Tony Snow: A Good Name
July 12, 2008 
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by Jack Kinsella
I cannot help but feel a sharp sense of loss on hearing this morning of the passing of former White House Press Secretary Tony Snow. Snow succumbed to complications from treatment for colon cancer after a long and public battle with the disease.
By all accounts, Tony Snow was truly a class act. This is a guy who lived all his adult life in the public eye, hobnobbing with the most powerful people on earth, yet by all accounts, didn’t have an enemy in the world.
I admired Tony Snow for years — if ever there were someone I wanted to be like, it was Tony Snow. He was an honest guy. He called it as he saw it, but he always managed it without becoming shrill. He had a way of cutting through political correctness without seeming to violate its unwritten rules.
Everyone has a public side and a private side, whether one is a celebrity or just a guy doing his best to get by in this world. Who you are at work isn’t who you are at home.
In the case of a high-profile celebrity, who you see on TV isn’t always who the guy really is. Take Bill O’Reilly, for example. There is a video circulating the internet of O’Reilly transforming from his on-camera persona to who is really is, and back again. (Warning: the language is pretty graphic. Turn down your speakers if you have kids at home.)
The point isn’t to denigrate Bill O’Reilly. The point is that who you see on camera is generally the person he wants you to see, not necessarily the person he is when the cameras are turned off.
Or, more recently, there’s the “Reverend” Jesse Jackson, whose public persona is as the ‘elder statesman’ of the civil rights movement and, of course, an ordained minister. The other day, when the “Reverend” Jesse Jackson thought the microphone was off, we got a glimpse of the real Jesse. (Same warning: it isn’t stuff you want your kids to overhear - even if he is a ‘Reverend’)
On camera, he’s “Reverend Jesse” — off camera, he’s still Jesse from the ‘hood.
Tony Snow’s career spanned three decades. He made a name for himself by expressing his conservative viewpoints, which were well established when, after working in the first Bush administration, he began his broadcast career with left-leaning CNN. He left CNN to help launch the Fox News Network, before going to work for George W. Bush in 2006 as his press secretary, when Bush’s popularity had hit rock bottom. Snow was also a dedicated and unabashed Christian.
That is the kind of resume that would ordinarily have liberals calling for his head. When the Reverend Jerry Falwell died of a heart attack, the Left’s blogosphere was ecstatic. The comments about his death were so vile and hateful I wrote a column about it.
Nothing like that with Snow’s passing, although there is likely little about Falwell’s beliefs that Snow would have disagreed with. Even the Huffington Post didn’t cheer his death as good riddance to another conservative — high praise, indeed — considering the source.
I watched hours of tributes to Snow on both Fox and CNN by his colleagues from both sides of the political spectrum — the sense of loss — even by his ideological foes, was obviously real.
King Solomon made the point that it is not until one’s death that one can take the full measure of a man’s life. Ecclesiastes 7:1 says, “A good name is better than precious ointment; and the day of death than the day of one’s birth.”
We all come into this life more or less equally equipped to face it. How we face it, and what we do with our lives, cannot be measured until it is complete. And in the end, the most valuable thing we take from it is a good name.
I never met Tony Snow, but I feel as if I knew him. And, by all accounts from those who did, the man I think I knew was the same man that they did. With his passing, even his ideological enemies are in mourning.
Tony Snow left behind a good name. I will miss hearing it.
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Excellent article. I too, never knew Tony Snow personally, but I had watched him for years. I felt as if I had lost a member of my family, and still do. I also believed that what you seen with Mr. Snow, was the same person you got 24/7. I loved the way he never was ashamed that he was a Christian and a dedicated family man.
He will be sorely missed by many for many years to come!
Linda