Yeah, we've known the president is selfish.
Yeah, we've known he's tone deaf.
Yeah, we know Fox News is about as fair and balanced as a peg-legged pirate.
And ... yeah ... most Americans now know these things too.
But the appt. of Snow to Press Secy. is truly the most tone-deaf and selfish thing Bush has done TO HIS OWN PARTY.
Why?
Because now the shine is truly off the Matrix for a good portion of the remaining 32% of the public who were still buying what Bush was selling.
You can only push cognitive dissonance so far. Some of the 32% are believers in theocracy and some are plutocrats, but the bulk are still relying on a hastily patched together worldview in which Fox News being the unfiltered truth is a linchpin. Now some of these people will look at Snow as the defender of truth in front of EVIL press ... truly making black into white.
But most will scratch their heads and say, "WHA? If he's suited to be the SPOKESMAN for the White House, then what the heck has he been all along?"
This will only become more acute when he sounds largely the same way he did on Fox.
And then those viewers will have trouble watching Fox. It's already been happening, as Blowhard loses viewers and the lineup has been shuffled around a little and CNN has profited from the Fox flight (and its own brand of angry men doing the Bizarro Universe Howard Beale schtick - or actually what Beale was doing by the end of Network).
And Olbermann and Colbert and Stewart will help that perception along with the young'uns. And it will solidify the meme.
And the GOP will SUFFER. Their House Organ has been compromised. It's in worse failure than Cheney's heart.
Fox will just spin off into unreality, and will soon find its competitor is Pat Robertson's CBN News and not CNN and MSNBC. Whether they decide to flip over to "our side" like Murdoch's British papers did for Labour (ugh) or just keep spinning out into space (like Murdoch's Chinese properties or Al Jazeera for the brief period that Murdoch had a controlling stake) ... it doesn't matter.
GOP dudes won't be able to cultivate serious support by going there. And Bush and Cheney will use it as the political cathedral ... which will make it all the more farcical.
Bush has raised his middle finger once more, and Cheney has blasted his shotgun ... both squarely in the face of their own party this time.
Thank the Lord.