So Many Republican Hypocrites, So Little Time

June 22, 2007 | SEND TO A FRIEND | GET EARLY NOTICE OF THE HOTW

Tony Snow

Welcome back to the BuzzFlash GOP Hypocrite of the Week.

We had Laura Bush all set for this week's honors. After all, she went on one of those morning entertainment shows -- you know the ones disguised as news -- and claimed how generous the White House was being in welcoming Iraq refugees seeking a place to live. The only problem with her deceptive assertion of compassion was the fact that the U.S. admitted only 69 Iraqi refugees this fiscal year, while the number of displaced Iraqis is well, well over a million.

But at the last minute, a Jon Stewart segment on Tony Snow caught in a bald-faced, indisputable lie kept nagging at us. We only saw another mention of it as an aside in a small column on a Chicago paper -- and we understand there was reportedly a sentence or two in The Washington Post in one of those wrap-up stories. But otherwise, the mainstream media was silent about a White House Press Secretary claiming that he never said something that he was caught on tape saying.

We all know that politicians and spokespeople shade the truth. One of Snow's predecessors, Ari Fleischer, was an artist at parsing words so that he wasn't technically lying; he was just daily misleading us.

But Snow, like Dick Cheney and George Bush, believes that "white lies" are for wimps. If you are going to lie, lie big.

After all, Snow, we are told, insisted on being a full part of Executive Branch deliberations before he would accept the Press Secretary position. So, he can't plead ignorance.

That is why this Jon Stewart video of "Tony Snow Vs. Tony Snow: Who's Telling the Truth?" is a must watch. The big lie is so epidemic in the Bush Administration, it isn't even news anymore.

Just a couple days later, when asked how the Bush Administration could violate the law by conducting politically sensitive Executive Branch business through RNC e-mail accounts -- and then allegedly destroying countless communications -- Snow lied again. He said that they were just doing what the Clinton Administration did. Not true, another lie.

Meanwhile, a veteran D.C. Associated Press reporter wrote a tawdry, cliched column calling Hillary Clinton "slick Hillary" and "the artful dodger" for not answering a question on a potential Libby pardon. Uh, shouldn't Ron Fournier be writing a column calling Bush "Slick George" for not answering questions about a potential Libby pardon? Isn't Bush the one being slick?

Fournier's pathetic AP "analysis" is just another example of the D.C. Press Corps bias that lets the Tony Snows, Dick Cheneys, and George Bushes get away with big lie after big lie, while writing "seasoned" columns that accuse Democrats of disingenuous behavior for not answering questions about issues that they are not even involved with.

It's a Snow job we're getting all around: from the White House to the Republican Congress to the mainstream media.

Thank the Lord for Jon Stewart.

As for Tony Snow, he wouldn't know the truth if someone threw a pie of it in his face.

Until next week, remember our motto: So many Republican hypocrites, so little time.

Catch up with you soon.