Then I expect the same from our side. (You'll still be allowed to misspell the recently deceased name as a form of protest).
PS. Snow was only repeating what Bush and Co. told him to say. He may or may not have been privy to any inner-workings of the Bush Administration.
--
I had discovered a great secret. That everyone loves themselves more than they love anybody else. And if I wanted them to love me, I better be like THEM!... Ken Nordine
One man's defeat by nature doesn't make up for the attack on humanity perpetrated by goons like him, but I'm happy about his slow destruction.
In a fair world, he would be tortured by every man unfairly disappeared into Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, or the European torture chambers. In a fair world, he would get his limbs blown off by the disfigured collateral damage of his war. Cancer got him instead. Good enough.
Second, I don't really advocate torture, otherwise I wouldn't care about the atrocities that people like Tony Snow enable. I might think that he deserves it, but I wouldn't support it. After all, I wouldn't want to become him.
Your comment makes no sense. We're not allowed to have morals without seeking guidance from your favorite religion? You need a priest to tell you that drowning someone is wrong?
And a god that apparently believes that generating PR about something is the same as doing that thing. So maybe you could be the patron saint of advertising.
--
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.
Opposing torture without quoting the bible = thinking myself a god? Grilling the bush admin for not being extremist enough, then joining their operation to defend their atrocious ways or just distract the media while his boss continues to kidnap random people and drown them or electrocute their balls = just PR?
You are happy that Tony Snow is dead, you hope he suffered before he died, and you support him being tortured when he was still alive. You call that "fair" because you have decided that even though Snow didn't torture anyone himself (you know that, right? Not sure how basic I need to get here), you believe he gave Bush cover while Bush was torturing people.
You are advocating torture "in a fair world"; but of course, the only people who should be tortured are the ones you believe deserve it. Further, you think it would be "fair" to torture people like Snow who you believe simply advocated or supported torture, even if they didn't do the actual deed.
Since you advocated the torture of Tony Snow and since you think it's OK to torture people who advocate torture, is there any reason why it wouldn't "fair" for the government to torture you in this imaginary world of yours? Your answer: Tony Snow deserved it, but you don't. My question: who in your "inhumane but fair world" decides who gets tortured and who doesn't? The obvious answer: You do.
Are you getting the self-deification issue yet?
--
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.
How much clearer can that be? Are we now going to debate whether "just" means "fair" in this context? If Username wants to back his way out of this one, he can. I don't get the impression he does.
And I prefer my favorite: "In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king."
--
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.
As I mentioned to catchy, I don't actually advocate that anyone be tortured, since I'm not willing to sink to Tony Snow's level.
Sure, if I were calling for Tony to be drowned until near or actual death then I would deserve the same by my own standards. But that's not the case. If you delivered a torturer (or an enabler of his like Tony Snow) to my house I wouldn't torture him, nor would I deliver him to torturers.
But I see BlaiseP's side of this as well. This is an internet message board about politics. Not sure why everyone's so fluffed up about BlaiseP's comments... it's just an opinion.
I'm reminded how I was sickened by the solemn reverent tone we all were supposed to adopt when Nixon died. Sad for his family, but I say good riddance.
My point is that this is a discussion forum, not someone's wake or private function full of grieving relatives. I think discussion should be left open.
And it's perfectly fine if people want to get offended, outraged or flustered, or ride tall upon high horses of indignation. Entertaining, and fine.
Also - do you guys (you and the other folks who are disgusted by certain postings on this thread) get all bent out of shape over celebrity death-pools, or guessing which famous person will round out the adage that "deaths come in threes"?
Whatever you think of this man's career and the consequences of choices he made in his life, that life is over now, and crowing over his fate is both a) embarrassing to anyone with any sense of decency and b) completely beside the point of current politics. Micturating on this guy's headstone is not going to change Iraq policy, nor bring anyone back to life, nor undo the damage of a major policy failure. It's just going to make you look like an unmannered twit.
A memorial, in other words, is no place to criticize a person's life. If you have some particular beef with Tony Snow, as opposed to the entire administration (which is currently alive and in power), it would be better to take it up some other time and place.
My condolences to his family and friends for their loss.
--
Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes. That way when you criticize them, you're a mile away and you have their shoes. -JH
Tony Snow's passing away from colon cancer (#102845)
by BlaiseP on Sun, 07/13/2008 - 4:13pm
ought to motivate everyone who reads this to get a checkup. Tony Snow's mother also died of colon cancer when he was only 17 years old.
We'll all die of something, no doubt. I've got a history of prostate cancer in my family. Men are always somewhat squeamish about it, but there's no reason to fear a medical exam if it will add decades to your life.
I didn't like Tony Snow's politics. I harbor an abiding disgust for Rush Limbaugh, for whom Tony substituted any number of times. He was more than Affable Tony, he was a virulent opponent of anything the Democrats ever said and even took George Bush to the woodshed in his column from time to time. He was never a nice man. At best he was what might be called Consistent, and his shrieking rants would earn him many solos fronting the Fox News Choir in the Church of Faux Outrage. When Bush came calling, in need of a spokesman, Tony stood up to carry water for a man of whom he once said
Little in the character of demeanor of Al Gore or George Bush makes us say to ourselves: Now, this man is truly special! Little in our present peace and prosperity impels us to say: Give us a great man! ... George W. Bush ... talks of a pillowy America, full of niceness and goodwill. Bush has inherited his mother's attractive feistiness, but he also got his father's syntax. At one point last week, he stunned a friendly audience by barking out absurd and inappropriate words, like a soul tortured with Tourette's.
Tony Snow stands with Mephistopheles in Gounoud's Faust:
Je crois que mes avis sont vains
Et que l'amour l'emporte,
Mais pour vous faire ouvrir la porte,
Vous avez grand besoin
du secours de ma voix.
I know my advice is in vain
Love has conquered you
But for you to open this door
You have great need
Of the help of my voice.
He manifestly attacked the Democrats every chance he got. (#102849)
by BlaiseP on Sun, 07/13/2008 - 5:28pm
His rhetoric was snide and obtuse. To read his prose, the Democrats were the greatest sinners in the history of mankind: intent upon the destruction of all we hold dear. No he was not a nice man in print.
He may well have been a decent man in person, when he wasn't behind a typewriter, what the Germans call Gemütlichkeit. This niceness was not apparent in print, and he would stand there, confronted by David Gregory:
GREGORY: It’s kind of a totality question, though. How you can hear these things and not conclude that it’s rejection of the President’s policy?
SNOW: Well, number one, “stay the course” is not the policy.
...
But you need to understand that trying to frame it in a partisan way is actually at odds with what the Group, itself, says it wanted to do. And so you may try to do whatever you want in terms of rejection, that’s not the way they view it.
GREGORY: I just want to be clear. Are you suggesting that I’m trying to frame this in a partisan way?
SNOW: Yes.
Verdict: Not Nice. Not fair. Partisan to the core. Oh, he may have been nice to individuals on a personal basis, no doubt he was. But a man is more than the sorts of things he says within earshot, at a dinner party or other social settings, that sort of politesse anyone can indulge in, for those who cannot be friendly to their enemies in social situations do not become the Press Secretary to the President of the United States of America. In the studio and in his column, Tony Snow was hardly given to being a Nice Guy, and don't you try to turn this guy into a saint. He was a spokesman for a vindictive Administration he once condemned.
Tony Snow was, I suppose, a decent and kindly man in person, but he was as I have said in the Faust quote, the man who could open doors with his voice. He'd look you straight in the eye and tell you things you could trust to be as one-sided as a Moebius Loop. And don't you take umbrage as if I lack compassion for his passing: he was a man who died most untimely. His death ought to put in mind of our own mortality and the threat of colorectal cancer. Others may heap him with fawning encomiums, I feel it's important to remember the man as he truly was: a handsome man who opened doors with his voice. The message he carried out from the Oval Office was a pack of lies, deeply partisan and he brooked no contradiction: his flashes of anger from behind the podium when confronted by these lies was ill-concealed, see above.
Tony Snow's most important lie about Democrats was saying Jimmy Carter authorized warrant-less wiretaps on American citizens. Carter specifically directed his Attorney General otherwise. Well, we've lived long enough to see warrant-less wiretaps become the order of the day. Tony would be proud.
There was also this little gem from behind the podum (#102851)
by BlaiseP on Sun, 07/13/2008 - 5:46pm
Q ... What would your guidance be to a public that has seen the President stand under a "Mission Accomplished" banner, proclaim an end to major combat operations, the Vice President talking about the "last throes" -- how should the public go into viewing this speech tomorrow?
MR. SNOW: I think the public ought to just listen to what the President has to say. You know that the "Mission Accomplished" banner was put up by members of the USS Abraham Lincoln. ...
As we now know, the banner was paid for and put up by the White House. Which sorta makes Mission Accomplished take on a whole new meaning.
There's a wonderful old Irish joke about a man's dog lying dead. The man brings the dog to church, asks the priest for a Christian burial and masses to be said for the dog. "Oh, there's to be none of that in this church, but maybe there's a church somewhere that might."
"Here's 50,000 pounds for the burial and masses to be said for five years"
"Well, why didn't you say this was a Catholic dog?"
Well, no undertaker can smear on the rouge thick enough (#102852)
by BlaiseP on Sun, 07/13/2008 - 5:56pm
to hide Tony Snow's long legacy of bitter savaging of his enemies in print.
Which doesn't take away anything from his humanity. Many's the fine lawyer who gets a wonderful eulogy from his fellows. But let's not get all mawkish in our grief here. In print and in front of the camera, he was an advocate, and he did not shoot straight with the American people. That wasn't in his job description.
Let others mourn his passing, enough people bought his line of garbage to carry his casket. If I feel obliged to put forward a few of this man's more pertinent utterances, it is nothing personal, as his attacks and lies weren't personal, either. He was just doing his job. I'm doing mine.
Ah, let him say what he likes, no skin off my nose. (#102858)
by BlaiseP on Sun, 07/13/2008 - 7:33pm
See, he really has no other comeback. Yeah, it is disconcerting to hear of the Affable Tony Snow being described as a deceitful Mephistopheles. But that's exactly what he was, there's really no denying it, however rude it may be to point out the truth of the matter. He sold us a Hefty Bag full of garbage and we're supposed to praise him for his consideration and kindness for providing us with such a useful and strong container.
Tony Snow goes back a lot farther than his days in the White House. I chiefly remember him from his column, back in the day when he was a leading spokesman for conservative causes. We must remember his career goes back over 30 years. In those days, he would have us believe the Democrats were the devil incarnate, and nary a kind word did he have for us. I have not forgotten his ugliness in print. Nor have I forgotten his petulance when confronted by obvious discrepancies between facts and rhetoric. The Scooter Libby go-round, with reporters shouting at him "Don't insult our intelligence" was really the nadir of his time at the WH.
Yet oddly, the news outlets thought he was the go-to guy for any conservative viewpoint. NPR had him on for a while. He'd turn up on McLaughlin and all the Sabbath Gasbag shows, oh they couldn't get enough of Tony Snow.
Well, now he's gone, and it's a personal tragedy for the people who loved him. But I come to bury him, not to praise him, for the evil men do lives on after them. Tony Snow, during his lifetime, was the public incarnation of the ugliest aspects of partisan bickering, and while the rest of the world can call me petty and small, I shall remain petty and small. Nobody beyond a few wonks will ever read my crap about Iraq or the Arabs or the Pashtuns, for they are tedious enumerations and knitting together of facts and names and places.
But my every prediction has come true. When the news of the Watergate break-in was reported, I predicted Nixon would fall. I predicted China would go capitalist in a big way after the Nixon visit. I predicted the fall of Cambodia after the US invasion. I predicted the Americans would abandon Vietnam and Laos. in 1983, I correctly predicted the fall of the Soviet Union. I predicted the Balkans War after Tito died. I predicted the re-invasion of Iraq. A few ugly epithets from the likes of Mac are easily shrugged off: time and tide have proven me correct, over and over. Every one of those predictions was greeted with catcalls from people with advanced degrees or command experience. Part of the problem with being a Cassandra is this: I know it's going to come true when people start in calling me ugly names. I suppose I should thank Mac and his ilk, they're the Prussian Blue on the microscope slide, giving my analysis the needed scoffing to bring out its fundamental correctness. It's when everyone agrees with me that I know I'm succumbing to Groupthink.
Tony Snow lied a lot to support policies that killed a lot of people. Now he's dead. I'm not particularly sad, because I don't value the lives of white middle class men more than the lives of the poor and persons of color whose ends he unethically hastened.
He was a person who did a job that required him to outright lie a lot. He was okay with that. That's who he was. Now he's dead. That doesn't change who he was.
--
It's impossible to debate if people simply hold beliefs that have no grounding in reality.
that there are a lot of folk on the right whose policies you + BlaiseP believe, as a matter of objective fact, lead directly to deaths.
But not only is that not taken for granted here, it's precisely those policies we're here to discuss.
I think Mac could've been more politic in engaging w. BlaiseP, but I also don't think it's good for the site that whenever a conservative dies - -Buckley, Snow, etc. -- that folk come here to dance on that person's grave.
Buckley IMO was really a pretty egregious case as it's understandable how folk could respect his thought processes and character. I'm friends with someone who was more or less adopted by Buckley so that he could continue playing classical piano vs. whatever non-artistic way he would've had to make his living.
Perhaps other folks might have similar connections to Snow, who knows.
Point is, I don't see someone's early exit from the stage as the best time to attack the person's record. If you feel the need to calm down excessive eulogizing or somethng that might be one thing.
But I didn't see anything like that here and I think these posts just serve to satisfy one's ranting proclivities and harden the discourse.
Forgetting the worry that it's a gauche lack of respect for our common humanity (which in all honesty I don't know how to feel about) such posting ain't really productive for a site like this.
Some people are honestly wrong about things, and I respect them. I tend to learn from them, because anyone who's basically honest probably has a thing or two figured out. It's the lying. Snow's job was to lie for a living, and he knew this, and he did it. That implies to me a less honest belief in the policies he worked so hard to support.
He's some guy. I have nothing in common with him. Thousands of people die of cancer every day, and he's one of them. He wasn't a particularly good person, and I didn't know him, so that's that.
I'm honestly surprised by the response to this; I thought that it was de rigeur around here to post diaries and comments celebrating the deaths of our political enemies. Is it that he's an American, so his decision to turn his back on decency doesn't count? Or is it that he's a middle class white guy, so he reminds too many of us of the arbitrary nature of our mortality?
--
It's impossible to debate if people simply hold beliefs that have no grounding in reality.
I thought that it was de rigeur around here to post diaries and comments celebrating the deaths of our political enemies
I hadn't noticed. Anyway I thought Mac was trying to change the etiquette and I'm inclined to agree.
Re: Is it that he's an American, so his decision to turn his back on decency doesn't count? Or is it that he's a middle class white guy, so he reminds too many of us of the arbitrary nature of our mortality?
I thought I said I was putting such general considerations to one side in favor of the site's goals + potential personal acquaintence.
Re: lying, I really didn't follow his career. You mainly mentioned his partial responsibility for 1000s of deaths.
Feel free to make a case based solely on the former, but I don't see how it's not going to also rely on your beliefs re: the latter.
I don't care about a guy who lies about trivial things. If some dude spent his political career insisting that the spork was invented by Chuck Norris, despite all evidence to the contrary, it would have very little effect on my overall opinion of the guy.
--
It's impossible to debate if people simply hold beliefs that have no grounding in reality.
But made an argument for not including, even as one component among others, your appraisal of the policies' effects since that's what we're here to discuss.
Put another way, would you deride someone after their untimely death if they'd made distortions for a policy you believed in (as several conservatives here do) -- i.e. regarded as ultimately saving more lives in the long run by avoiding a future protracted conflict?
Doubt it.
The pt. is that most people don't appreciate being sent the implicit message that, were they a stranger, their differing beliefs would be partial grounds for celebrating their demise.
I just don't think it's that much to ask to check one's comments in mixed company.
You're imputing way more caring than I have. I didn't say much of anything for days, and I only jumped in to explain why I appreciated why someone might feel that the man's work was being whitewashed.
Again, my opinion is: he's some dude that died. I assume that, like many people, he left behind friends and family to whom he was good, and I have precisely the same vague sympathy toward them as I have toward the tens of thousands of other friends and families of American dudes that died that day -- and tens of millions of friends and family of people in general who died that day. My interaction with Mr. Snow was peripheral, occasional, and unambiguously negative on every level.
It's absurd to expect me to eulogize a man who is only known to me because of his decision to engage in behavior which I find hateful on behalf of policies which I find malodorous.
Find me some Iraqi kid who was shot by an American mercenary, or a Afghanistani woman beaten to death by resurgent Taliban militants -- or, heck, a true-believing American private who was killed in action doing what he thought was right. They're actually innocent in a way that Mr. Snow was not. And they're dead due to policies he took great pains to support mendaciously.
He was just another public servant who viewed my trust as his plaything, and now he's gone. I'm sorry he didn't get a chance to spend his thirty pieces of silver and all that, but I'm not going to tear my shirt over it.
--
It's impossible to debate if people simply hold beliefs that have no grounding in reality.
It was expected that should I speak, I should eulogize. That is, that if anything were to be said, that it would be positive.
As always, I appreciate your decision to insult me and my postings; my unusually large head, XY chromosome structure, and propensity to sunburn have combined to give me the insight that if I am being so insulted, I am most certainly saying or doing something right.
--
It's impossible to debate if people simply hold beliefs that have no grounding in reality.
...of the phrase PM used, and attempted to find a tiny little linguistic crack so as to insert your bile. Of course nobody actually "expected" PM to eulogize Snow, but you simply ignored his point. Ho hum.
Then you claim it is PM's habit to tell lies when he posts:
"As usual, you simply can't get through a message without committing at least as obvious a "lie" as anything Tony Snow ever perpetrated."
I'd like to see some examples of these numerous lies, rather than your attempts at hyper-parsing. And if you can't come up with some examples, well, perhaps you should not accuse other posters of lying, and instead reflect on the feelings and the motivations that prompted you to accuse somebody of lying rather than address the substance of his post, and of this thread.
I'd eulogize Snow myself, but I found Blaise's comments described my feelings perfectly, and also his writing skills vastly exceed mine.
You gotta expect this stuff when you are welded to the political faction that started a war under false pretenses, for partisan political gain, actually, and thus committed criminal offenses against the nation. Buck up.
So BlaiseP, followed by PM, followed by you, crash a wake, shouting abuse at the recently deceased...
And when I - no great fan of either Tony Snow or the administration he represented - take exception to this disgusting behavior, you start shouting abuse at me.
Enough. I've had enough of you, and everybody like you.
I think you ought to point out where the lies are, V (#103220)
by BlaiseP on Tue, 07/15/2008 - 9:17pm
I'm not abusing anyone, least of all Tony Snow, who is beyond abusing at this point. Encomiums and accolades stack up around him from those who liked him and many who didn't. He really was a piece of work, Vinteuil. He wasn't nice to people.
Here, and in the life of Tony Snow, we are what we write. It doesn't matter if we're nice people in real life. That's easy: we're civil because we don't want to get arrested or fired or thought a jackass by people within arm's reach. We're nice because we have to be. But out here, and on paper, we're more at liberty to be our true selves, and it is my considered opinion mankind is a fierce little hominid with nothing better to do than defend what's his and take what isn't and lie and cheat and predate on the weak and make excuses for all of it. Tony Snow was just such a designated Excuse Maker, but few escaped his acid pen during his lifetime. The evil that men do lives on after them, the good is oft interred with their bones.
Well, excuse me for noting a summation of Tony Snow's life must include the things he said. Words live on, and Tony Snow's excuse-making is now part of the public record.
Don't take it as abuse, Vinteuil. You are not given to much in the bonhomie department, yourself. At least Tony Snow could affect a little bonhomie, graciousness, that sort of thing in person and if it came across as wooden, well, he was only playing a role. The press did not appreciate his insulting their intelligence, and I'll say the same of you from where I sit. Facts don't take sides.
-- "George W. Bush and his colleagues have become not merely the custodians of the largest government in the history of humankind, but also exponents of its vigorous expansion." [3/17/06]
-- "President Bush distilled the essence of his presidency in this year's State of the Union Address: brilliant foreign policy and listless domestic policy." [2/3/06]
-- "George Bush has become something of an embarrassment." [11/11/05]
-- Bush "has a habit of singing from the Political Correctness hymnal." [10/7/05]
-- "No president has looked this impotent this long when it comes to defending presidential powers and prerogatives." [9/30/05]
-- Bush "has given the impression that [he] is more eager to please than lead, and that political opponents can get their way if they simply dig in their heels and behave like petulant trust-fund brats, demanding money and favor — now!" [9/30/05]
-- "When it comes to federal spending, George W. Bush is the boy who can't say no. In each of his three years at the helm, the president has warned Congress to restrain its spending appetites, but so far nobody has pushed away from the table mainly because the president doesn't seem to mean what he says." [The Detroit News, 12/28/03]
-- "The president doesn't seem to give a rip about spending restraint." [The Detroit News, 12/28/03]
-- "Bush, for all his personal appeal, ultimately bolstered his detractors' claims that he didn't have the drive and work ethic to succeed." [11/16/00]
-- "Little in the character of demeanor of Al Gore or George Bush makes us say to ourselves: Now, this man is truly special! Little in our present peace and prosperity impels us to say: Give us a great man!" [8/25/00]
-- "George W. Bush, meanwhile, talks of a pillowy America, full of niceness and goodwill. Bush has inherited his mother's attractive feistiness, but he also got his father's syntax. At one point last week, he stunned a friendly audience by barking out absurd and inappropriate words, like a soul tortured with Tourette's." [8/25/00]
-- "He recently tried to dazzle reporters by discussing the vagaries of Congressional Budget Office economic forecasts, but his recitation of numbers proved so bewildering that not even his aides could produce a comprehensible translation. The English Language has become a minefield for the man, whose malaprops make him the political heir not of Ronald Reagan, but Norm Crosby." [8/25/00]
-- "On the policy side, he has become a classical dime-store Democrat. He gladly will shovel money into programs that enjoy undeserved prestige, such as Head Start. He seems to consider it mean-spirited to shut down programs that rip-off taxpayers and mislead supposed beneficiaries." [8/25/00]]/quote]
You got what you asked for. I like that. Tourette's Syndrome. Now I wouldn't say that about George Bush, but Tony Snow can, and you think that's Being Nice.
I'd hate to see what you find Not Nice. As for shoveling BS, it's all cited nicely for you and Vinteuil's inspection and review.
Now I'll tell you what shoveling BS is: it's going to work for a man you said was a barking idiot with Tourette's Syndrome. Which is only exceeded in the annals of BSomettry by the Bush Administration actually hiring this guy. But it takes one to know one, they say, and the White House press conferences were a recapitulation of the Augean Stables. I think the SI are coming out with a new unit of measure in his honor, the tonysnow, the amount of force required to give a mass of one kilogram of BS an acceleration of one meter per second squared.
...and I think perhaps Harley is overreacting to your comment, but it's so ambiguously written, by my standards, that I'm not sure what you're trying to say. I think Harley sees an insult, but I guess it has yet to hit me.
Intellectual standards aside, your side accused my side of lying out of habit. That observation is at odds with the vast majority of those who read his posts. There seems to be a lot of personal insults and road apples hurled primarily from your side of the fence to mine. This tactic implies, by my standards, that that's all you got.
You know, lots of guys who participate in political combat get eulogized this way. Most of the time they deserve it. This man helped lie us into a stupid and unnecessary war. If you stop and think about it, that is a really, really bad thing to do. That's what this is all about. Mere political opponents don't get eulogized this way. Those who make mistakes of this magnitude deserve criticism at each opportunity available. Let the book writing begin.
And no offense, but the 'your side vs. our side' and 'my side is truth/justice/majority/etc.' thingee is sort of the point, and as long everything is viewed through that lens, nothing I say is going to make much sense.
--
“I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views.”
Superman's motto: Truth, Justice and the American Way. I learned this sitting in front of the TV as a small child watching George Reeves bend revolvers and steel bars to cuff the bad guys.
Tony Snow did his best to fling crap on those ideals. Helped the Bushroids start an unnecessary war. I wish his family well and hope they see the errors in his ways. And write about them.
Seriously, this is ridiculous. I know there's apparently a perceived bunch of big bad libs piling on all the conservatives here, but these are direct and unprovoked insults coming from the same poster in this same thread. I thought there was a code red level crackdown in effect.
Mac's throwing some elbows, but they're no sharper than Zelig's, vinteuil's, or anyone else's that has waded into the scrum. Surely this "code red level crackdown" doesn't mean we're a bunch of wilting flowers, does it?
Maybe in the future when someone political dies, we can have a solemn serious Thread of Mourning, immediately followed by a thread where commenters can post thoughts and opinions about the person without getting the pearl-clutching "How dare you?!" treatment.
Being a partisan is one thing. However to LIE about someone, (and that is exactly what PM and Blaise are doing if we accept their insanely situational version of what constitutes lying) as some sort of drive-by counter obituary, is not only in bad taste, but it should be embarrassing…
However, it obviously isn't.
The individual that I know who was close to Tony Snow, is an ardent democrat, and it would kill him to read the crap pile of nonsense posted here. Or he'd kill the authors of it. Yet, because Snow was a public figure, people feel free to lie just so they can get in their lame partisan shots.
When partisanship takes over that much of someone's humanity...
well… it's creepy, I don't understand it, and I don't want to be associated with it.
--
“I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views.”
Did Tony Snow tell us the truth about Mission Accomplished? (#103002)
by BlaiseP on Mon, 07/14/2008 - 4:38pm
Did he tell us the truth about Iraq when he said "You didn't have girls in school when Saddam was there." That's a pure-d lie. Saddam did educate his women. That's because he was a secularist.
I've pointed out a host of other lies, but that one sorta sticks out. Maybe he had Iraq confused with Afghanistan, like the rest of the administration... makes me want to shout at 'em like a drill sergeant "No, you crop of dumbasses, you're on the wrong side of Iran, didn't they teach you geography? Iraq-Iran-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India."
Of course they didn't teach geography to these bozos. They wouldn't know a Shiite from a Sunni from an Allawi from a Druze from a Baha'i to save their lives. Or anyone else's life.
Y'know, I can take almost any amount of abuse online, and you're not going to get my blood pressure up. I learned a long time ago, anger spoils my aim, so I don't indulge in it. I have not LIED to anyone about Tony Snow. He was no different than his predecessors, yet another sacrificial lamb the Administration sends out to endure the press yelling Bullshit at them. You can almost hear the Prez and Cheney upstairs snickering when they're caught in a lie. The Congress won't act on these liars, and Bush commutes the sentence of Scooter Libby, who was convicted on four counts of perjury, obstructing justice and lying to the FBI.
So I guess, in Macallan's Bizarro-World, Tony Snow told us the truth. Clearly Tony Snow did not tell us the truth, that's beyond discussion, I've cited the WH transcripts. There's plenty more where that came from. You haven't contradicted me once, but you call me a liar nonetheless.
Lies take many forms, and every advertiser has a lawyer on retainer to make sure his claims pass muster. I don't expect a WH press secretary to run his boss down, but I think it's important the truth be told. The last seven years and some has been characterized by secrecy and lies beyond number. I see no reason to praise a man whose job was to tell lies. This administration has a track record of hiring liars: Elliot Abrams, professional liar to Congress, is now in charge of Middle East affairs for Condi Rice.
Now you can back down now. I don't care if you call me a liar, but it runs deeply contrary to the nature of this place. If you aren't able to calm down, I will simply leave, and no, the door won't hit my ass on the way out. You will never call me a liar again: it's my cue to leave TheForvm.
and you're better than that. Catchy chastised Macallan for the liar reference before I could (time zones again); it is in fact an obvious posting rules violation.
You and anyone else who feels the need can derogate Tony Snow all you like without violating the PRs. I don't have to like it (in fact, I don't) but that's insignificant. If you throw heat, you get some back but IMO comments either do or don't violate the PRs. Same for you and for Mac as for anyone else here.
--
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.
Derogation is an interesting word, Latin of course. (#103056)
by BlaiseP on Mon, 07/14/2008 - 7:36pm
de-rogare, fundamentally, to call into question, from rogare, to read a bill before the Roman Senate for acceptance or rejection.
There's really nothing to derogate here. He was paid for what he did, and they don't read your resume at your funeral. I have said enough decent things about him as a human being to warrant better treatment than this.
In his own lifetime, Tony Snow had time to make peace with his maker. I am given to understand as his illness progressed he grew more religious, and took up C. S. Lewis, a man who once said "Democracy demands that little men should not take big ones too seriously; it dies when it is full of little men who think they are big themselves."
I hope the man had opportunity to mend a few fences and he did seem like a decent enough fellow. If he did not always tell the truth, I have not always been entirely honest either. We all wish things about ourselves were not true, and if he told a few whoppers in the service of his far less personable masters, well, may God forgive him. I shall let others praise him. I find all such hucksters and pitchmen deeply repulsive: they cannot see the good in their enemies, having done no good themselves. Writers, not doers, they trouble our discourse and occlude the public record.
The Russians have a proverb: they hanged the three-kopeck thief and praised the fifty-kopeck thief. I am savagely amused to see the Pharisees like Tony Snow, who routinely vilifed Clinton for his lie now defended by some hereabouts when he is caught out in far more substantive lies. Clinton was a wretched liar, a man who lied when the truth would better serve him. But let's not act as if calling a man a liar is derogation: the matter is not up for question: Tony Snow did lie to the press and the American people, when the truth was not so awful. Derogation is not aspersion, and I am not being unduly harsh in my judgment of the man.
Are you saying I am somehow mistreated you by saying you were derogating* Tony Snow in your posts? Nonsense. I simply asked that you not draw lines in the sand like you did above. IMO it isn't constructive when one poster here tells another "if you do x I am leaving the forvm." It's obviously not a PR violation though, so you can do it all you like.
*From the latin "derogare" - to diminish.
--
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.
and FTR, Mac did hedge a bit -- he said you lied by the standards you applied to Snow.
So officially he just took issue w. your criteria and could say that he doesn't think either of you lied.
I'd still prefer Mac didn't dance around the posting rules so much.
But my other suggestion is that if you post a head-strong comment in an obit. diary that you be willing to take some flack and let the mods handle the rest.
(rude snicker) well if that isn't an Insanely Situational (#103015)
by BlaiseP on Mon, 07/14/2008 - 5:03pm
Version of what Constitutes Posting rules Violations, I'm a lizard. I shall remember that phrase, for it will serve me well when and if I decide to call someone a liar hereabouts. And at that time, feel free to ask me oh-so-nicely not to do it again.
In Hausa country, you can hire professional wailers for a funeral. Their piercing ululations are really quite something to hear, like a demonic choir. I am put in mind of the same hellish harmonies when I read all this obscene and mawkish grieving over Tony Snow. His whole professional career can only be described as one long hateful rant against his partisan enemies. As Press Secretary he was ever a mouthpiece of deceit and in death we are to speak no ill of him.
When you die in Japan, you'll get a Buddhist name. They're for sale, sorta, make a big donation to the temple and they'll give you a plaque bearing a name the dearly departed was never known by in life, but becomes his name in death. When James Carville dies, I expect people will in like manner weep and moan over that nasty little crocodile and say what a kindly man he was, too. But let's not play those games on TheForvm, shall we? Enough genuine heroes lie dead under fresh-sawn Vermont granite these days. Spare a few tears for them, and a few gobs of spit for the jackasses in the White House who sent them out to die halfway around the world for a pack of lies.
If Timmy can do this:
http://theforvm.org/diary/timmy/as-rare-as-a-cool-wind-on-summer-midday-...
Then I expect the same from our side. (You'll still be allowed to misspell the recently deceased name as a form of protest).
PS. Snow was only repeating what Bush and Co. told him to say. He may or may not have been privy to any inner-workings of the Bush Administration.
--I had discovered a great secret. That everyone loves themselves more than they love anybody else. And if I wanted them to love me, I better be like THEM!... Ken Nordine
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)- Login or register to post comments
)“I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views.”
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| parent )One man's defeat by nature doesn't make up for the attack on humanity perpetrated by goons like him, but I'm happy about his slow destruction.
In a fair world, he would be tortured by every man unfairly disappeared into Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, or the European torture chambers. In a fair world, he would get his limbs blown off by the disfigured collateral damage of his war. Cancer got him instead. Good enough.
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| parent )- Login or register to post comments
| parent )“I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views.”
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| parent )I'm fairly certain he didn't intend to retract either comment--even if he had been given a century to do so. More's the pity.
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| parent )I thought it was a 'no text required to respond' sorta thing.
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| parent )That's MSE's intrepretation. Your intrepretation is closer. I can't say what exactly was meant.
--“I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views.”
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| parent )of a dead cancer patient.
how about 'no speech is the appropriate response to the unspeakable'?
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| parent )Second, I don't really advocate torture, otherwise I wouldn't care about the atrocities that people like Tony Snow enable. I might think that he deserves it, but I wouldn't support it. After all, I wouldn't want to become him.
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| parent )In a fair world, he would be tortured by every man unfairly disappeared into Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, or the European torture chambers.
Does that mean you advocate an unfair world?
You don't support things that people deserve?
I guess that's a little confusing.
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| parent )- Login or register to post comments
| parent )I had this weird belief that only god got to do that.
--In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.
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| parent )Your comment makes no sense. We're not allowed to have morals without seeking guidance from your favorite religion? You need a priest to tell you that drowning someone is wrong?
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| parent )And a god that apparently believes that generating PR about something is the same as doing that thing. So maybe you could be the patron saint of advertising.
--In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.
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| parent )Opposing torture without quoting the bible = thinking myself a god? Grilling the bush admin for not being extremist enough, then joining their operation to defend their atrocious ways or just distract the media while his boss continues to kidnap random people and drown them or electrocute their balls = just PR?
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| parent )You are happy that Tony Snow is dead, you hope he suffered before he died, and you support him being tortured when he was still alive. You call that "fair" because you have decided that even though Snow didn't torture anyone himself (you know that, right? Not sure how basic I need to get here), you believe he gave Bush cover while Bush was torturing people.
You are advocating torture "in a fair world"; but of course, the only people who should be tortured are the ones you believe deserve it. Further, you think it would be "fair" to torture people like Snow who you believe simply advocated or supported torture, even if they didn't do the actual deed.
Since you advocated the torture of Tony Snow and since you think it's OK to torture people who advocate torture, is there any reason why it wouldn't "fair" for the government to torture you in this imaginary world of yours? Your answer: Tony Snow deserved it, but you don't. My question: who in your "inhumane but fair world" decides who gets tortured and who doesn't? The obvious answer: You do.
Are you getting the self-deification issue yet?
--In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.
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| parent )He discussed its justice. "An eye for an eye makes everyone blind."
--It's impossible to debate if people simply hold beliefs that have no grounding in reality.
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| parent )How much clearer can that be? Are we now going to debate whether "just" means "fair" in this context? If Username wants to back his way out of this one, he can. I don't get the impression he does.
And I prefer my favorite: "In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king."
--In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.
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| parent )As I mentioned to catchy, I don't actually advocate that anyone be tortured, since I'm not willing to sink to Tony Snow's level.
Sure, if I were calling for Tony to be drowned until near or actual death then I would deserve the same by my own standards. But that's not the case. If you delivered a torturer (or an enabler of his like Tony Snow) to my house I wouldn't torture him, nor would I deliver him to torturers.
What are you having trouble understanding?
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| parent )when someone dies at a relatively young age.
But I see BlaiseP's side of this as well. This is an internet message board about politics. Not sure why everyone's so fluffed up about BlaiseP's comments... it's just an opinion.
I'm reminded how I was sickened by the solemn reverent tone we all were supposed to adopt when Nixon died. Sad for his family, but I say good riddance.
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)I can't tell, but you'll get one, at least from me.
--In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.
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| parent )if that's what you want to do.
My point is that this is a discussion forum, not someone's wake or private function full of grieving relatives. I think discussion should be left open.
And it's perfectly fine if people want to get offended, outraged or flustered, or ride tall upon high horses of indignation. Entertaining, and fine.
Also - do you guys (you and the other folks who are disgusted by certain postings on this thread) get all bent out of shape over celebrity death-pools, or guessing which famous person will round out the adage that "deaths come in threes"?
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| parent )Don't answer if it involved Greta van Sustern in any way, please.
--In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.
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| parent )guessing, making bets when someone (celebrity) will die.
Google it.
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| parent )In the immortal words of Harry Callahan: Sounds pretty sick to me.
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| parent )All part of being a human being.
And again, this is a discussion forum, not a funeral home, wake or private service. Though we could use more deli trays around here.
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| parent )But there will be plenty of folks who'll do nothing of the kind.
--To think is not enough; you must think of something -- Jules Renard
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| parent )-0-o-0-
--In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.
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| parent )Whatever you think of this man's career and the consequences of choices he made in his life, that life is over now, and crowing over his fate is both a) embarrassing to anyone with any sense of decency and b) completely beside the point of current politics. Micturating on this guy's headstone is not going to change Iraq policy, nor bring anyone back to life, nor undo the damage of a major policy failure. It's just going to make you look like an unmannered twit.
A memorial, in other words, is no place to criticize a person's life. If you have some particular beef with Tony Snow, as opposed to the entire administration (which is currently alive and in power), it would be better to take it up some other time and place.
My condolences to his family and friends for their loss.
--Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes. That way when you criticize them, you're a mile away and you have their shoes. -JH
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)And Miss NPB has revived sufficiently to offer you her congratulations for your correct use of the word "micturating."
One doesn't see that every day.
--God help the while, a bad world I say.
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| parent )ought to motivate everyone who reads this to get a checkup. Tony Snow's mother also died of colon cancer when he was only 17 years old.
We'll all die of something, no doubt. I've got a history of prostate cancer in my family. Men are always somewhat squeamish about it, but there's no reason to fear a medical exam if it will add decades to your life.
I didn't like Tony Snow's politics. I harbor an abiding disgust for Rush Limbaugh, for whom Tony substituted any number of times. He was more than Affable Tony, he was a virulent opponent of anything the Democrats ever said and even took George Bush to the woodshed in his column from time to time. He was never a nice man. At best he was what might be called Consistent, and his shrieking rants would earn him many solos fronting the Fox News Choir in the Church of Faux Outrage. When Bush came calling, in need of a spokesman, Tony stood up to carry water for a man of whom he once said
Tony Snow stands with Mephistopheles in Gounoud's Faust:
Je crois que mes avis sont vains
Et que l'amour l'emporte,
Mais pour vous faire ouvrir la porte,
Vous avez grand besoin
du secours de ma voix.
I know my advice is in vain
Love has conquered you
But for you to open this door
You have great need
Of the help of my voice.
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)People who actually know him would beg to differ.
Being a partisan is one thing, but to habitually assert foolish nonsense about people at their passing is something else altogether.
It's a disgusting comment, it's completely false, and it appears to be a pattern for you.
--“I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views.”
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| parent )Tony Snow was not a nice man
--"I don't know where bin Laden is. I have no idea and really don't care. It's not that important. It's not our priority."
- G.W. Bush, 3/13/02
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| parent )His rhetoric was snide and obtuse. To read his prose, the Democrats were the greatest sinners in the history of mankind: intent upon the destruction of all we hold dear. No he was not a nice man in print.
He may well have been a decent man in person, when he wasn't behind a typewriter, what the Germans call Gemütlichkeit. This niceness was not apparent in print, and he would stand there, confronted by David Gregory:
Verdict: Not Nice. Not fair. Partisan to the core. Oh, he may have been nice to individuals on a personal basis, no doubt he was. But a man is more than the sorts of things he says within earshot, at a dinner party or other social settings, that sort of politesse anyone can indulge in, for those who cannot be friendly to their enemies in social situations do not become the Press Secretary to the President of the United States of America. In the studio and in his column, Tony Snow was hardly given to being a Nice Guy, and don't you try to turn this guy into a saint. He was a spokesman for a vindictive Administration he once condemned.
Tony Snow was, I suppose, a decent and kindly man in person, but he was as I have said in the Faust quote, the man who could open doors with his voice. He'd look you straight in the eye and tell you things you could trust to be as one-sided as a Moebius Loop. And don't you take umbrage as if I lack compassion for his passing: he was a man who died most untimely. His death ought to put in mind of our own mortality and the threat of colorectal cancer. Others may heap him with fawning encomiums, I feel it's important to remember the man as he truly was: a handsome man who opened doors with his voice. The message he carried out from the Oval Office was a pack of lies, deeply partisan and he brooked no contradiction: his flashes of anger from behind the podium when confronted by these lies was ill-concealed, see above.
Tony Snow's most important lie about Democrats was saying Jimmy Carter authorized warrant-less wiretaps on American citizens. Carter specifically directed his Attorney General otherwise. Well, we've lived long enough to see warrant-less wiretaps become the order of the day. Tony would be proud.
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| parent )WH press briefing
As we now know, the banner was paid for and put up by the White House. Which sorta makes Mission Accomplished take on a whole new meaning.
There's a wonderful old Irish joke about a man's dog lying dead. The man brings the dog to church, asks the priest for a Christian burial and masses to be said for the dog. "Oh, there's to be none of that in this church, but maybe there's a church somewhere that might."
"Here's 50,000 pounds for the burial and masses to be said for five years"
"Well, why didn't you say this was a Catholic dog?"
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| parent )Well, I guess projection isn't just for breakfast any more.
--“I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views.”
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| parent )to hide Tony Snow's long legacy of bitter savaging of his enemies in print.
Which doesn't take away anything from his humanity. Many's the fine lawyer who gets a wonderful eulogy from his fellows. But let's not get all mawkish in our grief here. In print and in front of the camera, he was an advocate, and he did not shoot straight with the American people. That wasn't in his job description.
Let others mourn his passing, enough people bought his line of garbage to carry his casket. If I feel obliged to put forward a few of this man's more pertinent utterances, it is nothing personal, as his attacks and lies weren't personal, either. He was just doing his job. I'm doing mine.
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| parent )people was who again?
You can't say someone "was never a nice man" unless you knew him, and I haven't seen anything indicating you knew Tony Snow.
--In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.
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| parent )You get paid to be petty and small?
For your sake, I hope the pay is worth the cost.
--“I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views.”
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| parent )I understand that's ambiguous between Blaise's comments vs. his character.
But in case you mised it, I recently asked for some more restraint.
I believe I would extend you the courtesy were our situations reversed.
I ask nothing mroe.
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| parent )violation.
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| parent )and wish others wouldn't call him out on this.
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| parent )based on consent of the target.
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| parent )Blaise insults Tony Snow's memory, you insult Blaise.
One of you is violating the posting rules, I think.
--To think is not enough; you must think of something -- Jules Renard
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| parent )...that you want to associate yourself with BlaiseP, here?
--God help the while, a bad world I say.
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| parent )But rules is rules.
--To think is not enough; you must think of something -- Jules Renard
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| parent )- Login or register to post comments
| parent )Let the remarks stand. I'm not being nice here, and I hardly expect better from those who thought Tony Snow was a great guy.
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| parent )Maybe everyone should cool down a bit.
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| parent )See, he really has no other comeback. Yeah, it is disconcerting to hear of the Affable Tony Snow being described as a deceitful Mephistopheles. But that's exactly what he was, there's really no denying it, however rude it may be to point out the truth of the matter. He sold us a Hefty Bag full of garbage and we're supposed to praise him for his consideration and kindness for providing us with such a useful and strong container.
Tony Snow goes back a lot farther than his days in the White House. I chiefly remember him from his column, back in the day when he was a leading spokesman for conservative causes. We must remember his career goes back over 30 years. In those days, he would have us believe the Democrats were the devil incarnate, and nary a kind word did he have for us. I have not forgotten his ugliness in print. Nor have I forgotten his petulance when confronted by obvious discrepancies between facts and rhetoric. The Scooter Libby go-round, with reporters shouting at him "Don't insult our intelligence" was really the nadir of his time at the WH.
Yet oddly, the news outlets thought he was the go-to guy for any conservative viewpoint. NPR had him on for a while. He'd turn up on McLaughlin and all the Sabbath Gasbag shows, oh they couldn't get enough of Tony Snow.
Well, now he's gone, and it's a personal tragedy for the people who loved him. But I come to bury him, not to praise him, for the evil men do lives on after them. Tony Snow, during his lifetime, was the public incarnation of the ugliest aspects of partisan bickering, and while the rest of the world can call me petty and small, I shall remain petty and small. Nobody beyond a few wonks will ever read my crap about Iraq or the Arabs or the Pashtuns, for they are tedious enumerations and knitting together of facts and names and places.
But my every prediction has come true. When the news of the Watergate break-in was reported, I predicted Nixon would fall. I predicted China would go capitalist in a big way after the Nixon visit. I predicted the fall of Cambodia after the US invasion. I predicted the Americans would abandon Vietnam and Laos. in 1983, I correctly predicted the fall of the Soviet Union. I predicted the Balkans War after Tito died. I predicted the re-invasion of Iraq. A few ugly epithets from the likes of Mac are easily shrugged off: time and tide have proven me correct, over and over. Every one of those predictions was greeted with catcalls from people with advanced degrees or command experience. Part of the problem with being a Cassandra is this: I know it's going to come true when people start in calling me ugly names. I suppose I should thank Mac and his ilk, they're the Prussian Blue on the microscope slide, giving my analysis the needed scoffing to bring out its fundamental correctness. It's when everyone agrees with me that I know I'm succumbing to Groupthink.
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| parent )n/t.
--God help the while, a bad world I say.
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| parent )Tony Snow lied a lot to support policies that killed a lot of people. Now he's dead. I'm not particularly sad, because I don't value the lives of white middle class men more than the lives of the poor and persons of color whose ends he unethically hastened.
He was a person who did a job that required him to outright lie a lot. He was okay with that. That's who he was. Now he's dead. That doesn't change who he was.
--It's impossible to debate if people simply hold beliefs that have no grounding in reality.
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| parent )that there are a lot of folk on the right whose policies you + BlaiseP believe, as a matter of objective fact, lead directly to deaths.
But not only is that not taken for granted here, it's precisely those policies we're here to discuss.
I think Mac could've been more politic in engaging w. BlaiseP, but I also don't think it's good for the site that whenever a conservative dies - -Buckley, Snow, etc. -- that folk come here to dance on that person's grave.
Buckley IMO was really a pretty egregious case as it's understandable how folk could respect his thought processes and character. I'm friends with someone who was more or less adopted by Buckley so that he could continue playing classical piano vs. whatever non-artistic way he would've had to make his living.
Perhaps other folks might have similar connections to Snow, who knows.
Point is, I don't see someone's early exit from the stage as the best time to attack the person's record. If you feel the need to calm down excessive eulogizing or somethng that might be one thing.
But I didn't see anything like that here and I think these posts just serve to satisfy one's ranting proclivities and harden the discourse.
Forgetting the worry that it's a gauche lack of respect for our common humanity (which in all honesty I don't know how to feel about) such posting ain't really productive for a site like this.
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| parent )Some people are honestly wrong about things, and I respect them. I tend to learn from them, because anyone who's basically honest probably has a thing or two figured out. It's the lying. Snow's job was to lie for a living, and he knew this, and he did it. That implies to me a less honest belief in the policies he worked so hard to support.
He's some guy. I have nothing in common with him. Thousands of people die of cancer every day, and he's one of them. He wasn't a particularly good person, and I didn't know him, so that's that.
I'm honestly surprised by the response to this; I thought that it was de rigeur around here to post diaries and comments celebrating the deaths of our political enemies. Is it that he's an American, so his decision to turn his back on decency doesn't count? Or is it that he's a middle class white guy, so he reminds too many of us of the arbitrary nature of our mortality?
--It's impossible to debate if people simply hold beliefs that have no grounding in reality.
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| parent )I thought that it was de rigeur around here to post diaries and comments celebrating the deaths of our political enemies
I hadn't noticed. Anyway I thought Mac was trying to change the etiquette and I'm inclined to agree.
Re: Is it that he's an American, so his decision to turn his back on decency doesn't count? Or is it that he's a middle class white guy, so he reminds too many of us of the arbitrary nature of our mortality?
I thought I said I was putting such general considerations to one side in favor of the site's goals + potential personal acquaintence.
Re: lying, I really didn't follow his career. You mainly mentioned his partial responsibility for 1000s of deaths.
Feel free to make a case based solely on the former, but I don't see how it's not going to also rely on your beliefs re: the latter.
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| parent )I don't care about a guy who lies about trivial things. If some dude spent his political career insisting that the spork was invented by Chuck Norris, despite all evidence to the contrary, it would have very little effect on my overall opinion of the guy.
--It's impossible to debate if people simply hold beliefs that have no grounding in reality.
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| parent )But made an argument for not including, even as one component among others, your appraisal of the policies' effects since that's what we're here to discuss.
Put another way, would you deride someone after their untimely death if they'd made distortions for a policy you believed in (as several conservatives here do) -- i.e. regarded as ultimately saving more lives in the long run by avoiding a future protracted conflict?
Doubt it.
The pt. is that most people don't appreciate being sent the implicit message that, were they a stranger, their differing beliefs would be partial grounds for celebrating their demise.
I just don't think it's that much to ask to check one's comments in mixed company.
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| parent )You're imputing way more caring than I have. I didn't say much of anything for days, and I only jumped in to explain why I appreciated why someone might feel that the man's work was being whitewashed.
Again, my opinion is: he's some dude that died. I assume that, like many people, he left behind friends and family to whom he was good, and I have precisely the same vague sympathy toward them as I have toward the tens of thousands of other friends and families of American dudes that died that day -- and tens of millions of friends and family of people in general who died that day. My interaction with Mr. Snow was peripheral, occasional, and unambiguously negative on every level.
It's absurd to expect me to eulogize a man who is only known to me because of his decision to engage in behavior which I find hateful on behalf of policies which I find malodorous.
Find me some Iraqi kid who was shot by an American mercenary, or a Afghanistani woman beaten to death by resurgent Taliban militants -- or, heck, a true-believing American private who was killed in action doing what he thought was right. They're actually innocent in a way that Mr. Snow was not. And they're dead due to policies he took great pains to support mendaciously.
He was just another public servant who viewed my trust as his plaything, and now he's gone. I'm sorry he didn't get a chance to spend his thirty pieces of silver and all that, but I'm not going to tear my shirt over it.
--It's impossible to debate if people simply hold beliefs that have no grounding in reality.
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| parent )I wasn't talking about anyone feeling compelled to eulogize.
Just cautioning against the counter-obit.
For all I know BlaiseP is exactly right. I didn't pay attention to Snow iwhen he was alive and I'm not going to get into the details now.
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| parent )...let alone *expected* you to eulogize anybody?
As usual, you simply can't get through a message without committing at least as obvious a "lie" as anything Tony Snow ever perpetrated.
--God help the while, a bad world I say.
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| parent )It was expected that should I speak, I should eulogize. That is, that if anything were to be said, that it would be positive.
As always, I appreciate your decision to insult me and my postings; my unusually large head, XY chromosome structure, and propensity to sunburn have combined to give me the insight that if I am being so insulted, I am most certainly saying or doing something right.
--It's impossible to debate if people simply hold beliefs that have no grounding in reality.
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| parent )...to "speak" at all.
What a typically feeble & intellectually dishonest attempt at evasion.
--God help the while, a bad world I say.
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| parent )I see no lie. You claim he lied. Somebody is a liar.
--Me: We! -- Ali
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| parent )..."scare quotes."
And then try again.
--God help the while, a bad world I say.
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| parent )You accused another poster of lying. I say "show me the lie" or apologize for the insult and the misstatement.
--Me: We! -- Ali
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| parent )You show me where anybody "expected" PM to "eulogize" Tony Snow, and then I'll show you where PM "lied."
--God help the while, a bad world I say.
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| parent )...of the phrase PM used, and attempted to find a tiny little linguistic crack so as to insert your bile. Of course nobody actually "expected" PM to eulogize Snow, but you simply ignored his point. Ho hum.
Then you claim it is PM's habit to tell lies when he posts:
"As usual, you simply can't get through a message without committing at least as obvious a "lie" as anything Tony Snow ever perpetrated."
I'd like to see some examples of these numerous lies, rather than your attempts at hyper-parsing. And if you can't come up with some examples, well, perhaps you should not accuse other posters of lying, and instead reflect on the feelings and the motivations that prompted you to accuse somebody of lying rather than address the substance of his post, and of this thread.
I'd eulogize Snow myself, but I found Blaise's comments described my feelings perfectly, and also his writing skills vastly exceed mine.
You gotta expect this stuff when you are welded to the political faction that started a war under false pretenses, for partisan political gain, actually, and thus committed criminal offenses against the nation. Buck up.
--Me: We! -- Ali
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| parent )So BlaiseP, followed by PM, followed by you, crash a wake, shouting abuse at the recently deceased...
And when I - no great fan of either Tony Snow or the administration he represented - take exception to this disgusting behavior, you start shouting abuse at me.
Enough. I've had enough of you, and everybody like you.
--God help the while, a bad world I say.
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| parent )I'm not abusing anyone, least of all Tony Snow, who is beyond abusing at this point. Encomiums and accolades stack up around him from those who liked him and many who didn't. He really was a piece of work, Vinteuil. He wasn't nice to people.
Here, and in the life of Tony Snow, we are what we write. It doesn't matter if we're nice people in real life. That's easy: we're civil because we don't want to get arrested or fired or thought a jackass by people within arm's reach. We're nice because we have to be. But out here, and on paper, we're more at liberty to be our true selves, and it is my considered opinion mankind is a fierce little hominid with nothing better to do than defend what's his and take what isn't and lie and cheat and predate on the weak and make excuses for all of it. Tony Snow was just such a designated Excuse Maker, but few escaped his acid pen during his lifetime. The evil that men do lives on after them, the good is oft interred with their bones.
Well, excuse me for noting a summation of Tony Snow's life must include the things he said. Words live on, and Tony Snow's excuse-making is now part of the public record.
Don't take it as abuse, Vinteuil. You are not given to much in the bonhomie department, yourself. At least Tony Snow could affect a little bonhomie, graciousness, that sort of thing in person and if it came across as wooden, well, he was only playing a role. The press did not appreciate his insulting their intelligence, and I'll say the same of you from where I sit. Facts don't take sides.
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| parent )...from day one.
--God help the while, a bad world I say.
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| parent )This isn't tough. Write the comment, click the little box at the upper right corner of the screen instead of "post."
--It's impossible to debate if people simply hold beliefs that have no grounding in reality.
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| parent )"He wasn't nice to people."
Give me a single cite of anyone who ACTUALLY knows him to support that ridiculously partisan bulls***.
It is an obvious lie, and one that you can't back up.
--“I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views.”
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| parent )Let's try on a few of his more pungent adjectives describing the man he's going to call his boss somewhat later.
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| parent )Stop shoveling BS on yourself.
--“I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views.”
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| parent )You got what you asked for. I like that. Tourette's Syndrome. Now I wouldn't say that about George Bush, but Tony Snow can, and you think that's Being Nice.
I'd hate to see what you find Not Nice. As for shoveling BS, it's all cited nicely for you and Vinteuil's inspection and review.
Now I'll tell you what shoveling BS is: it's going to work for a man you said was a barking idiot with Tourette's Syndrome. Which is only exceeded in the annals of BSomettry by the Bush Administration actually hiring this guy. But it takes one to know one, they say, and the White House press conferences were a recapitulation of the Augean Stables. I think the SI are coming out with a new unit of measure in his honor, the tonysnow, the amount of force required to give a mass of one kilogram of BS an acceleration of one meter per second squared.
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| parent )Still no cite.
--“I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views.”
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| parent )So this thread now counts as a wake? Guess I should have worn black... I had no idea.
What would Miss Nitpickywhatsername think of that? I thought this was a discussion thread.
Let me know which thread constitutes a Hootenanny... I'll don my overalls and bring my jug!
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| parent )Was to use PM's, and apparently your, intellectual standards. That you bristle so much at those standards says quite a lot. Doesn't it?
--“I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views.”
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| parent )...and I think perhaps Harley is overreacting to your comment, but it's so ambiguously written, by my standards, that I'm not sure what you're trying to say. I think Harley sees an insult, but I guess it has yet to hit me.
Intellectual standards aside, your side accused my side of lying out of habit. That observation is at odds with the vast majority of those who read his posts. There seems to be a lot of personal insults and road apples hurled primarily from your side of the fence to mine. This tactic implies, by my standards, that that's all you got.
You know, lots of guys who participate in political combat get eulogized this way. Most of the time they deserve it. This man helped lie us into a stupid and unnecessary war. If you stop and think about it, that is a really, really bad thing to do. That's what this is all about. Mere political opponents don't get eulogized this way. Those who make mistakes of this magnitude deserve criticism at each opportunity available. Let the book writing begin.
Please, no offense intended, buck up.
--Me: We! -- Ali
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| parent )It was just an observation.
And no offense, but the 'your side vs. our side' and 'my side is truth/justice/majority/etc.' thingee is sort of the point, and as long everything is viewed through that lens, nothing I say is going to make much sense.
--“I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views.”
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| parent )Superman's motto: Truth, Justice and the American Way. I learned this sitting in front of the TV as a small child watching George Reeves bend revolvers and steel bars to cuff the bad guys.
Tony Snow did his best to fling crap on those ideals. Helped the Bushroids start an unnecessary war. I wish his family well and hope they see the errors in his ways. And write about them.
--Me: We! -- Ali
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| parent )Seriously, this is ridiculous. I know there's apparently a perceived bunch of big bad libs piling on all the conservatives here, but these are direct and unprovoked insults coming from the same poster in this same thread. I thought there was a code red level crackdown in effect.
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| parent )Mac's throwing some elbows, but they're no sharper than Zelig's, vinteuil's, or anyone else's that has waded into the scrum. Surely this "code red level crackdown" doesn't mean we're a bunch of wilting flowers, does it?
--Brevis esse laboro, obscurus fio.
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| parent )It's not your place, or any other commenter's place, to demean a fellow poster's intellectual standards.
You said you didn't want to associate with this kind of thing. Fair enuf. Don't.
--To think is not enough; you must think of something -- Jules Renard
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| parent )What insults?
--“I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views.”
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| parent )to make of the *asterisks*?
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| parent )Maybe in the future when someone political dies, we can have a solemn serious Thread of Mourning, immediately followed by a thread where commenters can post thoughts and opinions about the person without getting the pearl-clutching "How dare you?!" treatment.
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| parent )Which brings us back to where I started.
Being a partisan is one thing. However to LIE about someone, (and that is exactly what PM and Blaise are doing if we accept their insanely situational version of what constitutes lying) as some sort of drive-by counter obituary, is not only in bad taste, but it should be embarrassing…
However, it obviously isn't.
The individual that I know who was close to Tony Snow, is an ardent democrat, and it would kill him to read the crap pile of nonsense posted here. Or he'd kill the authors of it. Yet, because Snow was a public figure, people feel free to lie just so they can get in their lame partisan shots.
When partisanship takes over that much of someone's humanity...
well… it's creepy, I don't understand it, and I don't want to be associated with it.
--“I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views.”
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| parent )Did he tell us the truth about Iraq when he said "You didn't have girls in school when Saddam was there." That's a pure-d lie. Saddam did educate his women. That's because he was a secularist.
I've pointed out a host of other lies, but that one sorta sticks out. Maybe he had Iraq confused with Afghanistan, like the rest of the administration... makes me want to shout at 'em like a drill sergeant "No, you crop of dumbasses, you're on the wrong side of Iran, didn't they teach you geography? Iraq-Iran-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India."
Of course they didn't teach geography to these bozos. They wouldn't know a Shiite from a Sunni from an Allawi from a Druze from a Baha'i to save their lives. Or anyone else's life.
Y'know, I can take almost any amount of abuse online, and you're not going to get my blood pressure up. I learned a long time ago, anger spoils my aim, so I don't indulge in it. I have not LIED to anyone about Tony Snow. He was no different than his predecessors, yet another sacrificial lamb the Administration sends out to endure the press yelling Bullshit at them. You can almost hear the Prez and Cheney upstairs snickering when they're caught in a lie. The Congress won't act on these liars, and Bush commutes the sentence of Scooter Libby, who was convicted on four counts of perjury, obstructing justice and lying to the FBI.
So I guess, in Macallan's Bizarro-World, Tony Snow told us the truth. Clearly Tony Snow did not tell us the truth, that's beyond discussion, I've cited the WH transcripts. There's plenty more where that came from. You haven't contradicted me once, but you call me a liar nonetheless.
Lies take many forms, and every advertiser has a lawyer on retainer to make sure his claims pass muster. I don't expect a WH press secretary to run his boss down, but I think it's important the truth be told. The last seven years and some has been characterized by secrecy and lies beyond number. I see no reason to praise a man whose job was to tell lies. This administration has a track record of hiring liars: Elliot Abrams, professional liar to Congress, is now in charge of Middle East affairs for Condi Rice.
Now you can back down now. I don't care if you call me a liar, but it runs deeply contrary to the nature of this place. If you aren't able to calm down, I will simply leave, and no, the door won't hit my ass on the way out. You will never call me a liar again: it's my cue to leave TheForvm.
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| parent )and you're better than that. Catchy chastised Macallan for the liar reference before I could (time zones again); it is in fact an obvious posting rules violation.
You and anyone else who feels the need can derogate Tony Snow all you like without violating the PRs. I don't have to like it (in fact, I don't) but that's insignificant. If you throw heat, you get some back but IMO comments either do or don't violate the PRs. Same for you and for Mac as for anyone else here.
--In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.
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| parent )de-rogare, fundamentally, to call into question, from rogare, to read a bill before the Roman Senate for acceptance or rejection.
There's really nothing to derogate here. He was paid for what he did, and they don't read your resume at your funeral. I have said enough decent things about him as a human being to warrant better treatment than this.
In his own lifetime, Tony Snow had time to make peace with his maker. I am given to understand as his illness progressed he grew more religious, and took up C. S. Lewis, a man who once said "Democracy demands that little men should not take big ones too seriously; it dies when it is full of little men who think they are big themselves."
I hope the man had opportunity to mend a few fences and he did seem like a decent enough fellow. If he did not always tell the truth, I have not always been entirely honest either. We all wish things about ourselves were not true, and if he told a few whoppers in the service of his far less personable masters, well, may God forgive him. I shall let others praise him. I find all such hucksters and pitchmen deeply repulsive: they cannot see the good in their enemies, having done no good themselves. Writers, not doers, they trouble our discourse and occlude the public record.
The Russians have a proverb: they hanged the three-kopeck thief and praised the fifty-kopeck thief. I am savagely amused to see the Pharisees like Tony Snow, who routinely vilifed Clinton for his lie now defended by some hereabouts when he is caught out in far more substantive lies. Clinton was a wretched liar, a man who lied when the truth would better serve him. But let's not act as if calling a man a liar is derogation: the matter is not up for question: Tony Snow did lie to the press and the American people, when the truth was not so awful. Derogation is not aspersion, and I am not being unduly harsh in my judgment of the man.
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| parent )Are you saying I am somehow mistreated you by saying you were derogating* Tony Snow in your posts? Nonsense. I simply asked that you not draw lines in the sand like you did above. IMO it isn't constructive when one poster here tells another "if you do x I am leaving the forvm." It's obviously not a PR violation though, so you can do it all you like.
*From the latin "derogare" - to diminish.
--In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.
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| parent )- Login or register to post comments
| parent )...fair, dignified, and restrained, considering who we're eulogizing here.
--Me: We! -- Ali
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| parent )and FTR, Mac did hedge a bit -- he said you lied by the standards you applied to Snow.
So officially he just took issue w. your criteria and could say that he doesn't think either of you lied.
I'd still prefer Mac didn't dance around the posting rules so much.
But my other suggestion is that if you post a head-strong comment in an obit. diary that you be willing to take some flack and let the mods handle the rest.
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| parent )Version of what Constitutes Posting rules Violations, I'm a lizard. I shall remember that phrase, for it will serve me well when and if I decide to call someone a liar hereabouts. And at that time, feel free to ask me oh-so-nicely not to do it again.
In Hausa country, you can hire professional wailers for a funeral. Their piercing ululations are really quite something to hear, like a demonic choir. I am put in mind of the same hellish harmonies when I read all this obscene and mawkish grieving over Tony Snow. His whole professional career can only be described as one long hateful rant against his partisan enemies. As Press Secretary he was ever a mouthpiece of deceit and in death we are to speak no ill of him.
When you die in Japan, you'll get a Buddhist name. They're for sale, sorta, make a big donation to the temple and they'll give you a plaque bearing a name the dearly departed was never known by in life, but becomes his name in death. When James Carville dies, I expect people will in like manner weep and moan over that nasty little crocodile and say what a kindly man he was, too. But let's not play those games on TheForvm, shall we? Enough genuine heroes lie dead under fresh-sawn Vermont granite these days. Spare a few tears for them, and a few gobs of spit for the jackasses in the White House who sent them out to die halfway around the world for a pack of lies.
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| parent )You're not a lizard!
I think I wa clear that Mac isn't adhering to the spirit of the PRs.
But I hope I've been generally polite when moderating and apologize if you think there's been a double-standard in your direction in particular.
It's a human process, I'm pretty even-handed, but admittedly my patience has been fluctuating a bit.
Best wishes Blaise.
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| parent )