Thanking Helen Thomas

The Grand Duchess of the White House Press Corps, Helen Thomas.

On April 23, 2008 Helen Thomas of Hearst Newspapers did an amazing thing. She spoke out in the White House press room and called White House Press Secretary Dana Perino and the Bush Administration in general on the carpet - daring them to deny, in the face of photographic evidence to the contrary and a previous statement by President Bush himself, that the United States tortures prisoners. Astoundingly, Press Secretary Perino did exactly that.

An excerpted transcript of the April 23, 2008 press conference follows as provided by Crooks and Liars:

THOMAS: The President has said publicly several times, in two consecutive news conferences a few months ago, and you have said over and over again, we do not torture. Now he has admitted that he did sign off on torture, he did know about it. So how do you reconcile this credibility gap?

MS. PERINO: Helen, you're taking liberties with the what the President said. The United States has not, is not torturing any detainees in the global war on terror. And General Hayden, amongst others, have spoken on Capitol Hill fully in this regard, and it is — I'll leave it where it is. The President is accurate in saying what he said.

THOMAS: That's not my question. My question is, why did he state publicly, we do not torture —

MS. PERINO: Because we do not.

THOMAS: How can you [deny that we torture] when you have photographs and everything else? I mean, how can you say that when he admits that he knew about it? .... I'm asking for the credibility of this country, not just this administration.

MS. PERINO: And what I'm telling you is we have — torture has not occurred. And you can go back through all the public record. Just make sure — I would just respectfully ask you not to misconstrue what the President said.

THOMAS: You're denying, in this room, that we torture and we have tortured?

MS. PERINO: Yes, I am denying that.

Once upon a time such an exchange would have remained cloistered in the White House press room. Once upon a time Dana Perino might have left secure in the knowledge that no one outside of the press corps would ever know of the exchange and the glaring inconsistencies pointed out by Helen Thomas. Once upon a time...

Welcome, Ms. Perino, to the internet. The press conference was carried live on C-SPAN2 and within a few hours ThinkProgress and Crooks and Liars were carrying the story as a headline. From there it spread through various social networks and media groups including Reddit, Digg, and Newsvine.

And then it became popular.

Perhaps it was the image of experienced journalism asking the Bush Administration's latest talking head the tough questions no one else seems willing to ask. Perhaps it was dissatisfaction with the main-stream media's back-burner treatment of Bush's sign off on torture provisions. Perhaps it was that Helen Thomas finally asked the question that thousands of citizen-journalists and arm-chair pundits have been pondering since the sidelined story ran earlier this month. Or perhaps it was some combination of the three.

Whatever the reason, the reaction to Thomas' question has been extraordinary.

By most accounts it began on Reddit. Paul Hennell, posting under the name "Hennell" made the first suggestion of a flower drive though he is quick to point out that it's very much a communal effort. His comment was resubmitted to the system as a story in-and-of-itself by another user, "eddie964." Eddie's resubmission drew a comment from a third user, "MicahFitch" who set up a ChipIn account for the Flower Drive and donations from the community began trickling in.

I set up the ChipIn page after reading about the "Granny Warrior" story, expecting to raise enough for a bouquet or two of flowers, Fitch explained. I'd say that was an underestimation.

An underestimation indeed. Within an hour the account had collected $40. A few more hours put the total at $500. That $500 doubled in the next two hours and then doubled again in a little under an hour. User votes propelled the Flower Drive story up the front page of Reddit and then Digg as well; thousands of users clicked through to the site with hundreds donating to the cause. 457 donations and more than 3,700 dollars later the drive is still going strong and the emergant community is debating how to go about delivering the better part of a floral greenhouse to the Matron of the White House Press Corps.

One thing is for certain, Helen Thomas is about to get an answer to at least one question she asked: Where is everyone?

We're out here Helen, and we're grateful for your courage.

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