Sirota - The Meaning of Tony Snow

The meaning of Tony Snow
David Sirota
April 26, 2006

http://www.workingforchange.com/blog/index.cfm?mode=entry&entry=D73913F9-F667-FAA1-30AF16E5858C7B70

There is something profoundly disturbing about the appointment of Fox News's Tony Snow as spokesman for the White House. It goes well beyond merely the laugh-out-loud quality of a President of the United States turning to a Guy-Smiley-ish fringe-right-wing talk show host to fix a pathetically inept White House. It even goes beyond the ridiculousness of the President appointing as his spokesman a guy who said he was an "embarrassment." It goes to what has become the new definition of "business as usual" in America's political system.
Here you have Fox News - a network that bludgeons viewers with Orwellian pledges of being "fair and balanced." The network employed Snow for 7 years as its purportedly "objective" host of "Fox News Sunday" - it's supposedly most "objective" show. And now, with the seamless appointment of Snow as the chief spokesman for America's right-wing government, the public is just supposed to accept it as mundane. Washington reporters barely bat an eye at the elimination of the boundary between media and government - god forbid they should look skeptically on the whole affair lest they may not be invited to the next White House Christmas party. In fact, many seem downright giddy that one of their friends on the D.C. cocktail party circuit got the job.

Meanwhile, Fox News continues to pledge a devotion to objectivity. Worse, instead of raising objections to one of its leading "objective" voices now becoming the President's spokesman, Fox is trumpeting the move on its website (even more ridiculous - it was actually trumpeting the early speculation of Snow's move before he took the job). As for Democrats - you remember them, they are supposed to be the opposition party - Fox News loudly tells us that "they say that aside from Tony being a good journalist, he's also a fair guy, who they think will be a welcome face in the room with the blue curtain."

This is "business as usual" in Washington. It is a place where Democratic and Republican politicians bloviate about supposedly wanting to clean up government - all while working feverishly to kill any serious reform legislation, all while they and their staffs happily sell off their government experience to the highest corporate bidder. It is a place where the few remaining hard-working journalists focusing on real issues in the nation's capital are shoved to the side in favor of the coiffed, ill-informed political pundit corps that sees nothing even vaguely problematic about the Soviet-state-run-media quality of trading in media badges for federal ID badges. It is a place where many major media organizations' leading voices are more interested in being mouthpieces for power, rather than challenging it. It is a place where the most blatant lies, myths, half-truths and hypocrisy is buried under a sea of government and media propaganda designed to make us believe nothing is wrong.

But no matter how many Tony Snows tell us everything is A.O.K. - either from behind an anchor's desk or from behind a White House podium - the public isn't stupid. We know what's going on. And at some point - whether that's November 2006, November 2008 or some other point - we're going to take our government back.

He's dead.

would be my guess.

They could have gotten him if they really wanted to.

http://www.workingforchange.com/blog/index.cfm?mode=entry&entry=D8E650BE-F404-8135-687F74853F4946B1

The Euphoria That Comes From Being Attacked By Fox News

By David Sirota

Forgive me if I am a bit overjoyed and excited - but that's the emotion that naturally comes when you are attacked by name in prime time by Fox News. That's right, Brit Hume - the guy who could play Droopy in Snow White and the Seven Dwarves - went after me on-air for my earlier post today about his pal Tony Snow (you can read the transcript here or see the video here).

Hume's piece begins by citing Beltway Democrats rushing to heap praise on Snow, the fringe-right-wing commentator-turned-government spokesman. Then, in his vintage Thurston Howell the Third tone, he turns his guns on me for merely noting the state-run media quality of the whole affair, whereby a supposedly "objective" journalist happily takes the job of the very administration he was supposed to be covering.

What's funniest about this is the fact that instead of seeing Snow's move as an indictment on Fox's purported objectivity, Hume and his network are haughtily bragging about the whole thing, seemingly unaware - or unconcerned - about what it reveals. Also humorous is that in a course of about 15 seconds, Hume manages to commit two of the most basic journalistic errors: he mispronounces my name and then makes a factual error by saying I posted anything on the Center for American Progress's website (I left CAP a year ago to write my book).

Then again, we shouldn't be surprised by any of this. Hume has long ago proven he is undeterred by facts and uninterested in actual journalism. He is the type of elitist who looks like he feels underdressed wearing a tie – he looks like he'd feel more comfortable wearing an ascot, smoking a pipe, sipping chardonnay and complaining about having to pay capital gains taxes on his yacht on Maryland's Eastern Shore. He clearly feels threatened that one of his fellow D.C. cocktail party friends was actually ridiculed on the facts.

Being attacked by someone like Hume and by a network like Fox, in other words, is one of the biggest badges of honor I've ever had the pleasure of receiving. That I got such an attack before my book even hit bookstores is even more thrilling - because it means there's more to come.