The National Catholic Education Association (NCEA) has a beautiful tribute to the late Tim Russert on account of his strong support and unyielding promotion of Catholic education in the United States. NCEA has also put up a picture page that contains some candid shots of Russert in action.
Also of note is the USCCB Communications Committee’s praise of Russert.
This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 18th, 2008 at 2:55 pm and is filed under Education, Media, Policraticus. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
Second Vatican Council, Apostolicam actuositatem 14
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:’(
This is such a tragedy.
Clearly, the wall-to-wall coverage of a reporter’s passing indicates that we should cancel the elections this year. This is more tragic than 9/11 or the Holocaust.
With such a tragedy, who can possibly care about the thousands in peril due to bad weather in the Midwest and South, and who can possibly focus on such minor issues like the hundreds that are killed on a weekly basis in Afghanistan and Iraq?
Please, MSNBC, just turn into the all Russert all the time network. Can we maybe get a one week retrospective on his passing, with monthly updates on how his cemetery plot grass changes in length with the seasons?
His untimely death is indeed a tragedy, but the extent of media navel-gazing here is a little troubling.
I dont know his views on some things, but it seems like I won’t have a problem with him being canonized. We need a saint who does not look all pious but who is passionate about every day life because of his faith.
LOOMISNEWS:
Did someone hold a gun to your head forcing you to watch the “wall-to-wall coverage” you’re griping about?? Anyone with cable has a few hundred other channels (besides MSNBC) to select from. Did that ever occur to you?
Loomisnews has it right. Russert was the paragon of liberal virtues and he’ll be deperately missed by the Democrat Party. From the halls of Planned Parenthood to the studios of Public Broadcasting and evey lefty, looney, liberal organization in between the chant will now begin: Santo Subito, Santo Subito! Tim Russert never met a Democrat that he did not fall head-over-heels in love with.
^^^ Another gracious “compassionate conservative” weighs in.
Apolonio,
You’re right… In a time when religion almost seems to not belong in the public debate, I could not believe how many people (Jews, Christians, other fellow Catholics, atheists) weighed in Russert’s faith and how important it was for him… I’ve actually been reflecting on him and what people say about him to hopefully be a better lay Catholic in the workplace. I think they key was his humility and joy… those are the two things that made his faith radiate outward.
Tim Russert was a nice man and a Catholic, but he was also an enabler of the narcissistic, self-congratulatory media culture that dominates Washington, DC, and which was easily manipulated by Bush et al., leading to the Iraq war.
What Barry Crimmins says below is true:
“Had I met Tim Russert, we’d have talked about sports, upstate New York and maybe some rock concerts we both attended back in the day. Russert seemed an amiable, affable fellow. He was clearly a man who valued being liked. That’s why he’d have been as cordial as possible as he fled from me as soon as I changed the subject to Daniel Patrick Moynihan and benign neglect or the police/prison industrial state or the plight of workers everywhere or genuine green activism or the putrid stench of corporatism that permeates the mainstream media and the politicians upon whom journalists are supposed to be reporting…
The media wags that survive Russert are incapable of seeing the absurdity of their overkill of his death. An hour into the maudlin, endless “tribute” to Russert, I found myself relieved that his wife and son were in Italy and beyond viewing range of a shameless parade of electronic narcissists. The surviving talking heads busily inflated their deceased colleague beyond any recognizable proportion. They had more than enough hot air for the task….
Russert was beloved for being a nice guy who never overlooked the small talk. He inquired after kids and families and talked sports just like a regular guy. Everyone MSNBC wheeled out to praise Russert referenced his working class roots…
True to his roots, Russert worked hard — he worked hard for the man who let him sit in the private dining room and taught him which fork to use for the salad. But what was his job beyond fitting in? And did he even know he was doing it? It always seemed to me that his job was to appear to be a tough journalist while never actually scratching the surface of what was really going on. For doing this he got status, celebrity and wealth. Again and again his response was to say “what a country!” But he never probed very deeply into the country that allowed his hometown of Buffalo to oxidize. Speaking of the upstate NY city, Russert was all Chamber of Commerce and professional sports booster but never one to draw attention to the crushing poverty found in our nation’s second poorest city. Russert seemed to think enthusiastic boosterism was all Buffalo needed and that’s all it ever got from its favorite son.
To speak up for his impoverished and forgotten hometown by specifically indicting the corporate greed that consumed it and left it to rot in toxic disrepair, would be to bite the hand that was tossing him the filet mignon nuggets. And so hardworking and likable Russert found a middle ground. He didn’t expose the truth about his hometown but instead put forth a syrupy narrative about the spirit of its community. This fit nicely with the rest of his work, spreading myths that either overrated or overlooked reality.
Russert’s Meet the Press could have been a great program and a wonderful exercise in journalism. Instead it was a weekly roundup of the usual suspects with the usual pat answers. Why didn’t working class Russert regularly feature labor leaders on his program? Why didn’t he ever interview popular revolutionary leaders from abroad? Why did he never bring on members of the Iraq Vets Against the War? Instead we got a steady diet of Bob Doles, Dick Cheneys, Terry McAuliffes and Joe Bidens. Otherwise, how could those guys have ever hoped to get their message out to the American people?
Russert provided a Sunday morning showcase for every official cover story disseminated by the D.C powers that be. He believed those stories just as he did when he bought the saddlesoap George W. Bush was selling about WMD’s. Did you? I didn’t for a second and I don’t have the full resources of NBC News at my beck and call. If we wonder why it’s easy for shadowy figures in Washington to steal everything that isn’t bolted down and then go to work with the bolt-cutters, we need look no further than Tim Russert. Because he was easily distracted. All you had to do was bring up the Buffalo Bills or ask him who made the best corned beef sandwich on Capitol Hill and Russert would be off and running, showing off his regular guy roots as he pontificated about professional sports, greasy sandwiches or the sacrosanct status of anyone hiding behind the flag.
I think it was Andrea Mitchell who said Russert’s eyes would tear up whenever he heard the national anthem. Unfortunately his emotion came for all the wrong reasons because Russert believed in and sold America the Exceptional when he should have been digging for the real stories so vital to people from Buffalo to Baghdad. Stories worthy of tears.
And so MSNBC is heading full bore into another day of mythologizing a nice guy who failed the very working people to whom he paid so much lip service. The tribute is meant to remind us that Mr. Russert and all talking heads are more important than regular people. Maybe now we’ll learn to appreciate and trust these people before we tragically lose another one of them!
The Russertathon establishes that talking heads matter more than many outstanding people, too. (At least as far as other talking heads are concerned.) In 500 years, who do you think will be considered more significant for his contribution as a chronicler of this age we live in? Tim Russert or Kurt Vonnegut? If Vonnegut got five minutes coverage on MSNBC when he died, I missed four minutes and forty-five seconds of it. Russert, on the other hand, has already had 30 times more airtime devoted to his life and death than all of the 129 journalists who have been killed in Iraq combined. It’s exactly the kind of reporting we’ve come to expect during the era of a nice guy named Tim Russert.
P.S.: …Another thing…How inappropriate was it to have his doctor on just hours after Russert died disclosing details about his patient’s health? It was intrusive, inappropriate and creepy.
I was no fan of Russert but this crap has not been a tribute, it’s been an assault, a propaganda campaign. I feel sorry for him because this has been a violation. It’s gotten to the point where it would be better if the blathering talking heads did what should be done at an Irish wake– drink. Their behavior couldn’t become any more embarrassing and maybe a little truth would leak out.
Honestly, I wasn’t going to write anything about this. But then it was still going on 24 hours later. At that point, the lack of any sense of proportion and the gauche and maudlin exploitation of the sudden death of someone by people who should have mourned privately, and with some dignity, demanded comment.”
barrycrimmins.com
I must say, along the lines of MM’s comment, there is a pretty stunning amount of narcissism on display in the media about this.
30 years ago, if an anchor had died, there would have been a mention at the end of the nightly newscast, and perhaps a 1-hour tribute after the late local news. I’m pretty sure there wasn’t this level of endless tribute when Morrow died, and he had far more of an historical impact (“This…is London”) than Tim Russert did.
This extravaganza isn’t as much about Tim Russert as it is about Sudden Death. Russert’s untimely demise stirred up the unspoken fear of our own mortality that lurks in the hearts of millions of Americans. The Grim Reaper can show up any time, anyplace, much sooner than expected and without warning.
Katerina,
I loved the fact that I keep hearing stories about how he kept saying, “What a great country!” or “Isn’t this great?!?” He had the enthusiasm of a child. I wish I wake up every morning having this enthusiasm for life because this is really what the Resurrection is about: that we experience and live life abundantly. What really struck me was his love for his son. I was reading his commencement address to Columbus School of Law and this line struck me:
“Whatever your ideology, reach down and see if there isn’t someone you can’t pull up a rung or two— someone old, someone sick, someone lonely, someone uneducated, someone defenseless. Give them a hand. Give them a chance. Give them a start, give them protection. Give them their dignity. That’s what it means to be a Catholic University graduate, a lawyer in 1997. For the good of all of us, and most important to me, my 11-year-old son, Luke, please build a future we can be proud of.”
The last line struck me the most because he saw “society” as a concrete reality, as something that his own son is part of. Plus, one can see his love for his son.
So, contra the Pharasaical Barry Crimmins, I don’t have a problem with Tim Russert being canonized. Again, I don’t know his beliefs so that may get in the way, but we should not have a preconception of what a saint should be. We should simply be jolted by reality. I think that’s the reason why we could be great in the workplace. He allowed himself be jolted by reality. Every Christian ought to be jolted, ought to be enthralled, by reality. Christ is risen. We need to look at reality differently because it is 100 times more beautiful than it really is.
I checked out a couple of the self described “Catholic” blogs (you know, where the “Good Catholics” hang out) yesterday to get their take on TR. Turns out the guy was just about as evil as you can get. “He was part of the Culture of Death”–”He was a Democrat and no Democrat can be a good Catholic”. Another thought he was evil for not using the MTP format to lobby against abortion. (Gee, what a practical suggestion!) A nun who favorably eulogized TR was verbally beaten up and thrown out the door. Rough crowd.
Apolonio,
I see what you’re saying, and I agree with your general idea, but I think it’s misapplied in the case of Russert. He had a child-like manner, but he was not involved in child-like stuff. Meet the Press was a show of immense importance, in which ideas that affect (and end) hundreds of thousands of lives are proposed. That show is where official Washington agrees to agree about what is going to be done. And if you read the transcripts leading up to the Iraq War, you’ll see that everyone was in agreement, and Russert did not see himself as having any responsibility to advocate for truth and life. And the Iraq War — in which he was complicit precisely by his would-be innocence — is only one example. He loved — like a child, one might say, but this is not precise — he loved to be part of the in-crowd in DC, and he loved to be the go-to journalist, and his love for proximity to power prevented him from actually pursuing the truth that was right beneath his nose.
If you’re not aware of the incestuous, narcissistic character of corporate media culture, then Russert’s nice-guy manner can be misleading. But he was an uncritical cog in a death-machine, and his child-like manner was not, in fact, child-like.
To be like a child sometimes involves getting angry, or at least pointing out that the emperor has no clothes. Or asking whether things are really so wonderful if you get to eat fancy meals while the corporation you work for (GE) is profiting off the war that your television program is presenting as inevitable. Is it fair? — this is also a child-like question.
Actually, from the stories I hear, he did have a love for truth. Just because he may be wrong on the Iraq War does not make him a bad person. But he was fair on Meet the Press and did ask tough questions, including the War pre and post. And so what if he loved to be part of the in-crowd in D.C.? So what if he loved to be the go-to journalist? How is that narcissistic? Is it bad to love to be loved? I recommend you understand what love is. It’s not wrong to want to be loved or love being loved. Hell, I love being loved. It’s what gets me moving in the morning. If you don’t know this from experience and want to read up on it, go read von Hildebrand’s book on the essence of love. Or even read Balthasar on receptivity. Your critique is too moralistic for a Christian.
have you really followed the behavior of the Washington media over the last 15 years, or the role of Russert in the Clinton impeachment, in the 2000 election, in the 2002 tax cuts, in the steady rightward trend of meet the press, in the incessant self-congratulation and need for coddling that has entirely emasculated the media establishment?
I have read the writers you mention and love them, and know something about receptivity and the need for love… certainly I know that Jesus needed nothing more than to be loved, as Therese of Lisieux taught…
that is not to the point. needing flattery is not needing love.
i am making a specific point about russert and washington, dc media culture, which you admit you don’t know much about…
so why are you attacking me?
there is no reason for you to attack me or my Christianity just because I object to the way Russert practiced journalism
i am not sure what your stake in this argument is.
you’ve written many moving things on this blog and on katerina’s blog; and your summary dismissal of my limited point is not consistent with the spirit of your other posts.
G. Alkon,
I apologize if I came off a bit harsh. What I was really trying to get was that we should not look at the mistakes and failures of a person. Certainly those are important but they are nothing compared to grace, nothing compared to the humanity russert has shown. Maybe he had blind spots, such as the things you have mentioned (I’m not gonna dispute it for the sake of the argument), but, again, that does not detract from his greatness. I guess I am moved by the simplicity of Russert loving his father and son or giving Ted Kennedy a rosary blessed by the pope. Certainly we can say that we know more about God because of him. I know how great of a Father God is because of the way He revealed himself through Tim. I would say though that if we are going to make a judgment on Tim, it must be reasonable and I think the most reasonable way of looking at his life is seeing what he said, wrote, etc as well as the witnesses, that is, what people thought of him. Even Neuhaus and Noonan have a high view of him.
I wasn’t attacking your Christianity nor did I try to intend that I was a better Christian. I too have a tendency of being moralistic. Every day I find myself being insufficient in what I am supposed to do or what I should be. Maybe that’s why I have sympathy for Tim’s weaknesses. What is important is that at this minute, I recognize the gift of God’s gaze, the same gaze He gave to Peter (Jn. 21), and I can say, “I am yours.” That, I think, is Christianity. It’s not so much of what we do but rather the ongoing conversion of our hearts. I am reminded of a husband in Italy who kept cheating on his wife. Afterwards, he kept coming back to her to ask for forgiveness. But he kept on cheating anyway. And he kept on coming back to ask for forgiveness. Everyone looked down upon him. Someone asked Giussani, “What do you think of him?” He answered, “He’s a saint.” Yes, he’s a saint because he kept going back. That’s what is essential in the Christian life. We will fall and have blindspots and mistakes but what is essential is that we come back to His embrace. I think we should judge this man, Tim Russert, without our preconceptions. God sees him 20 times more beautiful than the way we see him.
Anyway, again, I apologize. If you’re ever around NJ I owe you a drink.
Thanks Apolonio. I agree with you about the importance of seeing TR, and everyone else, as a revelation of the Father’s love. And no one should judge, period. That is a simple and unqualified command from Jesus. I do have a tendency to be judgmental, but here I was trying to judge the poor quality of his journalism — not necessarily dismissing the genuine personal feelings that TR attracted from many. The real object of my anger was the out-of-proportion televised celebration of TR. It is not coincidental that a lot of this occurs on TV. As Matt Talbot and MM pointed out, there is a quality of narcissism to mainstream Washington media that was on full display here. And what I wanted to emphasize most of all is that this self-regard is actually what damages the journalistic practice of these people. This is a serious problem affecting American culture and politics, that shouldn’t be swept under the rug.
( no one should judge souls — but we have to judge acts )