Hating Tony Snow: More

Frontpage Magazine has noticed the level of hatred that the left has lavished on Tony Snow since his recent death, something we blogged about Saturday.

You can, if you want, read the entire thing, which (if you read our post) won’t surprise you.

But we could not resist quoting the last paragraph.

He was a forceful exponent of his own views, which frequently clashed with those of the Bush administration. He is missed by conservatives who shared his views, moderates who enjoyed robust and respectful debate, and liberals capable of viewing a man as more than an embodied political platform. These last are too few, and their replacements disgrace American political debate.

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.

Tony Snow: More Liberal Hate

We posted yesterday about hateful comments on liberal blogs directed at White House Press Secretary, whose cancer has returned.

Since then we have found and archived two discussions on the Democratic Underground discussion board.

Almost two years ago, we posted about the vitroil on that board directed toward Marquette’s College Republicans, whose fundraiser for American snipers was shut down by Marquette bureaucrats.

While there are a fair number of solicitous comments directed toward Snow, there is a very large dollop of pure hatred.

Warning: Obscene Language Follows

One discussion was posted under the (sarcastic) title “God Bless Tony Snow,” and the initial post said:

I wish him talented doctors, a speedy recovery and peace to his concerned loved ones. I really do.

Even a lying shit shoveler like Tony Snow deserves decent medical care and emotional support in the tough times........

That pretty much set the tone, as comments such as the following were posted:

• . . . maybe he’ll get a glass bellybutton installed, so he can see with his head up his ass
• I like Tony Snow, and I wish him the best. He does his job. Unfortunately, doing his job means doing his best to put lipstick on a slobbering, slimy, festering pig.
• he does deserve it- and as for his job- he is just trying to be the best shit-shoveler that there ever was
• he gets rewarded for lying and enabling with the best that there is. . .
• Fuck him. He is a liar and a LOYAL bUSHIE
• I appreciate your sentiments but if he truly is concerned about his health he would quit his job. He lies to cover for a criminal and he has a nasty attitude to boot.
• being the Head Liar for the “MAN” means more than life itself...

A different discussion board at Democratic Underground is slightly more polite, perhaps because it is moderated. But it still contains comments like the following:

• I hope he gets well to, however i still have a fantasy about him that involves an open elevator shaft.
• maybe all that hatemongering hexed him! i cursed lee atwater....now i curse tony snow! do not ef with me you gop bastards!!
• Lately, poor Tony has been looking defeated & dejected, I think things aren’t going so well for his puppeteers.
• I think things aren’t going so well for his puppeteers. I assumed it was from having to lie, lie, lie every time he comes out there - that has to be hard on the body and the soul.
• Just because he’s a lying weasel doesn’t mean he shouldn’t be allowed lots of time to redeem himself.
• And I’ll admit that I don’t think much of Tony Snow. In fact, I really despise him. But I do hope that he recovers quickly and perhaps learns something from this that he obviously didn’t learn last time: life is precious.
• Get well,Tony . . . and get a conscience while you’re at it.

In Monday’s Washington Post, Howard Kurtz mentions the nastiness of the online discussion boards, but in a rather lame attempt to be even-handed, implies that it comes equally from both sides.

Kurtz mentions comments on the conservative blog Little Green Footballs, wishing that Gitmo prisoner Khalid Sheikh Mohammed had succeeded in his claimed plot to kill Jimmy Carter.

The comments page in question is here, and readers can read the comments to see whether the are as nasty as the ones on Democratic Underground.

Tony Snow: Liberal Hate Spews Forth

When John and his wife Elizabeth Edwards announced that her cancer had recurred, we saw nothing but best wishes from the conservative blogosphere. Righty bloggers don’t particular like the very liberal John Edwards, and won’t vote for him. But the universal reaction was to wish the couple well.

But when Tony Snow made a similar announcement, the lefty blogosphere reacted very differently. As explained by World Net Daily:

Moments after White House Press Secretary Tony Snow’s new personal battle against cancer became public yesterday, a vicious assault was launched at left-leaning websites, with some message posters hoping for a swift death for the presidential spokesman.

“Under the heading of ‘What goes around comes around’, the cancer in Tony Snow is removing the cancer of Tony Snow from the national scene,” wrote TDoff on the D.C. gossip site Wonkette.com.

Omnilation wrote, “Dear Tony, I hate you. -God.”

A contributor called homofascist stated, “It is a bitch that I wouldn’t wish upon even a smarmy, evil f---face liar like Snow. Because really, isn’t he OUR smarmy, evil f---face liar?”

Some readers at HuffingtonPost.com reportedly said:

“Sure holding all that bulls**t in your gut would make anybody sick . . . !”

“The growth in his abdomen is his head stuck up his a**. F**k him!! He is pure lying scum and should die ASAP!!”

Beccawalton was among those calling for an end to the venom-spewing:

“Stop these mean-spirited and hypocritical posts. Just because you don’t like his politics (and I don’t, either), don’t revel in this. It’s inhuman and cruel. I’m not going to waste space to prove my liberal cred, just stop it!”

And PghLori noted:

“There are freakin’ idiots on both sides of the political divide, and here you’re looking at the lib side. Aside from the fact that it is just ignorant to make jokes about cancer, it’s also self-defeating, as [Rush] Limbaugh, [Sean] Hannity, etc. will refer to these postings as examples of hate-filled libs, just as they did with the Cheney board postings. Thanks a lot folks.”

We just listened to Sean Hannity on the way home tonight, and the poster is right. Hannity did discuss the hate filled postings on his show.

But the last posting also raises the likelihood that there are many more liberals who are as hate-filled as those who posted, but are at least smart enough to avoid making their side of the ideological spectrum look like bigots.

If anybody thinks that this sort of rhetoric is limited to one lefty blog, they might check out what a blogger wrote on the Huffington Post:

I admit my bias shows with these stories. I hear about Tony Snow and say to myself, well, stand up every day, lie to the American people at the behest of your dictator-esque boss and well, how could a cancer NOT grow in you. Work for Fox News, spinning the truth in to a billion knots and how can your gut not rot? I know, it’s terrible. I admit it. I don’t wish anyone harm, even Tony Snow. And I do hope he recovers or at least does what he feels is best and surrounds himself with friends and family for his journey. But in the back of my head there’s Justin Timberlake’s “What goes around, goes around, comes around, comes all the way back around, ya..”…

Interestingly, this particular passage has been deleted from the Huffington Post, but reactions to it by readers remain. It’s hard to completely sanitize the record.

Check here for more details on the post.

Liberals constantly use the rhetoric of tolerance. So why do they (or at least so many of them) hate so much?