{"id":8019,"date":"2006-07-25T09:10:33","date_gmt":"2006-07-25T13:10:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/8019.html"},"modified":"2006-07-25T09:10:33","modified_gmt":"2006-07-25T13:10:33","slug":"tony-snows-michael-kinsley-moment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/tony-snows-michael-kinsley-moment\/","title":{"rendered":"Tony Snow’s ‘Michael Kinsley Moment’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last week, [tag]White House[\/tag] Press Secretary [tag]Tony Snow[\/tag] raised the rhetorical stakes in the debate over [tag]stem-cell[\/tag] r[tag]esearch[\/tag] by arguing that the policy is “[tag]murder[\/tag]<\/a>.” More specifically, asked to explain the president’s position on the issue, Snow said, “The simple answer is he thinks murder’s wrong.”<\/p>\n

Snow’s choice of words put White House Chief of Staff [tag]Josh Bolten[\/tag] in an awkward position on Meet the Press over the weekend, prompting Snow to backpedal a bit<\/a> yesterday.<\/p>\n

“I overstepped my brief there, and so I created a little trouble for Josh Bolten in the interview. And I feel bad about it. I think there’s concern. The President has said that he believes that this is the [tag]destruction[\/tag] of [tag]human life[\/tag].”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

When asked specifically is the president regards the research as murder, Snow said, “He would not use that term.”<\/p>\n

This struck me as fascinating for a couple of reasons. First, Snow “felt bad,” not because he argued from the White House podium that those who disagreed with him — including most of the country, Nancy Reagan, and several conservative lawmakers — tacitly support murder, but because Josh Bolten had “a little trouble” on Meet the Press. It’s an important distinction — the AP reported<\/a> that Snow “[tag]apologized[\/tag]” for last week’s comment. That’s only partially true; Snow seems to have apologized to Bolten, not to the rest of us.<\/p>\n

Second, Snow’s pseudo-retraction was basically a semantics debate. Indeed, in retrospect, the initial “murder” comment was practically a “Michael Kinsley moment.”
\n
\nA Kinsley moment is when a public figure commits a gaffe by accidentally telling the truth (or, in this case, the truth as Snow sees it). Last week, Snow tried to defend the White House policy and, in his always-cocky way, said what he was thinking. As far as he’s concerned, stem-cell research really is<\/em> murder. That’s why [tag]Bush[\/tag] opposes federal funding — because it’s financial support for homicide.<\/p>\n

Except, in this case, Snow’s candid admission became politically inconvenient, so he backpedaled. He made a mistake by saying what he truly believed.<\/p>\n

In fact, yesterday’s act of contrition had nothing to do with the substance of Snow’s original claim at all. As of yesterday, Snow said, the White House believes researchers are engaged in morally objectionable science that intentionally destroys human life. Is that “murder”? Well, Snow said, the [tag]president[\/tag] “would not use that term.” It’s a distinction without a difference — Bush would use a different word to describe murder, but the White House still considers it murder.<\/p>\n

I was offended by Snow’s remark last week, but looking back, I can at least appreciate his willingness to be bold and publicly acknowledge his bizarre and contradictory beliefs. Yesterday’s retreat, therefore, was just sad. It wasn’t an [tag]apology[\/tag]; it was a subtle reaffirmation of what got him into trouble in the first place.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last week, [tag]White House[\/tag] Press Secretary [tag]Tony Snow[\/tag] raised the rhetorical stakes in the debate over [tag]stem-cell[\/tag] r[tag]esearch[\/tag] by arguing that the policy is “[tag]murder[\/tag].” More specifically, asked to explain the president’s position on the issue, Snow said, “The simple answer is he thinks murder’s wrong.” Snow’s choice of words put White House Chief of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8019","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8019","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8019"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8019\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8019"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8019"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8019"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}