Man Of Character
(IBD)
Obituary: Former White House spokesman and longtime journalist Tony Snow died Saturday, taking with him a measure of decency that Washington and American politics in general could use more of.
Snow fought the fatal colon cancer with the same grace and dignity that he brought to the blood sport of politics.
At 53, the man with the eternally sunny disposition and notably deep faith left far too early for both his family and for a political system that could use a little more civility and lot less of the derangement that drives the hatred we’ve seen the past eight years.
No matter what his station in life, Snow always treated others as equals. We didn’t have the honor to know him, but by all accounts — or at least those of decent people — he was genuine, a real person who respected those with whom he fought, both as a journalist and a political aid.
Washington Post media critic Howard Kurtz wrote that no matter how fierce the sparring, Snow always “could separate the personal from the political.” Even NBC’s David Gregory, who had a high-profile clash with Snow the White House press secretary, remembered “what a decent guy he was.”
Two years into his battle with the disease, having endured surgery, chemotherapy and then a recurrence of tumors, Snow refused to adopt a victim’s mind-set. Writing last July in Christianity Today, he said:
“I don’t know why I have cancer, and I don’t much care. . . . The mere thought of death somehow makes every blessing vivid, every happiness more luminous and intense.”
The headline for the piece? “Cancer’s Unexpected Blessings.”
The only people who have spoken unfavorably of Snow are hate-filled cranks of the left.
In comments following Snow’s Los Angeles Times obituary, for instance, one reader said that “repeating lies day in and day out is bad for your health,” while another said, “Lying causes cancer? Now we know.”
“Rest in hell” was a suggestion by a reader of the Daily Kos blog while another of the Kos Kids expressed the hope that “there really is a hell and he’s burning in it right now.”
Snow was a man who wanted his struggle with cancer to inspire the sick and their families, to create hope where there is none, to help others get through what he wouldn’t.
He held those same selfless wishes for those who maliciously say he deserved the disease and death that he got.
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http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2007/july/25.30.html
Tony’s article in CT.
Worth the read.
R.I.P. Mr. Snow.
July 16th, 2008 at 9:13 am