The endless tributes are making me nauseated. Tim Russert, NBC’s smiling big galoot, died of a sudden heart attack as if struck down by God. Who would have his reasons, though I think he was too lenient. The longer you tell me that Russert hosted Meet the Press, the more Americans should hold him responsible for the opaque window we have into the politics of Washington. On Russert’s watch, they’ve drawn the shades, while the press pretends its public tea parties represent access. The Matalin/Carville pundit operatives have reason to cry, they’ve lost an uncritical host under whose nose they got to run their con/shill shell game. On the Afghanistan and Iraq Wars, Russert was a media war drum drill sergeant, and unless you’re prepared to eulogize him as a complete pea-brain, his affable demeanor was among the propaganda machine’s greatest snow jobs. In other news, they’re still sandbagging in Iowa.
UPDATE: More critics weigh in…
A Discordant Note on Tim Russert
-Matthiew Rothchild, THE PROGRESSIVE 6/14
Russert gave established power more voice
-Pierre Tristan, DAYTONA BEACH NEWS JOURNAL 6/17
Enough Already! The eulogies for Tim Russert ignore his role as the War Party’s sounding board
-Justin Raimondo, ANTIWAR.COM 6/18
Eric, you and Marie are both watching too much TV and it is beginning to effect your mental health. Forget about Tim Russert, both of Yuh! He has now gone to a better place. He has gone to the Graveyard of the Talking Heads. His blather will soon be joined by Dan Rather I rather think.
Honestly, Verlo’s inflamatory rhetoric is out of line. Tim Russert was a guy who ran a TV interview show, not someone ordering mass slaughter.
Even if being an uncritical interviewer on a TV show is a “sin” it is hardly a hanging offense, and on TV show does not bear responsibility for the nation’s ills. The free press is a collective venture, which each practioner carries out his part in to the extent of his or her own abilities and biases.
Amen! To my mind, being a decent human being, a loving husband and father, a hard worker, and a loyal and honest friend, trumps being a fierce and arrogant ideologue any day. Take Bill O’Reilly as an example.
Russert’s death grieved many which is certainly an indication of what type of person he was.
Yeah, let this dead ‘little Eichmann’ be, Eric. He is silent now even if the chortling media moaning his death is not. Let them pretend the guy was some sort of Jesus. Turn the boob tube off.