had unfairly maligned her: “One of those idiot shows, like, whatever, Sean Beck Hannity Fred Phelps...they show a picture of me like a freakin' Macy's balloon: 'Look at fat, gay Rosie O'Donnell...She's a communist.'” She yelled: “Eat me! All of you!”

Will the White House Press Corps Get Wimpier Without Helen Thomas?

Jon Ward of the Daily Caller, until recently a White House reporter for the Washington Times, wrote a piece for Sunday's Washington Post titled “Why we'll miss Helen Thomas.” But Ward also interviewed some White House press colleagues who suggested Thomas had ventured across a line into explicit advocacy and argument:

"Helen had always been a tough, no-nonsense interrogator of presidents and press secretaries," said Ann Compton, who has reported on the past six presidents for ABC News. "About a decade ago, when she shed her role as reporter and began a career at Hearst as an opinion columnist, Helen's questions began to cross the line into advocacy."

Ward wrote that as “zany and obvious” her advocacy had become, he wondered if other reporters couldn't learn something about being a little bit tougher on press secretary Robert Gibbs. Fox reporter Major Garrett admitted to Ward “that until the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico became a major story, the White House press corps (himself included) had often failed to adequately hold Gibbs's feet to the fire.” He explained:

"There had long been an unnecessary deference and sort of delicacy and decorum about waiting to be called upon, and rigidly adhering to what is essentially a manufactured process that Robert sought to achieve at the very beginning," Garrett said. He added that the dynamic of the press room works best when reporters are free to follow up and really push the press secretary, but "that has been extremely rare, for whatever reason."

Ward offered a few examples he felt showed excessive deference:

A couple of incidents come to mind. At a briefing just one week after Obama's inauguration, for example, only two reporters pressed Gibbs for details about the president's knowledge of a drone strike in Pakistan -- the first military action of the new administration -- and they received no backing from colleagues in the room when he refused to discuss it. And more recently, in the June 3 briefing, Gibbs faced only a few scattered questions on the announcement by Colorado Senate candidate Andrew Romanoff that a top White House official had dangled three job possibilities in front of him should he drop his challenge to the incumbent Democrat, Michael Bennet.

Ward didn't explore the idea that the bosses of these White House reporters weren't truly interested in pressing Gibbs. Even as several reporters asked for answers on job offers to Romanoff and Pennsylvania's Joe Sestak, the networks never put the non-answers of Gibbs on the air to create pressure for more disclosure. Persistent questions by reporters alone doesn't move the news needle. Their bosses also have to find it essential to get answers out of Gibbs