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Thank you, Ms. Thomas

By Rich Copley rcopley@herald-leader.com

You can see the presidential lineage in the face of Kennedy, niece of President John F. Kennedy and daughter of Robert F. Kennedy, who was a candidate when he was ­assassinated in June 1968, six months before she was born.

Rory Kennedy's career as a documentary filmmaker has brought her to the ­American South numerous times, and to Kentucky when she made American Hollow, a film about an impoverished Eastern Kentucky family that rubbed some folks the wrong way.

Recently, Kennedy's focus has been Thomas. The 40-minute film premieres Monday night on HBO and repeats through September.

”I really enjoyed making the film and celebrating her,“ Kennedy said in a recent phone interview. ”She is extraordinarily deserving of having a documentary made about her life.

”One of those qualities that is unique about Helen Thomas is this quality of ­reporting that is hard-core. She continually asks those hard questions, and she's done it for so many years and she's seen so much, and she's so well-known.“

That last quality is particularly unusual for a wire-service reporter who often does not get a byline, Kennedy says.

She started with JFK

Thomas, 88, began ­working for United Press International in 1943 and began covering presidents in 1960, when she was assigned to follow President-elect Kennedy.

She has continued to be part of the White House press corps, a group of journalists based in the White House who regularly cover briefings, press conferences and other presidential activities. She became UPI's White House bureau chief and was known as ”the dean of the White House press corps.“

For decades, she opened press conferences with the first question and ended the conferences by saying, ”Thank you, Mr. President.“

In the film, Thomas tells how the line started: in a moment of sympathy for President Kennedy, who was clearly struggling during a press conference. Thomas got him off the hook by ­uttering that closing remark.

But Thomas' ­reputation was for asking tough ­questions, a trait that kicked in after the Watergate scandal that ended President Richard Nixon's administration.

”She felt like the White House reporters didn't do their job well,“ Rory ­Kennedy said. ”They failed because they were too close to the president, and it took two outside reporters (Bob Woodward and Carl ­Bernstein of The ­Washington Post, who were not part of the White House press corps) to uncover what was happening. That was a ­turning point for her, where she decided, "I will never again allow this to happen on my watch.'“

That hasn't always been a popular position, particularly in recent years.

Shunned by Bush

During the current Bush administration, Thomas has been bumped to the back row for press conferences, although she's still up front for briefings. She went three years without being called on by Bush.

During that same time, Thomas moved from being a reporter for UPI, which she left after the wire service was bought by the Rev. Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church, to being a ­columnist for Hearst Newspapers. In her columns, which are published occasionally in the Herald-Leader's opinions pages, Thomas has been scathingly critical of the Bush administration.

”It's extraordinary for me to see a woman who, after so many decades doing one job that she was really happy with, and she had a name for herself, now doing so ­wonderfully as a columnist and able to voice her ­opinion, and finding her voice comfortably,“ Kennedy says.

The filmmaker says Thomas has enjoyed going from the ”only the facts, ma'am“ style of beat ­reporting to being able to speak her mind, informed by almost half a century in the White House.

”She hardly even used an adjective,“ Kennedy says. ”She did have strong opinions, as it turns out, even though she did hide them over those years. And I think it's been a relief for her to be able to voice them, particularly now, under this administration, where I think she has some very strong opinions about where this country is being led in and the role of the reporter and journalist in holding them accountable.“

Because of illness, Thomas was not available to be interviewed for this story. In 2006, Thomas gave a speech at Centre College, and she laid into the Bush administration, recalling President Harry S Truman's saying, ”The buck stops here,“ and commenting, ”That has never been true in this White House.“ When she was asked by someone in the audience whether she could think of anything ­positive about Bush, she said, ”Give me a week, and I'll think of something.“

Kentucky is in her voice

Something else Kennedy heard in Thomas' voice is Kentucky.

Although Thomas moved to Detroit as a child and was primarily raised there, her roots are in Kentucky.

At that Centre talk, Thomas recalled her father would often travel back to Kentucky, returning with ”blackberry jam, ham and oysters.“ She said, ”We never lost our ties to the state.“

The film focuses on Thomas' White House work with just a brief mention of her youth. But in ­interviewing Thomas, Kennedy says it was clear that Kentucky, and her parents moving to the United States from Lebanon, was very ­important to her. Kennedy also said she could hear some Kentucky-isms in Thomas' speech that echoed time Kennedy spent filming in Eastern Kentucky.

”Even though she doesn't have any children herself, she maintains strong ties to family, and family is very important to her,“ Kennedy says. ”She doesn't have a Southern accent, but there were some ways that she spoke that made me think about people in Appalachia, mostly because there were kinds of sayings and ways she used to describe things that felt very familiar to me in terms of what I ­experienced in Kentucky.“

It was ”a colorful and old-school way of ­speaking“ that struck Kennedy — phrases like ”There's a fine line between fishing and looking stupid“ and ”You see a president, ask a question. You have one chance in the barrel. Don't blow it.“

As Kennedy's film shows, Thomas rarely did.

Rory Kennedy knows about the presidency and she knows about Kentucky.

Those two areas of expertise come together in her latest documentary, Thank You, Mr. President, covering the career of Winchester native and legendary White House correspondent Helen Thomas.