An e-mail:

K-Lo:Your post brought back a lot of memories.When I was a junior in high school, I took part in the 1994 National Journalism Conference (forgive me if the name’s not quite right; it’s a late hour, and 1994 was a long time ago–what I can be certain of is that the event took place at the National Press Club). I was, after all, fired up to become a crusading right-wing journo (proof of my own teenage dorkiness). Tony Snow was our keynote speaker. He was an energetic speaker–and someone who made the world of political journalism, not to mention my secret ambition of becoming a presidential speechwriter, seem both attainable and worth the effort. For me, though, having Tony Snow as the keynote was double exciting because, earlier in the week, he had subbed for Rush Limbaugh–a feat that made him, well, ubercool. I remember asking him questions afterwards about the double-standard applied by the media, and why the media wasn’t going after Whitewater the way that they had gone after similar scandals under the former President Bush. His answer was instructive: He told me that the job of journalists was “not to go and rip the other guy’s face off.” Now, as a speaker with conservative bona fides, and the guy who had subbed for Rush, and a columnist in the Detroit News, and a former speechwriter for a Republican president, this was not at all the answer I expected. But it was a glimpse into the guy’s fundamental goodness. After his speech, and the evening’s other events, he stood around out in the lobby talking to us, the assemblage of young, high school journalists. He talked WITH me, and even posed for a photo with me–which in retrospect must have seemed a stalker-like request. I still have that photo to this day. It’s been a rough year for conservatives. We’ve lost giants, like Cap Weinberger, Jeane Kirkpatrick, and Milton Friedman. We’ve seen heroic figures like Don Rumsfeld hounded from power. We lost the House and the Senate. And yet, none of this news felt like the sucker-punch of reading that Tony Snow’s cancer was back, and had spread to his liver. I’ll be saying some prayers and lighting some candles at Mass on Sunday. And I believe that if anyone can fight this and win, it will be Tony Snow. But I still have had a lump in my throat all day.Sorry to bug you with my own remembrance, but I think it’s interesting that we can document at least two instances where he went out of his way to be nice to teens who were acting like, well, teens. There are a lot of people in DC you couldn’t say that about. Tony Snow’s not one of them.