I did a phone interview with Helen Thomas in advance of a Milwaukee visit eight years ago, and I asked the question you just had to ask Helen Thomas:
"You've covered nine presidents so far. How many more do you plan to cover?"
"Why is that always a question?" she protested. "I'd like to work forever. How long are you going to work?"
My smarty-pants answer: "'Til 4 o'clock or so. Is that OK?"
"You should work longer than that, much longer," she said with a parental, or grandparental tone.
In the end, Helen Thomas worked too long. She had one more president under her belt when she retired Monday at 89, following an embarrassing and ignorant comment, caught on video:
She posted an apology on her Web site:
"I deeply regret my comments I made last week regarding the Israelis and the Palestinians. They do not reflect my heart-felt belief that peace will come to the Middle East only when all parties recognize the need for mutual respect and tolerance. May that day come soon."
Thomas, of Lebanese descent, has been a columnist based in the White House for years for the Hearst newspapers, although she made her reputation as a wire service reporter. While that columnist job freed her to express opinions, the ridiculous opinion that Israelis whose families came from Germany or Poland should "go home" to Germany and Poland was beyond explanation.
Now, a groundbreaking career that stretches back to John F. Kennedy is likely to be remembered for one hateful comment.
Of course that's sad.
Thomas has been the target of the more vitriolic commentators on the right. Bill O'Reilly has termed her "the wicked witch of the East," and her wizened looks (she's 89, after all) were frequently the subject of jokes on Internet sites like this one.
None of that stopped her from expressing her self-described liberal views. As she said during our conversation, "what's wrong with being liberal?"
That didn't mean she treated Barack Obama with kid gloves. Here she is at a White House news conference:
Thomas had a reputation as the hardest-working person in the press corps, showing up before everybody.
But, in the end, she worked too long -- a lesson for everybody who's unwilling to retire.
Just what Milwaukee's radio dial needs: The non-stop Beatles marathon ended around 3 p.m. Monday at 106.9 on Milwaukee's FM dial with the launch of "Big Buck Country," playing country music from the 1970s, '80s and '90s.
If it sounds familiar, "Big Buck Country" plays the same music as WOKY-AM (920), which calls itself "The Wolf." But FM's a better place to listen to music than AM, which is why virtually the entire band is given over to some form of talk.
Even if Big Buck Country trounces the Wolf, we're talking about a niche station. It's targeting adults 36 to 64. That's an older audience than the broad 25 to 54 audience sought by most Milwaukee stations.
The Wolf, by the way, is owned by Clear Channel, which also owns the markets big country music station, WMIL-FM (106.1).
Now, let's talk about call letters -- which are the station's legal name, and are frequently picked to tie into the station's identy.
The smooth jazz incarnation of the station was WJZX-FM. It's now calling itself WQNW-FM, which were likely reserved to tie-in to the top-40 "Now" format that WQBW took first.
It wouldn't be a surprise if the station ended up applying for another set of call letters more in line with this "Big Buck Country" identity.
Tim Cuprisin is the media columnist for OnMilwaukee.com. He's been a journalist for 30 years, starting in 1979 as a police reporter at the old City News Bureau of Chicago, a legendary wire service that's the reputed source of the journalistic maxim "if your mother says she loves you, check it out." He spent a couple years in the mean streets of his native Chicago, and then moved on to the Green Bay Press-Gazette and USA Today, before coming to the Milwaukee Journal in 1986.
A general assignment reporter, Cuprisin traveled Eastern Europe on several projects, starting with a look at Poland after five years of martial law, and a tour of six countries in the region after the Berlin Wall opened and Communism fell. He spent six weeks traversing the lands of the former Yugoslavia in 1994, linking Milwaukee Serbs, Croats and Bosnians with their war-torn homeland.
In the fall of 1994, a lifetime of serious television viewing earned him a daily column in the Milwaukee Journal (and, later the Journal Sentinel) focusing on TV and radio. For 15 years, he has chronicled the changes rocking broadcasting, both nationally and in Milwaukee, an effort he continues at OnMilwaukee.com.
When he's not watching TV, Cuprisin enjoys tending to his vegetable garden in the backyard of his home in Whitefish Bay, cooking and traveling.
