respect for the departed

i'm sure that i'm not the first to have asked this question, but what's the grace period on speaking ill of the dead?

i'm not speaking ill of anyone, but i know there are liberals, centrists, and media critics out there who are just chomping at the bit, waiting for their editors to let them rip into tony snow.

none of the obits slammed him, although many of them had subtle indications that future retrospectives would not be so kind to the former white house press secretary.

probably the most fair and balanced (pun partially intended) obit comes from peter baker, who used to be a white house reporter, albeit in the clinton years. most of it is glowing and respectful, but baker knows when to point out the important contradictions/subtleties of the man:

When a flamboyant radio reporter demanded to know whether Snow was going to evade a typically offbeat question, Snow chuckled. "No," he said, "I'm going to laugh at it."

In short, Snow led the first press briefing for the talk-show era, and he played the role with gusto. As the first working journalist in 30 years to serve as White House press secretary, he loved nothing more than jousting with reporters and expressed disappointment when they did not challenge him enough. To him, the job was the "Disney World of communications," as he once termed it. But at times, it seemed to be more about theater than information. He demonstrated little interest in the nitty-gritty of policy and delegated most off-camera reporter inquiries to his deputies. Precision was not his strong suit; translating difficult decisions into easily digestible explanations was.

the NYT does a mini-biography that kind of acknowledges the problems he faced, but doesn't delve too deeply.

the AP tries to play it down the middle, for better or worse. they play up the "something of an embarrassment" comment that snow once made about bush, using that as a way to counterbalance the man's general conservative outlook. not sure it all weighs evenly, but it must have been awkward to do an AP-style obit about a media figure.

the AFP doesn't even try to insinuate anyone's negative feelings about the man.

NPR takes a weird middle path, by having their most conservative commentator, juan williams, do a personal speech about snow, thus letting them have their cake and eat it too.

and of course, there are plenty of individual columns from fox news that are very positive.

so my point is, when are people going to start talking about how much they hated him? what's the moratorium on things like that? i'm not saying i hated him (no partisan stance in this blog), but it's not like it's a secret that he was persona non grata with a large swath of media commentators.

hell, even the daily show was holding back in its final interview with him, months before his death! and the daily show was probably more critical of tony snow than any other source!

when can we expect the backlash?

either way, my thoughts and prayers are with his family and friends.