Former White House Press Secretary Tony Snow Is Dead

Another loyal servant of the Bush White House has passed away -- too soon, far too soon.

According to Sheryl Gay Stolberg, writing in the New York Times, "Tony Snow, Former White House Press Secretary, Dies at 53"

Tony Snow, the conservative columnist and television commentator who relished sparring with reporters during a 17-month stint as President Bush’s press secretary, died Saturday of colon cancer, the White House said. He was 53.

Mr. Snow’s tenure was interrupted by a recurrence of his cancer, and he was quite public about his battle with the disease, saying he wanted to offer hope to other cancer patients. His message to them, he once said, was: “Don’t think about dying. Think about living.”

Dana Perino, who succeeded Mr. Snow as press secretary, said Mr. Snow’s family informed her of the death early Saturday morning. Mr. Bush received the news from his chief of staff, Joshua B. Bolten.

“It was a joy to watch Tony at the podium each day,” Mr. Bush said in a statement. “He brought wit, grace and a great love of country to his work. His colleagues will cherish memories of his energetic personality and relentless good humor.”

Only a cold-blooded psychopath could bring relentless good humor to a job which consisted entirely of telling deliberate lies in an attempt to justify horrific, murderous, torturous, treasonous policies. And only another cold-blooded psychopath could speak of such a performance and "a great love of country" in the same sentence.

The sheer evil that was visible behind the White House podium every day during Tony Snow's tenure on the job has -- if anything -- been made even more visible by the current chief dissembler, who is not only cold-blooded but young and blonde and "cute". And this is progress, if your interest is in catapulting the propaganda.

With his tall, lanky frame, his thick head of gray hair (it thinned, but never disappeared, during chemotherapy) and his showman’s style, Mr. Snow, who joined the White House in April 2006, helped reinvigorate a press operation that many Republicans believed had been lacking. He loved serving at the White House, once calling it “the most exciting, intellectually aerobic job I’m ever going to have.”

And why was that? Because for once in his career Tony Snow found himself in a place where his lies might be publicly challenged?

Before becoming the chief spokesman for the president, Mr. Snow was a television commentator for Fox News. He was also host of the network’s Sunday public affairs program “Fox News Sunday.” Before joining Fox, Mr. Snow was a syndicated columnist for the Detroit News and USA Today.

At the White House, he turned the daily press briefing into something of a one-man show, challenging reporters’ questions and delivering hard-hitting answers, even when he was occasionally short on the facts.

It's quite nauseating to see how Cheryl Stolberg spins Snow's constant lying and non-stop aggression against the people who were supposed to be trying to find out the truth ...

More than once, Mr. Snow was forced to apologize, as he did shortly after taking the job when he erroneously said Mr. Bush viewed embryonic stem cell research as murder.

... for instance, here she chooses an example where Snow was wrong about what Bush had said.

Never mind all the other preposterous lies he told, like the one where the president was "in the war every day". And never mind about all the other times that Snow and Bush told the same deliberately false stories over and over ...

“He’s velvet glove and iron fist,” Jim Axelrod, the CBS White House correspondent, once said in describing Mr. Snow.

Is this a good thing? Do we all need to be punched in the nose more often?

Coming into the job, Mr. Snow had credibility [sic] with the media because as a commentator, he had often been critical of Mr. Bush.

It's amazing to think that working at FOX News in any capacity could gain anyone "credibility" with the media.

But credibility isn't what it once was. In the old days you had to earn it by telling the truth. Now it's conferred on those who tell the most convincing lies.

“Tony Snow broke the mold — he was a completely different kind of press secretary,” said Ann Compton of ABC News, who has covered six presidents. “For one thing, he would give you his own opinion and you’d have to say, ‘Tony, wait, I asked what the president thought.’ “

Translation: He wouldn't even answer the irrelevant quesions.

His snappy sound bites made Mr. Snow an instant hit among Republicans — and he was not shy about breaking barriers. “It’s like Mick Jagger at a rock concert,” Karl Rove, the president’s former political strategist, once said in describing him.

Snow's smiling, energetic performances helped keep Karl Rove out of prison.

During the 2006 midterm election campaign, Mr. Snow raised eyebrows by using his celebrity to raise money for Republican candidates — something that by Mr. Snow’s own admission, other press secretaries had declined to do for fear of seeming too partisan.

He didn't even care about creating the pretense of impartiality.

Mr. Snow said simply that his job was to serve the president, and that is what he intended to do.

The hottest spot in Hell is reserved for those who simply wanted to serve their tyrants. And Tony Snow is there -- right now -- warming up spots for Rove, Dumsfeld, and all the rest.

Ms. Compton, who had been in touch with Mr. Snow in recent months, said his condition took a turn for the worse after the White House correspondents’ dinner in April. “He had a front-row seat and he looked wonderful,” at the event, she said.

"Wonderful" in his usual energetic cold-blooded smiling psychopathic killer kind of way, of course.

"Wonderful" as described in all the obituaries flooding in ... as usual.

Whenever a prominent "conservative" dies, the "conservative" press goes into hyperdrive, publishing endless tributes to the fallen monster. Occasionally a blogger or two demurs and writes a factual piece about the dead scoundrel, and then "conservative" bloggers ask questions like, "Is the world better off, in your opinion, now that he is gone?"

In my opinion, NO, NOT MUCH. He had already done about as much damage as he could, and he was no longer in a position to do much more.

The world is not a much better place now that he is gone. The world would have been a slightly better place if he had never been born. The world would be a slightly better place today if he had been struck by lightning the first time he told a lie in the service of this unelected president. The world would have been a slightly better place if he had been born with a conscience -- or if he had developed one as he "grew up". But then his career path would have been different, for the American government has no use for citizens with consciences. And neither does FOX News.

I do not celebrate Tony Snow's death in any way. In my opinion it came far too soon. If there were any justice on Earth, Tony Snow's battle with cancer would have been a very long one. But that wouldn't have made the world any better, either.

What would make the world a better place?

If the millions of zombified sleepwalkers who are presently celebrating the twisted life of this despicable man were to read a piece such as this and -- instead of getting angry at the author -- remove their blinders and see for the first time how blatantly they are being manipulated, and how shamelessly they are being used as instruments of evil by the very psychopaths they idolize ...

And then, if they decided to do something about it ...