Tim Russert Passes Away

[QueenAdrock]

Breaking News:

http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/06/13/tim.russert/index.html

[NoFenders]

This is ashame. He was one guy I truely loved hearing from. Always fair, and always insightful. He will be missed for sure.

RIP Tim

:cool:

[alien autopsy]

i dont think he was always fair. i remember seeing ron paul on his show and being somewhat pissed at the way russert was trying to tie ron paul in with the "9-11 truthers" and interrupting him frequently after asking shady questions...it was clear the interview was designed to make paul look like an idiot.

another CFR media campaigner gone. good riddence.

[Bob]

another CFR media campaigner gone. good riddence.

you're adorable

[King PSYZ]

you're adorable

I knew he was a Paultard(lb)

[EN[i]GMA]

i dont think he was always fair. i remember seeing ron paul on his show and being somewhat pissed at the way russert was trying to tie ron paul in with the "9-11 truthers"

Yeah, who would want to be associated with those fucking loons, eh?

Oh, right...

and interrupting him frequently after asking shady questions...it was clear the interview was designed to make paul look like an idiot.

I think you're confused: the interview need not have been designed that way, that's merely an effect of having Ron Paul on an interview, period.

The man is an idiot, and so he's always going to look like an idiot.

It would be no harder to concoct an interview to make Paul "look like an idiot" than it would to concoct an interview in which I make a dog "look like a dog."


another CFR media campaigner gone. good riddence.

You often were quick to jump on me for being an asshole, and yet I don't celebrate the deaths of people I disagree with.

[adam_f]

Yeah (http://www.beastieboys.com/bbs/showthread.php?t=87227), you're so behind the times.

[yeahwho]

NBC news anchor Brian Williams described him as "aggressively unfancy", I like that. I can never really think of any moment he did his job poorly, he's been quoted and linked by many of us, his style always seemed to me as frank, open and very intense. He knew his audience, of which I was part of. Going to miss the Russert.

[Knuckles]

another CFR media campaigner gone. good riddence.

You know, I think Ron Paul is a bit of a wacko but if he passed away I would feel terrible for his family.

You should be ashamed of that comment alien autopsy.

[yeahwho]

Heres a cool russert story, copy and pasted from the internets:

While in law school, an official from his alma mater, John Carroll University, called Russert to ask if he could book some concerts for the school as he had done while a student. He agreed, but said he would need money because he was running out of money to pay for law school. One concert that Russert booked was headlined by a then-unknown singer, Bruce Springsteen, who charged $2,500 for the concert appearance. Russert told this story to Jay Leno when he was a guest on the The Tonight Show on NBC on June 6, 2006. On September 28, 2007, Springsteen and the E Street Band played live on the Today show in Rockefeller Plaza, and Russert could be seen listening to the music in casual dress toward the front of the stage.

And sure enough he's there behind Matt Lauer rocking out checkout :59 second mark (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKkMfKUZBi4)

[taquitos]

This really, really freaked me out and i don't totally know why.
Maybe it's because he was only 58 and it was so sudden, but anyway I always really liked the guy. He will be missed.

Political commentators who act like they might actually be nice people come few and far between. (n)

[Dorothy Wood]

this news made me really sad today. cort texted me about it because she knows I love him, but I had already heard. we poured one out for russert tonight, because he's good people.

one of the only journalists on t.v. that seemed like he was really after the truth, and had a good head on his shoulders, never forgot the common man.

I appreciated him in so many ways, and I am very sad that he's no longer with us. :(

[yeahwho]

Tim's haircut being criticized by Springsteen during a song introduction (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Wlgm7Fehaw&NR=1), he was big in fun, journalism and life. That smile is so great!

[DroppinScience]

As far as the mainstream media goes, Tim Russert was pretty good. It's a shame this happen to him so suddenly and so soon.

[DroppinScience]

I have two commentaries on Russert, one positive and one leaning more negative on his overall legacy and impact as a broadcast journalist.

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/06/14/9637/

Tim Russert and the End of No-Talking-Points Journalism
by John Nichols

The passing of Tim Russert leaves us in the midst of an essential election season without the man who had been the steadiest and most serious inquisitor of the powerful during the darkening period when broadcast journalism was degenerating beyond parody.

There will be praise for the host of NBC’s “Meet the Press” whose interviews of presidential candidates were often revealing, who still steered discussions toward the neglected concerns of working Americans, who gave rare forums to the dissenting voices of Russ Feingold (five times, most recently as he emerged as the clearest anti-war voice in the Senate) and Ralph Nader (regularly, even after other media outlets stopped asking the consumer advocate to appear), and whose love of politics — and respect for frequently disregarded constituencies — was infectious.

There will, as well, be criticism of Russert’s 2003 interview of Vice President Dick Cheney on the Sunday before the war in Iraq began; and the fact that when the moment demanded an Edward R. Murrow interrogation we got instead a Larry King-like nod-along with power. Every journalist makes mistakes and this was Russert’s most serious. Unfortunately, it came at a time when most media outlets — broadcast and print — were making the same mistake of trusting an administration that was owed nothing but skepticism.

Russert would enjoy the praise but accept the criticism.

His was a big, bold persona of the old school — disinclined toward the preening and pompousness that had come to define his chosen profession. Most importantly, though he had come from the political sphere himself, Russert rejected the “talking-points” approach to electoral analysis that is now practiced on most networks programs.

As someone who has known Russert for more than a quarter century — since he was an aide to former New York Governor Mario Cuomo and I was a student at Columbia, introduced to the political player from Buffalo by consummate New Yopk journalist Marty Gottlieb — I can agree with what both John McCain and Barack Obama have said on his passing.

Russert was, as McCain says, “the preeminent political journalist of his generation.” And Obama’s right that — even if he faced few competitors in the vast wasteland of what passes for television news and public affairs programming — “There wasn’t a better interviewer in television nor a more thoughtful analyst of our politics, and he was also one of the finest men I knew.”

But the best assessment of Russert’s premature death came from a pol who shared the “Meet the Press” host’s working-class roots and distaste for what has become of broadcast journalism.

Wisconsin Congressman Dave Obey — the gruff chairman of the House Appropriations Committee — said it best.

“Tim Russert’s death is not just a body blow for NBC News,” said Obey, “it is a body blow for the nation and for anyone who cherishes newsmen and women who have remained devoted to reporting hard news in an era increasingly consumed by trivia.”

John Nichols is a co-founder of Free Press and the co-author with Robert W. McChesney of TRAGEDY & FARCE: How the American Media Sell Wars, Spin Elections, and Destroy Democracy - The New Press.

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/06/14/9638/

me as a shock to me, as it did to everyone: He was a fixture for those of us who are obsessed with politics. And to be stricken of a heart attack at 58 is a fate that no one should have to suffer.

I feel bad for his family, and for his colleagues.

For many years, I looked forward to watching him on Meet the Press.

But I stopped after September 11.

As the praise for Russert has overflowed, I just want to register, even at the risk of showing bad manners, a discordant note.

I stopped watching him regularly after September 11 because he became a cheerleader for war.

He festooned himself with red, white, and blue, and in one of the first programs after the attack, he appallingly said that the Bush Administration would have to prepare the American public for a “disproportionate” response.

Such a response is, by definition, immoral under just war theory.

And he was essentially inviting Bush and Cheney to kill many times more than the 3,000 people who died on September 11.

He also did not explore with Cheney the Vice President’s comment to him that the United States would need to go to “the dark side.” Some early skepticism about the torture and kidnapping that was to come might have done the country good.

A year and a half later, right before the Iraq War, Russert let Cheney get away with an outrageous comment that was pure propaganda.

It was March 16, 2003, less than a week before Bush and Cheney started bombing.

Russert: And even though the International Atomic Energy Agency said he does not have a nuclear program, we disagree.

[Note the pronoun “we.”]

Cheney: I disagree, yes. And you’ll find the CIA, for example, and other key parts of our intelligence community, disagree. And we believe he has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons.

Russert didn’t challenge him on that bald-faced lie.

When Cheney came back on, almost two years later, Russert played the videotape. But rather than aggressively going after Cheney, Russert soft-pedaled.

Russert: Reconstituted nuclear weapons. You misspoke.

Cheney: Yeah, I did misspeak. I said repeatedly during the show “weapons capability.” We never had any evidence that he had acquired a nuclear weapon.

For Russert, who rightfully earned a reputation as a tough questioner, to go easy on Cheney, well, this was not his finest habit.

I bring all this up, even at this delicate moment, to point out simply that even great mainstream journalists sometimes bow to patriotism and to power, and when they do, our democracy, and the cause of peace and justice, suffers.

Matthew Rothschild is the editor of The Progressive magazine.

[saz]

although russert's conduct during the run-up to the illegal invasion of iraq was quite pathetic, ie being a total lapdog for the bush administration by having dick cheney on meet the press and not challenging or questioning his bullshit propaganda, this was very shocking and very sad news as russert really seemed to be genuinely good person.

r.i.p.

[Dorothy Wood]

well, dick cheney is scary!

[yeahwho]

Some of the memorial service is here including Bruce (http://www.redlasso.com/ClipPlayer.aspx?id=0190480d-ef3b-49ff-923f-e7798ccc398c) piping in himself

Then they played "Somewhere Over the Rainbow (http://www.redlasso.com/ClipPlayer.aspx?id=13eae443-0cab-4658-b61d-8edc4cc273cb)" sure enough one came out.