What’s so inexplicable about the comparison of Snow to Goebbels? Both had the same job. It’s only a difference in scale.
Again, this is simply not true. Please do a little basic research before you spout off such nonsense.
and the search for clarity continues…
I’m happy to affirm that tastes differ from one person to another, and that mine may not be suitable for most people. In the immortal word of Dick Cheney–so?
Is all we’re discussing the fact that gloating about someone’s death is not the most decorous act one could indulge in? Fine. Yeah. Sure.
I’ll do it on special occasions anyway. Tony Snow’s painful death substitutes (for me) for the illusion that justice exists in this world. Every time I think of Karl Rove running around free ignoring subpoenas, I can console myself “Oh, well, at least Tony Snow died young and in a good deal of discomfort–what goes around at least sometimes comes aorund.”
Now if I could swap Tony Snow’s fate with Rove’s (to date), I’d do it in a heartbeat, but you can’t always get what you want.
Goebbels included on his resume such things as being the campaign manager for the Nazis in various 1930s elections, being in charge of the purge of Jews and liberals from German cultural life, being in charge of the censorship of German cultural life, one of the main inciters of Kristallnacht, and we haven’t even got to the Holocaust or the war yet.
You are insane.
What part of “difference in scale” don’t you grasp? What’s the essential difference between Godzilla and the Geico Lizard? A difference in scale. What is the difference between being the propaganda agent for one of the most evil bunch of fuckers ever, and one of the evilest bunch of fuckers we’ve had to endure? A difference in scale.
Was Goebbels vastly, galactically more evil than Tony Snow? Yes. Precisely that.
Were the policies and decisions that Mr Snow fronted for more evil and degrading that you would like for our country? Well, you tell me.
Note: the reference to Godzilla and the Geio Lizard is illustrative only, I intend no insult to the Reptilo-American community.
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I’m not sure how it was possible to be both batshit and chickenshit in one thread, but cousin **Dio,**you’ve done it. This is licking-the-walls-and-talking-to-your-boots crazy. 'luci is spot on, maybe go out into the Minnesota wilderness for a while and bring a prozac the size of a handball with you. Christ.
Well, the thing is, as Frank and I have pointed out, it’s not simply a difference in scale - it’s also a difference in kind. Again - to make this really simple - Snow had NO input into formulating public policy, as opposed to Herr Goebbels. I don’t know why this is a difficult concept to grasp.
I fail to see a difference in kind, at least not enough to matter. Selling mass murder is selling mass murder. I guess we’ll just have to agree to disagree.
I’m a damn foreigner, so I’ll give my two honest eurocents as to the perceived difference.
First of all, Tony Snow was a hack. A Bush-brand, dishonest, political apologist. Intelligent enough to get away with it, honest enough to give his own opinions occasionally - like calling Bush something of an embarassment, looking impotent, not meaning what he says and calling him the linguistic heir of Norm Crosby - but still a hack. The usual WHPS high noise-to-signal ratio and the careful use of words that mean absolutely nothing. Par course for the job. He facilitated lies and the deception of the public. In the time period of April 2006 to September 2007, he validated by association a highly controversial (and most certainly damned imoral) war which has claimed hundreds of thousands of lives and trillions of dollars.
Joseph Goebbels on the other hand was a personally outspoken, violently anti-semitic politician. He started his rise to power as a divisional leader of the Nazi party in Berlin. After he was instated as Propaganda Minister in 1933, he ordered - on his own authority - the burning of anti-Nazist or Jewish books. He was personally and politically the prime factor in the design and execution of the Kristallnacht, in 1938. He was responsible for the design and implementation of a great many acts of propaganda based on blatant lies and deceit, leading the German population into accept war for territorial expansion.
While it’s true that Goebbels rose into media and history prominence as the voice and face of the Nazi party in the war-time, like Snow in his period, the chief difference between the two is that Goebbels himself designed and implemented most, if not all, the domestic policies that he was talking about. He was a mouthpiece for himself in most, if not all, domestic affairs.
Tony Snow was an educated and award-winning journalist who moved on to write speeches and handle the media for the White House, under both Bush administrations. My point is while both Goebbels and Snow were complicit and facilitated what I believe history will recognize as great crimes, Snow was essentially a puppet with moving lips and a hand up his ass. Even if he some-times phrased the words, themselves.
To conclude, what makes the difference in my perception is the level of personal involvement in the actual decision-making and strategy-forming talked about. I think Snow should have never taken the jobs and kept his journalistic intergrity intact, but on the list of Great Evil Men, he hardly clears the Top 1000. Goebbels would be in the top 100 for the Kristallnacht alone.
YMMW, of course.
As for me personally, I regret Snow’s death because of his youth and his family. I take no pleasure and find no relief in his passing.
Oh, for Christ’s sake.
It’s not just “selling mass murder”.
It’s “formulating public policy that leads inexorably by design to mass murder.”
EDIT: Thank you, Gukumatz
Doesn’t make a lot of sense. Do you have any incidents to offer that Goebbels ever *opposed * a policy decision of Hitler’s? Isn’t part of making policy to have views and to present them? Hitler told Goebbels what Goebbels views were, and Goebbels agreed that he was right. How is that to mean that Goebbels was a policy-maker?
Did Tony Snow actively make policy? Of course not. I would have to say that Colin Powell bears a lot more blame than he, by a long shot. On the other hand, Powell has shown some regret. Ever hear any of that from Tony Snow? Tony Snow was no dummy, how come it took him so long to see what the rest of us caught on to pretty quick? Are we to say that he never caught on, and sincerely believed the bullcrap he was foisting upon us? So he’s either one dumb sumbitch, or he was willfully and intentionally cooperating with very, very bad people.
Which would you prefer us to believe?
Right, Snow was “only following orders”.
Gukmatz, your points are well taken, but you imply a distinction that is hard to confirm. You say that Goebbels formulated domestic policy and so on, and no doubt that is so. But I think that Goebbels simply reflected policy as embodied in Hitler, he was a puppet and a reflection, without any autonomy.
Its been many a year since I spent much time on the Turd Reich, but I don’t recall any difference of opinion between Goebbels and Hitler, certainly none that Goebbels prevailed over the Fuhrer. Being human, that may simply be because it would weaken my case, but do you?
Is someone who participated so enthusiastically in selling stuff even he knew was bullshit, whether his paycheck said Fox or US Treasury on it, less culpable for not having created the bullshit in the first place?
Lee Atwater, whose culpability was far greater, at least had the grace to repent on his deathbed. What excuses Snow’s failure to do likewise? What good deeds did he do for the world that offset the damage he did to it?
His family has my sympathies for the loss of its father and husband. But there’s no obligation for anyone to go much further than that. Not every man’s death diminishes us equally.
First, I posted. I thought, “My God, Diogenes has gone off the deep end, poor bugger.” Then, I read the remainder of the thread, where Tony Snow is compared to Joseph Goebbels. The idea in and of itself causes the mind to reel (as Tony Snow never really even flirted with the idea of the extermination of an entire race of people, much less joined a political party to attempt to ensure it, but I digress). The further defending of the idiocy is less confusing, more maddening and altogether sad.
I read then the comparison to the brothers Hussein and Mr. Snow. Again, I’d be hard pressed to find the story about Mr. Snow tossing a poorly performing soccer player off of a building, but hey, I’m slow, maybe he did.
The common human decency that Autolycus talks about is somehow dismissed as grey area. It seems to me that when someone who didn’t hold particularly horrible beliefs (Helms) do horrible things (Goebbels) or, y’know, kill people (La Familia Hussein) is diagnosed with an ignoble, degrading disease, and somewhat publicly, dies from it, that as people, we owe them just a passing moment of repect and restraint. Of course, not everyone believes as I do, nor am I advocating that, however if you’re going to be, as he has claimed to be, on the side of peace, on the side of hope, on the side of “justice” or the side of the “people” you can forgive and even meditate on Mr. Snow’s life and how you would not repeat it, and perhaps his lesson might be learned.
Diogenes did not do that. He railed, and still he rails, perhaps less exuberant and more contemplative, but still, “glad” that this man died and his children will be without a father.
I could say that he is despicable, but I know better. I want to call him names and point out the kind of person I think he is.
The pity that I feel for him prevents me from doing it all.
He is crippled by his own mind. Letting so much negativity do so much damage is simply pathetic, this impotent hatred will fade eventually and perhaps he will come around. Perhaps not.
“who didn’t hold particularly horrible beliefs … do horrible things … or kill people”
There are those of us who inexplicably find wars of aggression and torture of innocents, including the selling of them, “horrible” nonetheless. Imagine that.
Why would this be relevant? Hitler didn’t exactly keep a Western democratic style cabinet to bounce ideas off of. Obivously, Goebbels and Hitler agreed on the big picture - otherwise, why would Goebbels have spent years supporting Hitler before he even came to power?
I think you are confusing Stalinist totalitarianism, which was largely top-down from the center, with Nazi totalitarianism, in which multiple loci of power competed with each other for Hitler’s imprimatur.
Can’t it be both?
I am sure he is grateful for your restraint.
“I could say that he is a rabid, shit-eating mongel, but I’m too nice a guy, so I won’t”. Right. Got it.
Well, OK, I’m listening. How?