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The unexpected and untimely death of Tim Russert has evoked a mammoth media response and commentary from just about everybody. I don’t watch the Sunday Talking Head shows anymore, so my exposure to Tim was on the nightly news or on election coverage. In Bush’s first term and a half, I was down on the media, Tim Russert included. I felt they were giving the Bush Administration a "bye" [I still believe they did that]. Even when they were confrontive, they were operating as if the Bush Administration was credible, which I personally think has never been true.<\/p>\n
Then came the Libby Trial in January, after the 2006 election. Cathie Martin old us all that Fridays were especially good for releasing stories the Administration wanted to have a short shelf life. She also said that Russert’s Meet the Press was a favorite place for the release of the Administration’s spin stories. Later in the trial, Russert was on the stand. Libby had attempted to pawn off Russert as a "source" of his knowledge that Valerie Plame was a C.I.A. Agent. He had had a phone conversation with Russert. Russert dramatically denied Libby’s story. I guess Libby banked on Russert’s evoking priviledge – which he didn’t do.<\/p>\n
After that trial, it seemed to me that Russert came around. In fact, there’s been a general shift since then by the Press to more realistic reporting. My assumption is that the Libby Trial exposed how much the Administration had manipulated the Press, and they fought back. After that, Russert seemed to be back in the groove of a newsman. It was good to have him back.<\/p>\n
My reaction to his death is odd. I don’t yet think of him as dead, in spite of all the eulogies and the memorial service last night on MSNBC. He was such a leprechaun-like<\/span> figure and his mastery of the political "numbers" was amazing, in spite of his playful approach to the news and the twinkle in his eye. I think his absence will dawn on me over time, but for the moment, I like the fact that his infectious smile lingers in my mind. He was an unlikely "pundit," but he filled those shoes well. I wish he’d been awake and alert from 2000 on [I wish everyone had been awake and alert from 2000 on], but I’m forgiving about that because I wasn’t either. 9\/11 put us all to sleep for a while. Apparently, Arianna Huffington slammed him for his earlier collusion with BushCo in her new book, and he retaliated by banning her from NBC news. So all is not sweetness and light…<\/p>\n The unexpected and untimely death of Tim Russert has evoked a mammoth media response and commentary from just about everybody. I don’t watch the Sunday Talking Head shows anymore, so my exposure to Tim was on the nightly news or on election coverage. In Bush’s first term and a half, I was down on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2266","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2266","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2266"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2266\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2266"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2266"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2266"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}I can see why many say that the tele-eulogizing of Tim Russert was overdone. I agree with Marcy Wheeler that it would be nice if our Iraq War casualties collectively were eulogized so much as this man. But I think it’s a very American thing for his son of a garbage-man to be canonized. He earned his place in our story. We’ll particularly miss him as this election season progresses…<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"