Foot in Mouth Disease

On his first solo outing as press secretary, Tony Snow promptly puts his foot in his mouth. Twice:

SNOW: Having said that, I don’t want to hug the tar baby of trying to comment on the program, the alleged program, the existence of which I can neither confirm nor deny.
….

QUESTION: What are your personal goals? What do you hope to achieve here? Will you continue to televise these briefings? And would you put into English the phrase (OFF-MIKE) the tarbaby?

SNOW: Well, I believe hug the tarbaby, we could trace that back to American lore.

So much for Snow's smooth talker reputation.

Psst, Tony. As Think Progress explains, the term is considered a racially derogatory remark and has been grounds for termination of employment.

And as Republic of T. writes,

And as an African American born and raised in the South, I’ve been called a “tar baby” once or twice in my life. A high school acquaintance called me that as a nickname, until I enlightened her on how not funny it was. It wasn’t funny, innocent or harmless then, and the use of the phrase isn’t any of those things now either.

Why don't you clean up your language and show a bit more sensitivity, Tony. You're not with Faux News anymore.

Image from cnn.

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