We’re late comers to the aid and assistance game in Lebanon.  Our P.R. isn’t very effective in that arena.  Maybe Bush ought to assign Rove to handle that.  It seems to me, from all that I’ve heard, that Hezbolla did rush in with aid for schools and hospitals and help with some re-building in Palestine. This made a great impression on people and was great P.R. But I believe neither they nor Hamas have any stomach for actually governing, setting up the institutions necessary for it, seeing that the government actually listens to and meets the needs of people. It is far easier (Lord knows the Republicans have found this out, to their dismay, that it is easier to criticize than to govern), to call for Israel’s destruction, than it is to govern and build a state that Palestinians would be glad to live in. Neither Syria nor Iran has the stomach to govern either and both will use the Palestinians as they see fit, and then abandon them. The same seems to be true of the remainder of the oil-rich Middle Eastern countries. So once again the Palestinians are being led astray and shafted. Not the first time, as Arafat proved, not the last time.

DR: Thanks for the reply, but you’re woofing up the wrong tree with your assumptions about me and what you’re so sure Jon Stewart “meant.”

I was merely pointing out (for those who care about such things as accuracy, even as a basis for ridicule) that the gag was based on a misinterpretation of Snow’s statement.

If you’re interested in that point (rather than just looking for an excuse to rant about Israel, Rumsfeld, hubris, etc.), look at the entire press briefing (http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/08/20060816-1.html). There were plenty of real mistakes and goofy exchanges that were ripe for smug correction by JS/TDS, but the particular item chosen wasn’t one of them.

For your convenience, I have included the following exchange from earlier in the briefing. The key sentence (reinforced a little later by the “chosen” quote) is the next-to-last one:

——-

“MR. SNOW:  I’m sorry, Iran, thank you.  The U.S. and the international community already have pledges of $425 million and more to come.  The United States is going to have—is going to participate in a humanitarian donors conference on August 31st.  There’s also considerable talk about reconstruction.  The fact is, it’s important to get Lebanon reconstructed.  And if I were Hezbollah, I’d do the same thing.  If I had just caused the wholesale destruction of portions of a country, I think I’d try to improve my public standing, too, and spread around a little money, and that’s exactly what they’re doing.

Q:  But you’re talking about timing here.  This is like getting the streets plowed in Chicago after the snow falls.  This is delivery of services.  And they’re going to be in there—apparently, they are already—while we’re talking about donor conferences.

MR. SNOW:  Well, actually, no, the United States has contributed $30 million so far, and $24 million of it is already in place.  It’s there.  We got 24 million bucks that are on the ground immediately.  And I think what you’re—the donor conferences are in addition to the $425 million that’s already being pledged and distributed.  Again—

Q:  Can you get the stuff on the ground?

MR. SNOW:  Yes.  I mean I’ve just told you, the United States out of its opening contribution—by the way, Secretary Rice, I think it was in—well, it was in an op-ed piece today, announced that there are going to be an additional $20 million, and that’s just the beginning of humanitarian assistance.  But, yes.  But again, the longer-term question, Bill, is not the race to—Hezbollah can spread around money, but it is not going to be able to delude people into the fact that they were firing rockets out of homes and they were placing people at risk.  This is one of these questions that you sit back and see how things shake out, and see whether Hezbollah is embraced as an organization that reflected Lebanese needs, or Iranian orders.”

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Now—hang with us, DR, you’ll still have plenty of time to pull another stock tirade out of the file—compare that to the later exchange which contained the chosen quote:

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“Q Is there much discussion of trying to strengthen the Lebanese government in various ways, militarily or—

MR. SNOW: There is already—we’re already supplementing the Lebanese armed forces, and we’ll continue to do so. And, yes, absolutely. I talked to Secretary Rice earlier today, and she stressed that the $50 million is the beginning of a long-term and serious commitment to the government of Lebanon. I don’t know what will be announced when, but the fact is, absolutely, we’re committed to the success of the government.

Q How much—

MR. SNOW: I don’t know. I honestly don’t know.

Q Can I follow up on that?

MR. SNOW: Yes.

Q There seems to be a Catch-22, though, that while the Lebanese government we’re trying to elevate is busy fixing roads and bridges in the country, they don’t have the kind of walk-around money for social services that Hezbollah has down in the south.

MR. SNOW: Well, I just told you, we’re talking already of commitments that are double what Hezbollah has. And one—

Q I’m talking about services—

MR. SNOW: No, no, no, I’m talking about international commitments. The Saudis have made commitments, the Iraqis have made commitments, we’ve made commitments, strictly on the humanitarian side. There is a separate pot of money that is also being discussed for reconstruction. That is going to be the topic of the August 31st meeting. So, yes, there are humanitarian commitments. But, again, Hezbollah can spread out all the walking-around money it wants, but people also remember who is putting rockets in their living rooms.”

Noah: You actually think Stewart might have mis-interpreted SnowJob? I think not. He was making a very specific point: that the Lebanese are going to remember the bombs Israel used to blow up their homes much more than the rockets Hizbollah lobbed over the border. The fact that you didn’t get the point shows that you (and most of the other “Israel can’t do no wrong crowd) are simply unable to put yourselves in the other person’s shoes and at least try to see the situation from the other side.

One of the major issues in this conflict was the impression Israel left that to them, a Lebanese life is simply not equal to an Israeli one. That will be the ultimate consequence of this, and Israel lost a large number of supporters when they leveled an entire region in order to avoid the deaths of a few of their soldiers (when they adopted the Rumsfeld tactic of “Bomb the shit out of them; they’ll give up”, instead of sending ground troops).

Israel might have had a point originally about Hizbollah needing to be disabled. Granted, they are not good guys. But they went at it in exactly the same way that the U.S. went about disabling Iraq, like a bull in a china shop. And ultimately, Israel will end up paying fdr its hubris.

You’re all missing the real issue here. Either Jon Stewart (and his writers) completely misunderstood Snow’s point, or they chose to intentionally mislead for cheap “ironic” effect.

To anyone aware of how the Hezbos operate, it is clear that Snow was referring to how they use civilians’ homes and neighborhoods—including PUTTING (as in “placing,” not “sending”) Hezbo rockets into people’s living rooms (hiding them for launching at Israel), thus putting those people at risk in the conflict.

It was either careless, ignorant or disingenuous of Stewart and his writers to twist this around as if Snow was referring to Israel’s retaliatory weapons (which have never been called “rockets” by anyone anyway).

There are plenty of things to satirize about the politicians and their spokesmen without completely misconstruing the original quote.

Instead of “Boy, Tony, that was a really stupid thing to say,” Stewart should be saying, “Oh, sorry, we feel stupid for completely misunderstanding.”

Tony Snow is appropriately named - his job is to snow the press with official White House spin on reality. As a press secretary he is not hired to tell the truth - only to report what his bosses tell him to report. T’was ever so for all Administration press secretaries!

Everyone should remember that Jon’s “fake” news show is real news with commentary and that network/cable “real,” corporate news is the glossy, fake stuff.

Wow…a self-hating Jew…who’d have thought?

I love how pithy little comments can so easily replace reasonable argument.

I love it as many other clips of the daily show. Jon, again and again, is proving his show is politically informative. GO JON….