It’s hard to think of any jokes about Tony Snow being hired as the White House PR guy. It’s already a joke—why gild the lily? I love Fox’s angle on this: Can a opponent of the president’s agenda serve as his spokesman?
I can’t envision Snow this will help to dig Bush out of his 32% hole.
Why is it a joke? Because he worked at FOX News?
When you’re getting the ice cream cones for free, why buy the whole truck?
I figured that Hugh Hewitt had it sown up, but I gues the White House considered him just too much of an independent thinker. So they went with Snow.
Huh? Brian, do you know what the press secretary’s job is? I’ll give you a hint — it’s not to be an “independent thinker.” The press secretary is the voice of the White House, a spokesman for someone else. People rarely ask the press secretary “What do YOU think about this issue?” Nobody gives a crap what he (or she) thinks. That’s not their job.
But your comment is doubly nonsensical because Snow is well known for being an independent thinker. He’s been a maverick conservative columnist and talk show host for many years, very often criticizing leading Republicans, GWB in particular.
Jon brings up a fair question — why is it a joke?
Fox’s angle? That’s what Think Progress asked.
I’m no fan of Snow, but I’ve found the mixed reaction of the left fairly amusing. They can’t seem to decide whether he’s a Bush apparatchik just switching desks to do the same job…or a critic who now has to explain about his previous opposition.
Frankly, I’ve no idea why anybody would take the job. Regardless of the administration involved, the press secretary job is pretty ugly. Spin Doctor in Chief.
I Publius,
It’s a joke because Fox has a notorious reputation for being a propaganda organ for the White House. People have long poked fun at them for spinning nearly every bit of news, no matter how damning, in the White House’s favor. So the idea that both the Bush Administration and a prominent Fox News anchor have finally decided to make official what was already the case is very appropriate.
Is Tony Snow also known as being a propagandist for the White House? I don’t watch cable news, so I’m not familiar with him.
News anchor? I thought he was always an openly partisan commentator, of the type employed by every network. Are you sure he was a news anchor?
And that “notorious reputation” is something claimed by the left, as well as those jealous competitors who can’t stand the fact that Fox News is the #1 news in MSM.
Fox is a propaganda organ for Bush in the same way that the rest of MSM has been a propaganda organ for Democrats for the past half-century. So we’ll just give libs the benefit of the doubt and call it even.
The truth of the matter is that Fox just happens to be the first major TV news that isn’t laughably skewed to the left, so it’s understandable that liberals cling to the “notorious reputation” spin.
I know exactly what a press secretary does. If ideology didn’t matter, well, I suppose they could have hired just anyone to read off the talking points, repeat the message of the day, and stonewall any skeptical inquiry. Hell, the practically did with Scotty McClellan.
Fox is and continues to be the voice of the Republican Party leadership, which does not equate being the voice of American conservatism. A bit of straying off the reservation regarding minor matters is expected, and tolerated, as long as one cleaves to the basics of tax cuts and nationalism, and does so smartly. And, I remember just how Democratic the media was during the 2000 presidential campaign, when I recall little scepticism of Bush’s various claims, and during the years of the Whitewater investigation, where no right-wing rumor was too small to be inflated into a pressing story. Bush’s curse is currently to be the guinea pig in a special test of Fox’s meteorological advocacy: how many people being pissed on can it convince of having wandered outside in the rain? At least one.