Tony Snow and the Tolerant, Compassionate Left

Warning. Strong Language.

Tony Snow, former White House Press Secretary and Fox News journalist dies, and how do the folks in the leftist blogosphere react?

With all the venom one might expect.

When looking at comments on liberal blogs, one has to note that many have the notion “Sub-thread removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules” (this from the Democratic Underground) or some such.

Which means that the post was so vile that a moderator removed it. Which means that to get the true flavor of the responses, one needs to move the the bottom of the discussion to see posts that the moderators haven’t gotten around to removing yet.

Just a sampling of comments from the aforementioned Democratic Underground.

• Meet your maker and all the people you helped kill Tony.
  
• Condolences to his family, good riddance to a fucking liar.
  
• We have no right to rejoice over this. But what about the man whose entire family was slaughtered by american bombings in Iraq ? Snow, as Bush’s spokesman, bears a responsibility.
  
• Mr. Snow, meet Mr. Fire. Another fascist bites the dust. None too soon.
  
• A fond farewell Mr. Snow ... If there is someplace you go after death, I hope George Carlin is there waiting to kick your ass.
  
• He (or his masters) paid image consultants a crapload of money to make him seem like a decent guy, but he stood for and supported everything that Bush and Cheney do, and I wouldn’t apply the term decent to either of them...
  
• My condolences ... to the Iraqis who have died because of the neocons.
  
• Why not just let him lie and say nothing, and save your pity for the people who have suffered and died because of Bush administration policies that Snow helped promote?
  
• I saw him on Bill Maher maybe back in January. And I remember being shocked at the time that someone battling what is usually a death-sentence illness . . . would not have learned anything about life. His illness and what he went through obviously not having taught him anything about compassion, humility or empathy. But there he was, Tony Snow. As hateful and arrogant as ever.
  
• that Tony was a filthy, lying bastard who devoted his later years to spewing propaganda for fascists and miscreants.
  
• Rest in peace, Mr. Snow. Just joking.
  
• He was a paid liar for the worst administration in our history.
  
• He was just one of the flacks. Media manipulators for hire. Spin machines. I have often wondered how they manage to sleep at night.
  
• he lied to me daily
  
• Isn’t that nice. A faithful Christian who enabled the slaughter of innocent Iraqis.
  
• sorry snow------- his bullshit lies and smarmy face caused the deaths of soldiers, the ignoring of global warming, the spreading of disinformation.
  
• Maybe he can now meet some of the people his lies killed.

We could, of course, cut and paste all night on this.

In all fairness, not all comments were nasty, although some posters pointedly said they were not going to say anything (presumably because they could say nothing good).

But the contrast to conservative blogs is stark. Comments gloating over Teddy Kennedy’s brain cancer were few, and sympathy was the norm there.

[Sunday Afternoon Update]

Some similar hatred from the Daily Kos.

• Question #2.Was Tony Snow part of a Goebbels-like propaganda machine allowing a cabal of pillaging, warmongering thugs to seize War Powers of an Industrialized “Democracy” allowing said Regime to unrepentently torture, maim, and kill civilians in foreign lands while rationalizing his patrons Police-State Powers at home via the comprehensive, calculated dissembly of the Rule of Law? . . . Yes.
  
• I feel horribly for the children, elderly parents...the wife I am more ambivalent about. I could not love or stay married to a man who enabled Bush.
  
• Isn’t it ironic. . . that a man who held onto and fed people the lies, the smears, the condescending attitude, who hurt so many should be overcome by the very thing that his own body was feeding and growing.
  
• Tony Snow I am sure was a nice man to those of like mind. And there is exactly the problem. “Those of like mind” do not give a damn about you or me or the rest of this once great country.
  
• Let’s talk about Tony Snow - I mean really talk about Tony Snow and what lies he spread to the world for profit.
  
• Standing in Puragtory’s line, behind 100k Iraqis
  
• It is fair and balanced to note what team he played for. How many Iraqis and Americans died so he could continue in his job?

It is ironic that the secular leftist types at the Daily Kos invoke God and the afterlife. But one poster explained the whole thing.

• Not a believer in an afterlife, but let me say that would be fitting; something like Marlow’s ghost from “A Christmas Carol”, here’s Tony chained to all of his lies, doomed to walk the earth seeing the destruction he facilitated...every military funeral, every Iraqi body laying in the street, every homeless vet...
  
  I can see why this whole “afterlife” thing is so popular.

The stunning thing about all this is not so much that liberals hate. Strong partisans have always tended to demonize the other side.

It’s that the liberals are so shameless in their hate. They think their views are the only decent ones, and therefore all who oppose them deserve to be hated.

They are, in other words, proud of their hatred.