On-camera question stops new press secretary

WASHINGTON – White House press briefings rarely veer into the deeply personal. But that’s what happened Tuesday during Tony Snow’s first on-camera tangle with the White House press corps.

It was nearing the end of the new presidential spokesman’s question-and-answer period before the cameras, and he was asked why he wears one of the popular yellow “LIVESTRONG” bracelets that raise money for cancer through the Lance Armstrong Foundation.

Snow, who had his colon removed last year and underwent six months of chemotherapy after being diagnosed with colon cancer, struggled with his response for 45 seconds.

“I had cancer last year,” he began. “It’s going to sound stupid, and I’ll be personal here.”

Then he had to stop. Gripping the podium, grimacing and looking down, Snow paused for a full 10 seconds – a virtual lifetime of dead air when television cameras are rolling and 100 pairs of eyes are silently trained on you – and gave talking several more aborted tries.

“Having gone through this last year (pause), and I said this to (former Fox News colleague) Chris Wallace, it was the best thing that ever happened to me,” Snow said, waving his arm and stopping again for another long silence. He mentioned his mother’s death from colon cancer when he was 17.

Snow found his composure with an ode to the American health care system that kept him alive and left him with a doctor’s simple directive that “you don’t have to worry about getting cancer, just heartburn talking to these people.”

Snow’s briefing also produced a couple of backpedals, several pointed rejoinders – and at least one turn of phrase that raised eyebrows.

Asked repeatedly about reports that the government has collected records on millions of Americans’ phone calls, Snow said, “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.”

The expression, which refers to a character in the most famous of the fictional Uncle Remus stories, is sometimes used to portray an inextricable situation. But, as the word also has been used as a derogatory term for blacks, it raised eyebrows when spoken from the White House podium.

Later in the briefing, Snow was asked what he meant. “Well, I believe ‘hug the tar baby,’ we could trace that back to American lore,” he said.