Let it Snow, Tony Snow, Tony Snow

By Lee Russ

Wednesday, April 26, 2006 at 05:52 PM

So Fox's Snow is now America's Snow, with the White House's unwavering one having named the Foxy one the new Press Secretary.  The best the news headlines seem to be able to do is "Snow has been critical of Bush."

If only that was the major point...or even a medium point.

Tony Snow (almost certainly to become known as Tony Snowjob) has quite a paper trail, so to speak.  Detroit News columnist, columnist for many conservative web sites including Jewish World Review and Town Hall, columnist for USA Today, editorial page editor for the Washington Times, Fox t.v. and radio "host," speechwriter for Bush I, substitute host for Rush Limbaugh, holder of a B.A. in...Philosophy.

Margaret Atwood is quoted as having said that Eskimos have 52 names for snow "because it is important to them."  I suspect that we'll only have one name for this Snow after a pretty short time: pretzel man.  Not because he's limber; because for a guy with a lot of newspaper experience, a degree in Philosophy, and experience in the White House, he's got some twisted logic in his writings.  I kid you not.  Check out these gems:

1. In a November 4, 2005 Town Hall column, Snow said:

...Joe Wilson himself made his wife a public figure by yowling about her supposedly rough treatment at the hands of the meanies working for the president. But there was no roughing up. When exposed, she was not "covert" and hadn't been for years. A number of reporters, including Michael Isikoff of Newsweek and Andrea Mitchell of NBC, described her CIA work as an "open secret" in Washington.

Now he said this just after rebutting Dem claims that the indictment is related to the White House use of intelligence to spur the war by citing Patrick Fitzgerald's statement that the Libby indictment was "not about the war ... not about the propriety of the war ... This indictment will not seek to prove that the war was justified or unjustified ... this is focused on a narrow transaction." So he trusts Fitzgerald's statements, right?

Well how come he doesn't trust (or bother to cite) Fitzgerald on whether Plame's status was a secret?  Fitzgerald could not have been clearer that Plame's CIA role was not well known until she was outed by the White House:

a. The Fitzgerald press statementabout the indictment specifically says that "on or about July 7, 2003, Libby had lunch with the then White House Press Secretary and advised that individual that Wilson's wife worked at the CIA, noting that such information was not widely known;

b. At Fitzgerald's press conference on Oct. 28, Fitzgerald specifically stated "In July 2003, the fact that Valerie Wilson was a CIA officer was classified. Not only was it classified, but it was not widely known outside the intelligence community. Valerie Wilson's friends, neighbors, college classmates had no idea she had another life. The fact that she was a CIA officer was not well known for her protection or for the benefit of all of us."

c. The Libby indictment itself specifically states "At all relevant times from January 1, 2002 through July 2003, Valerie Wilson was employed by the CIA, and her employment status was classified. Prior to July 14, 2003, Valerie Wilson's affiliation with the CIA was not common knowledge outside the intelligence community."

2. In a March 17, 2006 Town Hall column Snow says:

Another study shows that enhanced unemployment benefits have produced the predictable result -- longer periods of unemployment. Those who accept the benefits stay off the job more than twice as long as those who don't.
....
The welfare system actively prevents our pursuit of happiness. It discourages enterprise, innovation, risk, work, marriage, and personal responsibility for procuring medical care, caring for loved ones and saving for the future. It outsources compassion and criminalizes common sense.

If these aren't sufficiently lacking in logic and/or understanding of reality, try the fact that he made these comments as part of a laudatory review of the Charles Murray's book In Our Hands, a book which, among other things, recommends killing all federal programs concerned with health care, food, housing, education, jobs, job training, energy assistance, social services, retirement, unemployment insurance and income security. In their stead, he would give every American citizen over the age of 21 $10,000 per year from Uncle Sam, to be deposited directly into the person's bank account, with the stipulation that $3,000 of that sum must go directly into a retirement account. Isn't that swell? The poor would essentially get $7.000 for their current survival, have no other benefits or aid, and all the non-poor would also get $7,000 on top of what they already have. To which Snow says...the above quotes.

3. In an April 7, 2006 Town Hall column, Snow says:

The standard of living in the nation has grown to the point that the average welfare recipient has more creature comforts (homes, computers, televisions, cars, air conditioners, etc.) than the average citizen of France.

No reference to support this rather bizarre "fact," of course, though it sure sounds like one of those loony studies from Heritage or Hoover that play intricate games with definitions, make a crapload of loony assumptions and announce that, Yes, Virginia, there is no poverty.

4. In an April 14, 2006 Town Hall column, Snow says:

The story of Easter is one of renewal against all rules and odds. It describes the life of an unknown man who preached in a forlorn and forgotten corner of the globe, who lived humbly and died in humiliation, whose votaries fought with words and not swords, and who somehow became the source of the world's greatest and most influential religion. Death begat life, and life begat hope, and hope begat liberation.
....
Or how about prayer? Doctors swear by it. And even those who have tried to debunk it through scholarship have found themselves apologizing that even seemingly damning results seem downright unsatisfying.

The key to Easter is this: It is too preposterous, too outrageous, too incredible not to be true, and not to be the key to a much larger truth.

I swear I'm not lying; the man who wrote that has a degree in Philosophy.

5. In a March 3, 2006 [Town Hall column ], Snow says:

The analysis not only ignores the facts, but defies them. The Dubai hysteria came on the heels of a successful effort to tamp down a would-be rebellion in Iraq, followed by the arrest of dozens of al-Qaida operatives spread across Saudi Arabia, Iraq and the Levant.

A "successful effort to tamp down a rebellion in Iraq?"  what the F does THAT mean?

6. In an online column titled U.S. has absorbed millions of entrants, and economy soars, dated April 3, 2006, Snow attempts to rebut the many criticisms, and claims of costs associated with, of "illegal immigrants" but largely does so by comparing the claims about "illegal immigrants" with either plain "immigrants" or just "Hispanics."  That's a comparison that's air tight logically, right?

7. In a November 22, 2004 entry on Tony Snow's blog says:
   

....Despite recent global complaints about American "arrogance," we're a modest people, eager to credit Providence for our blessings and determined to make full use of our bounty.

Humility begets generosity, another staple of our national life. Somewhere near you, somebody right now is trying to help the indigent and poor - providing food, shelter, clothing or simple kindness. Millions of Americans annually commit themselves to such good works - and no country on earth comes close to matching our record.

Finally comes the matter of faith. We believe. We believe in our destiny as a nation. We believe we have been called to do good - to spread the blessings of liberty and encourage the sense of trust upon which free societies depend.
To have faith is to believe in truth; to believe that truth confers special power on those lucky enough to get a little insight; but most of all, to have faith is to know in the marrow of our souls that these things come from God.

This circle of virtues - from humility to God and back - explains why any American can rise from penury to greatness, and why all of us feel the tug of history's call. It helps us understand why young men, thrust into combat operations a half-world away, can operate with brutal efficiency on a battlefield and then display jaw-dropping compassion the instant hostilities draw to a close. It accounts for the fact that Americans volunteer their services in every squalid encampment on this planet, and why the typical picture of an American features a smile. We know life is good.

Shades of Mr. Reagan's Mourning in America [yes I know it's "morning," not "mourning"]

8. From the same blog, an entry dated December 8, 2004, Snow appears to join the Christians who are convinced that Christmas is "under attack":

Enter the Theophobes
This year, the Theophobes went too far: They chased the Salvation Army away from Target, banned "Merry Christmas" at Macy's, denied Christians a place in Denver's "Parade of Lights," booted fifth-and-sixth grade carolers from San Francisco's Union Square, and eliminated the Declaration of Independence from the history curriculum at Stevens Creek Elementary School in Cupertino, Calif.

It is hard to imagine a more telling batch of secular idiocies.

9. In yet another entry on the same blog Snow says, in addressing EJ Dionne's claim that the Bush 2004 victory was based in part on vicious personal attacks against John Kerry:

Vicious personal attacks: This is the sound of an otherwise bright guy in deep and whiny denial. The "vicious personal attacks" on John Kerry involved skepticism about his Vietnam record and rage about his betrayal of veterans upon his return from combat. George W. Bush, in contrast, had to put up with Fahrenheit 911, the rantings of every known rock star and most Hollywood celebs, bogus stories about his National Guard record, "lost" munitions, human-rights abuses, etc. The only conclusions one can draw here are that E.J. hasn't read his own side's rantings.

10. In a column apparently written for the Detroit News, but which caused a stir by appearing on a web site devoted to criticism of Martin Luther King (and apparently linked to a White supremacist web site called Stormfront), Snow writes about why Kwanzaa is a fraudulent holiday:

There is no part of Kwanzaa that is not fraudulent. Begin with the name. The celebration comes from the Swahili term "matunda yakwanza," or "first fruit," and the festival's trappings have Swahili names -- such as "ujima" for "collective work and responsibility" or "muhindi," which are ears of corn celebrants set aside for each child in a family.

Unfortunately, Swahili has little relevance for American blacks. Most slaves were ripped from the shores of West Africa. Swahili is an East African tongue.

To put that in perspective, the cultural gap between Senegal and Kenya is as dramatic as the chasm that separates, say, London and Tehran. Imagine singing "G-d Save the Queen" in Farsi, and you grasp the enormity of the gaffe.
...
Nobody ever ennobled a people with a lie or restored stolen dignity through fraud. Kwanzaa is the ultimate chump holiday -- Jim Crow with a false and festive wardrobe. It praises practices -- "cooperative economics, and collective work and responsibility" -- that have succeeded nowhere on earth and would mire American blacks in endless backwardness.

Our treatment of Kwanzaa provides a revealing sign of how far we have yet to travel on the road to reconciliation. The white establishment has thrown in with it, not just to cash in on the business, but to patronize black activists and shut them up.

This year, President Clinton signed his fourth Kwanzaa proclamation. He crooned: "The symbols and ceremony of Kwanzaa, evoking the rich history and heritage of African Americans, remind us that our nation draws much of its strength from our diversity."

11. According to Raw Story Snow told television viewers on an October 2003 edition of Fox News Sunday:

Here's the unmentionable secret: racism isn't that big a deal anymore.

Why? Because "no sensible person supports" it, and because of that, racism is "quickly becoming an ugly memory."  Why would anyone, even a Tony Snow, say that?  Well, he was defending Rush Limbaugh's now-famous claim that Donovan McNabb, a black NFL quarterback, was being deliberately overrated by the media because he was Black.

12. Media Matters reported in August, 2005 that Snow's August 12 syndicated column:

...equated evolutionary theory to "intelligent design" (commonly referred to as ID), claiming that "[e]volutionary theory, like ID, isn't verifiable or testable. It's pure hypothesis." Specifically, he falsely asserted that no fossil evidence exists in support of evolutionary theory. In fact, there is significant support for evolutionary theory in the fossil record, just one of many pillars of evidence supporting evolutionary theory.

And just for the hell of it, check out Media Matters' coverage of the lies of Tony Snow, part 1 and part 2.

So, all in all, perfect for the job of representing Bush, the man who is not reality-bound, before the nation's press corps.

Snow job.  Not a Snow ball's chance in hell of this being any improvement.

Snow white, Snow bright, can you see the earth tonight?

Jesus but I'm sick of this century.