Tony Snow

Tony Snow’s first formal press briefing as White House press secretary on Tuesday brought to mind an Oscar Wilde quip. Snow misquoted poll results, misquoted President Bush, made conflicting statements about whether the NSA is invading the privacy of Americans or not and used a phrase that has been deemed politically incorrect for the last seven years. He said he didn’t want to “hug the tar baby” of the surveillance program. To top off his sloppy and ill-prepared first official day on the job, he had a tearful private moment with long seconds of dead air during which he struggled to get his emotions under control in order to speak of his colon cancer surgery. It was then that Oscar Wilde came to my mind: “One must have a heart of stone to read the death of little Nell without laughing.” How long Tony Snow is going to blame his gaffes on the fact that he’s not yet up-to-speed on White House info is anyone’s guess. But a press secretary gets only one free pass to cry about his near-death cancer surgery. Tony Snow used that pass Tuesday. But Snow has managed to do one thing since his switch from the Fox News Follies to the White House Shuffle. He has made former press secretaries Ari Fleischer and Scott McClellan look terrific.