Say Anything Blog

Newsbusters points out this Associated Press article filled with needless jabs at the recently deceased Tony Snow:

  With a quick-from-the-lip repartee, broadcaster’s good looks and a relentlessly bright outlook — if not always a command of the facts — he became a popular figure around the country to the delight of his White House bosses.

  ..... During daily briefings, he challenged reporters, scolded them and questioned their motives as if he were starring in a TV show broadcast live from the West Wing.

  Critics suggested that Snow was turning the traditionally informational daily briefing into a personality-driven media event short on facts and long on confrontation. He was the first press secretary, by his own accounting, to travel the country raising money for Republican candidates.

Journalists may have had their issues with Snow, but using the man’s obituary to air those grievances is just plain inappropriate.

As for the criticism itself, I actually thought Tony Snow was far less confrontational with reporters than other press secretaries.  Certainly less confrontational than his predecessor Scot McClellan.  And who are these reporters to accuse White House personnel of being confrontational anyway?  Anyone who has ever watched a White House press briefing knows the sort of badgering Snow and his colleagues had to put up with from the media.  Heck, the journalists themselves put the famously hostile and abusive Helen Thomas in the front row of the White House press room.

And Snow gets jabbed for being confrontational?

Give me a break.

If anything, the barbs the media is throwing at Snow now that he’s gone sound like little more than the bitter complaints of people who tried but could not get the better of the man.