Tim Russert: Written on water
Today's Financial News - Posted June 23, 2008
I am sure Tim Russert was a fine fellow, father, husband, son, etc. But he was in the end not as significant as his sendoff implies.
by Christopher Corbett
Baltimore — (TFN): The death of the televisionarian Tim Russert has been easily the most spectacularly overplayed news story in the recent history of that not especially distinguished medium. The ululations over Russert’s departure would have been topped only if HE had risen on the third day and appeared to his followers in the NBC newsroom. Roll back the stone!
NBC’s Washington Bureau Chief seems by all accounts to have been a decent fellow from humble origins (Americans love that angle). Is there a log cabin in the CV? We heard rather more than we needed to hear about “Big Russ,” Tim Russert’s blue-collar father. Russert the younger became a significant force in the world of opinion making or whatever the hell it is they do inside the Beltway. He died with his boots on Friday the 13th of a heart attack. He was 58.
His death has generated a level of encomiums and hosannas so disproportionate to its significance that it begs explanation. Why?
I am not sure whether the nation mourned his loss but journalism certainly did. Or what passes for journalism. Journalists find journalists fascinating. It may be why folks who are not journalists always rank the sons of Grub Street alongside people who sell used cars or guarantee dry basement work. It’s a shifty line of work. I know this first hand. It is generally a fickle line of work too.
Normally the send-off that Tim Russert received would be reserved for a beloved elder statesman, the pope, or Anna Nicole Smith. Not to put to fine a point on this, but Russert was not, strictly speaking, a journalist. Never was one. He did not actually work as a journalist or at least he did not start out as a journalist. The old time broadcasters, Walker Cronkite et al, were genuine ink-stained wretches. Guys like Cronkite or Edward R. Murrow’s “boys” worked for the wires services or newspapers. They WERE reporters. This is not a subtle distinction.
Russert worked for politicians in the days of his youth. He was a flack, an insider, a food taster. Chris Matthews is cut from the same bolt of cloth, to name but one. Talkers like Bill O’Reilly and Larry King are worse, having absolutely no foundation beneath them. There is nothing there. And this has nothing to do with your politics.
Food tasting is a line of work that prepares one for having opinions on television. It provides one with the contacts and connections that are valued in this greasy trade. But it is also a pedigree that in my estimation greatly complicates and taints. It goes along way towards explaining the quality of broadcasting in the Republic, too.
In the old days a journalist who went over to the dark side NEVER came back.
And the servants of the darker powers never became journalists. The Internet and 24/7 television have made it possible for us to have a lot of information. Whether that is really information is another matter. It is certainly opinion. We have a lot of opinions. Russert was a mandarin of that class.
Programs like “Meet The Press” et al are all about inside baseball. Inside the Beltway. These shows appeal largely to insiders.Their viewers are mostly politicos, porch climbers and shills. It is a world that the average American has no interest in and the average American is better off for that. The question the average viewer might ask is, who cares? What do we learn from television commentators? Might the nation not actually benefit if Wolf Blitzer contracted lockjaw?
I am sure Tim Russert was a fine fellow, father, husband, son, etc. But he was in the end not as significant as his sendoff implies. Consider that the columnist Walter Lippmann was a force of nature on the American political scene for decades. He wrote volumes. Who reads him now? The brothers Alsop? The earth trembled when they were on the prowl. I am sure that there are readers now for whom those names mean nothing.
Russert was not a sage. He did not write a word that is memorable. Does anyone really imagine that we will be watching old “Meet The Press” videos years from now? Russert was, in the end, a personality. His name was written on water.
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