Columnist.
Ari Fleischer was press secretary to an American president, not to some commissar or caudillo, yet his reaction to Helen Thomas' latest anti-Israel outburst would have been more fit for a totalitarian than a free society. He demanded that Hearst fire its White House correspondent, who'd probably been there longer than most of the furniture.
If you missed the president's news conference Thursday, his first in 10 months, here's a succinct summary: It was about the oil spill. And it's mainly somebody else's fault. Whose? BP's or the previous administration's (his favorite scapegoat even though he's been president now for some 16 months). Or it's the fault of unnnamed "federal agencies" he really has nothing to do with, or the "culture" of the oil industry and government regulation thereof, or ... you name it. This he called taking responsibility.
The most vivid memories aren't those carved in stone but the ones etched in the mind. Memory deepens with the years, the way a river carves through rock, slowly revealing new layers, creating canyons. Sometimes the river overflows its banks. And you tear up. Maybe on an anniversary, or when you hear a certain song, or for no discernible reason at all. And it all comes back. On this Memorial Day weekend, I think of the old lady in black. She was a fixture of my childhood, never speaking, but always there in one of the little shops up the street just a few doors from our own.
