Speak No Ill of the Dying?
Steve Shives
April 03, 2007
I don’t go to many funerals. I find them depressing and counterproductive. The only one I’ve ever attended was my grandfather’s three years ago, and I didn’t have much choice on that. It was a quiet, dignified, family-only affair, and therefore didn’t boast many of the stereotypical features of funerals as I’ve come to imagine them. No gossip, no sermons—best of all, no speeches nominating the deceased to be canonized.
We tend to regard the recently dead as better people than they actually were. We know we do it, we know lies are being told, but we do it anyway because it just seems the polite and decent thing to do. I’m sure Ken Lay’s eulogy had a few glaring omissions. What I find interesting is how this practice has recently been expanded to include those who aren’t dead yet but seem to be heading that direction.
Primarily I’m referring to Tony Snow, White House Press Secretary and former talk radio and Fox News Sunday host. Tony lost his colon to cancer a few years ago, and just recently announced the cancer had returned and spread to his liver. Though Snow and his fellow White House spokespeople have scrupulously avoided concrete predictions on the matter, if you read between the lines it isn’t hard to guess that Tony doesn’t expect to be around much longer.
The news generated the expected reactions from the right and the left: conservative bloggers like Michelle Malkin immediately posted tearful “courage, Tony” articles, while writers of liberal blogs reacted with a mixture of indifference and elation. What’s surprising is how harshly the likes of Malkin and Bill O’Reilly have responded to the anti-Snow posts on The Daily Kos and The Huffington Post.
O’Reilly devoted a segment of his show Friday night to what he called the “vile attacks” on Tony Snow by “radical left-wing bloggers.” Joined via satellite by Malkin, and by an administrator from the Huffington Post, O’Reilly read and displayed on-screen edited versions of articles from Daily Kos in which the author made use of my favorite expletive (hint: the one that starts with “f”) to describe his lack of sympathy for Snow’s plight, instantly giving these “vile” comments a hundred times the audience they had on the websites for which they were written.
Did Tony Snow perform some act of heroism I haven’t heard about? Did he help save some old women from drowning in their nursing home after Hurricane Katrina? Did he donate a kidney or get a kitten down from up in a tree? He’s apparently an affable guy who is well-liked by the Washington reporters he’s made his living lying to for the past year. He’s married with little kids. He’s probably going to die of cancer and that’s sad, but it doesn’t put the guy above criticism.
Tony Snow’s not a guy who walked in the door with George W. Bush and decided to remain loyal through the hard times—he didn’t come aboard until the ship was already sinking. Snow had a job at Fox News, he’d been a radio and television host for years, he had a few years as George H.W. Bush’s speechwriter on his resume—he had his pick of jobs, and the job he picked was to go before the media every morning and lie for this President. He doesn’t get my sympathy either. His kids, sure—they didn’t choose their father, and now it looks like they’ll have to grow up without him. I feel bad for them.
How many thousands of people have died on either side during this war? How many men, women and children have been catastrophically injured? How many billions of dollars have been wasted? Knowing all this, Tony Snow still chose to serve at the pleasure of George W. Bush, the man responsible for it all, the man who chose to place a legitimate conflict against terrorists in Afghanistan on the back burner in order to instigate a misguided and unnecessary war against Saddam Hussein. Forgive me if I share the feelings of the Daily Kos and Huffington Post writers who said they’d rather save their sympathy for the people made to suffer by the policies of the man whom Tony Snow is probably still proud to call his boss.
Maybe it’s harsh to say you get what you’ve got coming to you. Maybe it’s insensitive to look at the case of Tony Snow and coldly observe that sometimes you reap what you sow. Maybe it’s tactless to suggest that people like Tony Snow deserve to wither from disease and die. Maybe it’s also true.
We tend to regard the recently dead as better people than they actually were. We know we do it, we know lies are being told, but we do it anyway because it just seems the polite and decent thing to do. I’m sure Ken Lay’s eulogy had a few glaring omissions. What I find interesting is how this practice has recently been expanded to include those who aren’t dead yet but seem to be heading that direction.
Primarily I’m referring to Tony Snow, White House Press Secretary and former talk radio and Fox News Sunday host. Tony lost his colon to cancer a few years ago, and just recently announced the cancer had returned and spread to his liver. Though Snow and his fellow White House spokespeople have scrupulously avoided concrete predictions on the matter, if you read between the lines it isn’t hard to guess that Tony doesn’t expect to be around much longer.
The news generated the expected reactions from the right and the left: conservative bloggers like Michelle Malkin immediately posted tearful “courage, Tony” articles, while writers of liberal blogs reacted with a mixture of indifference and elation. What’s surprising is how harshly the likes of Malkin and Bill O’Reilly have responded to the anti-Snow posts on The Daily Kos and The Huffington Post.
O’Reilly devoted a segment of his show Friday night to what he called the “vile attacks” on Tony Snow by “radical left-wing bloggers.” Joined via satellite by Malkin, and by an administrator from the Huffington Post, O’Reilly read and displayed on-screen edited versions of articles from Daily Kos in which the author made use of my favorite expletive (hint: the one that starts with “f”) to describe his lack of sympathy for Snow’s plight, instantly giving these “vile” comments a hundred times the audience they had on the websites for which they were written.
Did Tony Snow perform some act of heroism I haven’t heard about? Did he help save some old women from drowning in their nursing home after Hurricane Katrina? Did he donate a kidney or get a kitten down from up in a tree? He’s apparently an affable guy who is well-liked by the Washington reporters he’s made his living lying to for the past year. He’s married with little kids. He’s probably going to die of cancer and that’s sad, but it doesn’t put the guy above criticism.
Tony Snow’s not a guy who walked in the door with George W. Bush and decided to remain loyal through the hard times—he didn’t come aboard until the ship was already sinking. Snow had a job at Fox News, he’d been a radio and television host for years, he had a few years as George H.W. Bush’s speechwriter on his resume—he had his pick of jobs, and the job he picked was to go before the media every morning and lie for this President. He doesn’t get my sympathy either. His kids, sure—they didn’t choose their father, and now it looks like they’ll have to grow up without him. I feel bad for them.
How many thousands of people have died on either side during this war? How many men, women and children have been catastrophically injured? How many billions of dollars have been wasted? Knowing all this, Tony Snow still chose to serve at the pleasure of George W. Bush, the man responsible for it all, the man who chose to place a legitimate conflict against terrorists in Afghanistan on the back burner in order to instigate a misguided and unnecessary war against Saddam Hussein. Forgive me if I share the feelings of the Daily Kos and Huffington Post writers who said they’d rather save their sympathy for the people made to suffer by the policies of the man whom Tony Snow is probably still proud to call his boss.
Maybe it’s harsh to say you get what you’ve got coming to you. Maybe it’s insensitive to look at the case of Tony Snow and coldly observe that sometimes you reap what you sow. Maybe it’s tactless to suggest that people like Tony Snow deserve to wither from disease and die. Maybe it’s also true.
Print
Email
