- If you expect someone to pose some tough questions to Steve, you should go to Helen Waite.
- Second best choice might be Helen Thomas
If Helen Thomas holds the only chair in the White House press briefing room named for an individual rather than an organization - a front-and-center seat at that - it may have something to do with the barriers that the 88-year-old columnist has broken in her long career.
From this seat, the Hearst Newspapers columnist has asked some of the toughest questions of the sitting president - "You'll be sorry,'' she once warned President Bush when he called on her in her front-row perch - and she suggests that President-elect Barack Obama won't get much of a honeymoon.
Thomas, who allows that the historic election stirred a certain chord for her - citing Bobby Kennedy's prediction that Americans might elect a black president in another 30 years - also questions why the self-styled change-agent who has won the White House has turned to so many characters from the Clinton administration for his own team.
"I'm already after Barack for... going after the old Clinton faces,'' she says. "Why -- doesn't he know anybody?''... I don't understand falling back on all the old faces.. it seems to me that if you want to have a fresh start, you really ought to have a fresh start.'' And these are tough times, she notes: "The economy is in the toilet.''
Side note. Annete Benning is going to play Helen Thomas in a movie called ‘Dirty Tricks’.
