I don't think Tony Snow self-purged his FR history

[jmowreader]

All good DUers (all DUers are good) know that Faux News propagandist/radio host/reich-wing editorialist Tony Snow has accepted Scott McClellan's old job as White House Press Secretary.

We also know that Tony Snow, before he took this job, was very active on Free Republic. Right after the announcement of his hiring, all of Mr. Snow's FR posts were removed.

There are three reasons why this would have happened:

Reason 1: Tony Snow realized that the posts would come back to bite him and his boss in the ass, especially if he continued to post to FR, which prompted him to ask the mods to remove all of his posting history. (This is easy to do: just write a post containing the sentence "Bill Clinton was America's greatest president" and click Send. Your ass, and all of your posts, will be history in about 15 minutes no matter how stellar a freeper you were.) Being that Free Republic has never been the place to go for Socratic debate and intelligent discussion, the ass-biting would commence at the first press conference: he'd call on the first reporter, who'd read one of his juicier posts, and ask him if he was really that fucking stupid. And the ass-biting would continue at Bush's next press conference, if he ever holds one: "Mr. President, were you aware that your press secretary thinks Senator Clinton's mother was a jackal and her father was an insurance salesman?"

Reason 2: Robinson really doesn't need the publicity associated with people actually finding out what's on Free Republic. My local paper describes Free Republic as "a conservative group that supports the war." Being described as a racist group that sends death threats to 15-year-old girls who make anti-war films and advocates the murder of liberals wouldn't do him any good. (Nor would publicizing the Honorary Membership the Portable Sanitation Association International bestowed upon Jim Robinson for his efforts to enrich the portable-toilet industry by renting two toilets per freeper for their little protests...) If WE can find out that Tony Snow's a freeper, so can the press...and now that the sharks are circling, this wouldn't be good.

Reason 3: All White House officials, from the president (or whatever in hell you call Bush) to the turf technicians, have security clearances. When you apply for one, they ask you to list all of the organizations you belong to. (They asked me if I'd ever been in a motorcycle gang, and I was applying to be a private in the army. Tony Snow is applying for direct access to George Bush. You know they asked.) He would have had to list Free Republic as an organization he was a member of, and someone went over there and looked around...and got scared shitless. They know the press is on their asses. They know the press has computers that can connect to the Internets. They know the press is intelligent enough to type "freerepublic.com" into their web browsers, and they know the press would have a field day with comments like this one:

Homosexual activity is extremely harmful to ones health (intestine tract). Just look at the famous singer that died not too long ago "from a twisted intestine". That kind of disaster happens all the time to them, but it is covered up by the MSM. It takes someone famous to die to ever hear about it and then it is pushed off the news as quick as possible.

(The famous singer was Maurice Gibb, whose condition was congenital and who was straight.)

Therefore, the White House called FR and told them to get rid of Tony Snow's posting history.

I think the White House one is most likely, RimJob deleting the posts in an act of self-preservation is next, and Snow himself having them removed is possible but not that likely--he doesn't look that intelligent to me.

[KingFlorez]

1. I don't buy it either

It would be detrimental to allow that to be seen by all, the criticism would be endless.

[stop the bleeding]

2. Interesting reasoning - especially using the Big Dog reference to

kick one kicked out of FR

[anarch]

3. this is all pretty hilarious to me

Just the fact that the White House people would open themselves up to any and all press conferences being referred to as "Snow Jobs" is funny enough, but this guy is just such a piece of work, it's freaking hysterical.

[AlCzervik]

4. of course it was Rimjob, same thing with Buckhead.

[Monk06]

6. And Jeff Gannon. He bragged about getting a job in Washington.

and after he was outed someone on FR posted, "You'ld better lay low for a while Jeff."
The insiders at FR knew about Gannon all along.

[Skinner]

5. Just as guess here.

Speaking as the administrator of a high-profile discussion forum, my guess is that Tony Snow asked Jim Rob to delete all his posts now that he is White House press secretary, and Jim Rob obliged.

Jim Rob is loyal to the Bush Administration. He would not want to see Bush or Tony Snow crash-and-burn because of Tony's association with FR.

[helderheid]

7. that was my guess

[ronnykmarshall]

9. That's what I thought as well.

As soon as Snowjob was the front runner to replace Scotty, RimJob got a little call from the WH and <poof> Snowy's posts went bye-bye.

[jmowreader]

16. That's not Skinner's theory but it's probably what happened

Skinner thinks Snow himself asked for the posts to be deleted.

As I said in the first message in the thread, one of three things happened:

a) Tony Snow called Jim Robinson and asked that his FR presence be deleted (or he purposely got zotted)
b) RimJob deleted Snow's FR presence by himself because proof that Tony Snow's a freeper would both be embarrassing to the Administration and hazardous to Free Republic
c) The White House had RimJob remove Snow's FR presence; telling Snow to call Jim Robinson or Kristinn Taylor counts under this line

The likelihood of Snow voluntarily having the posts removed is low. Therefore, it was either FR doing it on their own to help out the administration, or someone at the administration asking FR to help them.

[TahitiNut]

13. Occam's Razor - Yep. Until I see stripes, I'll assume horses.

RimJob would, without a doubt, oblige any such request from SnowJob - eager to cooperate with any WhackJob insider. I'd also be inclined to believe that part of SnowJob's "vetting process" included the identification of any such 'record' and it's 'correction.' I wouldn't be shocked if Faux did a little scrubbing on their website as well.

[shenmue]

8. You know...

somebody's going to dig up his responses (must have been saved somewhere before, perhaps by an anti-Snow person like one of us) and I bet they'll be funny as hell.

[helderheid]

12. somebody did:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=364&topic_id=1035213&mesg_id=1035213

[grasswire]

10. they didn't do it for Gannon, notice

Robinson didn't purge Gannon's posts, which were actually pretty damaging to the WH press office.

[warrens]

11. I've been through this before

I helped out a racist editor at the Moonie Times. He called RimJob immediately and had all his posts pulled and his profile canned. I had all his threads on my hard drive by then, of course, and his name disappeared from the Times masthead.

Snow no doubt emailed RimJob and said deep six my stuff; I don't remember what's there, but why give those lieberal dimeocrap commie reporters any ammunition?

My take on Tony after reading his posts for years is that he is a third-rate intellect who for some reason thinks he's first-rate. Hanging around with FRetards will probably do that to you; most of them couldn't spell cat if you spotted them c and a.

[TahitiNut]

14. "In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man will be king."

"most of them couldn't spell cat if you spotted them c and a." :rofl:

[Catrina]

15. He had fans at FR who call themselves 'Snowflakes'. He needed them

for his radio show, which was listened to on FR and commented on each day ~

Imo, if you're going to be a public figure, even a supposed 'fair and balanced' reporter for a major news organization, it is pretty stupid to belong to an organization that is so partisan, just raising a question about any Republican can get you banned.

You also should not have to be ashamed of any of the organizations you belonged to ~

Just knowing someone was a freeper is enough to justify questioning the intelligence of such a person. The fact that he is ashamed of his FR postings, confirms its reputation. Imo, he should have left his postings there. We have a right now to that information, imo. Isn't he paid with tax dollars? And if anything he said on FR could not hold up to scrutiny, he should have refused the job, imo.

Be true to yourself! Apparently Mr. Snow chose not to be. Apparently he didn't believe he could defend an eight-year membership in an organization to which he was very dedicated from what I've seen from the record so far.