Eventually McClellan was given his outright release by the big club, which immediately restored its credibility by bringing in Rush Limbaugh’s former caddy Tony Snow to fill Scotty’s teensy shoes. By the end of Snow’s first briefing, McClellan appeared fortunate for having been thrown out of the Rose Garden and into the Briar.
FAMILIAR WITH CULTURE?: Tony Snow didn't want to "hug the tar baby" |
Snow debuted with diplomatic aplomb while lying about the NSA-wiretapping/data-mining/“Big Brother on Inhuman Growth Hormones” scandal by citing a USA Today poll, explaining, “Part of it said 51 percent of the American people opposed [wiretapping], if you look at when people said, if there is a roster of phone numbers, do you feel comfortable with that — I’m paraphrasing and I apologize — but something like 64 percent of the polling was not troubled by it. Having said that, I don’t want to hug the tar baby of trying to comment on the program — the alleged program — the existence of which I can neither confirm nor deny.”Say, this new press secretary sure does have a gift for speaking directly and clearly to the American people!
The next day, Snow slowed his rhetorical verve and thus stopped short of quoting Little Black Sambo chapter and verse. But he still came spinning at top speed at a smirking press corps.
“Well, apparently, what’s happened is, apparently some people are unfamiliar with the pathways of American culture, and don’t realize the old Uncle Remus story where somebody hugs a tar baby . . . ”
So it was his belief in his own cultural superiority that caused Snow to fall in May. Of course, the same line of thinking did in the Third Reich and the Confederacy. Coincidence?
While we were distracted by his “tar baby” reference, we failed to note another White House fiction. Snow had claimed that 64 percent of us believe it’s fine for the sons of Joe McCarthy to rifle our underwear drawers in the defense of liberty. This from the same White House that again and again tells us that polls don’t matter when 65 percent or more of those questioned disapprove of the administration. I guess you don’t have to make up your own mind about the relevance of anything, including polling, when you have no qualms about ignoring millions of other people when they make up theirs.
More shit, sir?
The White House Press Corps annual dinner, in April, was memorable for two things. The first was George W. Bush’s de facto confession that he couldn’t even appear as himself without the use of a stunt double. Better yet was the way satirist Stephen Colbert landed a twofer on both Bush and the assembled media by pointing out the Cheney-orange bull’s-eye on the president’s smug puss. He then effortlessly hit the target with a barrage of material that garnered some laughter and much cowardly silence.
