Rhetoric and the death of Tim Russert

added: 1 Jul 08
Should Keith Olbermann replace the late Tim Russert?

The rhetoric surrounding the death of Tim Russert did not take me off guard. Though saddened and admittedly prayerful for the loss of his humanity on our fair planet, I questioned the repeated encomiums (particularly those issuing from other NBC colleagues of Mr. Russert's from CNBC (the financial incarnation) and MSNBC (the political version) marked by the following lofty phrases:

He (Russert) led the way; (He) always encouraged us to dig deeper, (You)) trusted this man from Buffalo; the power and authority coming from Tim Russert; he set the gold standard of going after (the truth); Meet the Press (Russert's famed program) was a record for America...

On listening to these expressions, one experienced the feeling Mr. Russert was being apotheosized, that these folks weren't broadcasting to us "out there" but talking among themselves while perpetuating certain myths that they obviously believed about themselves and the subculture in which they operate, which is the political world of Washington, D.C. In their almost private, though televised, interlocutions, they were making Russert into a God.

Yet, what can we believe about Russert? Truly, when the mourning, fellow journalists grieved "the loss of a wonderful colleague, of a great son and himself a great father," one could embrace their words on a humanistic level, yet become cautious when dovetailed with the professional legacy. After all, Tim Russert and his colleagues have occupied only a niche in American journalism, one may say an insular, circular, and frankly neutered niche of political journalism. This fact rendered the praise half-true--that which spoke of Russert as a decent human being. The rest, extending to the legacy left to journalism, somewhat improbable, almost imaginary. To his credit, and as Tim Rutten said in the Los Angeles Times, "(Russert) understood the foundational value of initial questions and how to follow up effectively on his guest's responses," a practice Charlie Rose could surely cultivate. Furthermore, Russert worked diligently at his facts and tested his guests on these facts. "He disagreed civilly."

Agreed, we all have appreciated these qualities in Russert, so different from the staged animus and confrontational approach of so many political shows these days. What proved troublesome, alluded to above, was the "circular" milieu Russert operated in while being "Russert" that "fueled a descent into "character" status, a cloying willingness to trade on sentimentalized Catholic boyhood and working-class roots" (Rutten). Thus, we knew "our boy" was in there with the "big boys" digging out the truth, exposing political misdeeds. Yes, in his way he was "in there," but more along political lines than journalistic, and this tarnishes his legacy.

Thus, the critical problem with Tim Russert's credentials comes from the fact that his professional career rose from the seed-bed of politics to the interviewer's podium. Despite his own emphasis on spending time with family, and we believe this, Russert still seemed charmed by the powerful elites operating in the unseemly, broken world of Washington, D.C. where "leadership" and "ethics" is just empty rhetoric, and "ethical leadership" an oxymoron. Though Russert claimed he was "not a very social animal.... I don't go to many cocktail parties" (as told to TV Week), he did attend enough parties to get himself into serious historical trouble. He had become a celebrity in his own right, "descending into character status" as Rutten says.

That Tim Russert was an honest man in his family life and among his colleagues seems reliable; that his personal ethics stemmed from his belief in a higher power seems most credible; but, that he might have been self-deceived to think he could operate as a purely objective journalist getting the story out for all us "common" folk "out there," also appears likely. Russert probably spent too much social time with Washington's power brokers. That is, he wasn't strictly operating as a journalist, even while believing he was. If it is true that Russert had become an "insider" journalist, as many do, then he violated the warning of a truly eminent political journalist, I.M Stone, who discouraged anything but a strictly subject-object relationship with the powerful. Subject-Subject would have been unthinkable to Stone. Stone admitted attending but two social gatherings during his entire illustrious career. It was Stone who also said: “Rich people march on Washington every day.” We may complete the implied, if paradoxical syllogism:

"If rich people march on Washington (in the form of well-paid lobbyists), and if "Washington" is comprised of those who are influenced by the lobbyists who in turn represent the rich and well-connected, then Washington must be run by people really effectively representing those rich and well-connected people."

It was said by Lawrence O'Donnell that Russert read the New York Times and the writings of the Washington Press Corps each morning. How should that impress those millions of us who live in St. Louis, Oxford, Mississippi, and Los Angeles? "Meet the Press is a record for America," said O'Donnell. We may ask: for America or for the goings-on in the Beltway, which is more similar to the Paris of Louis XVI than the Washington of John Adams, FDR, or even JFK.

Nevertheless, the circular, dizzying world Tim Russert worked in put Dick Cheney in Russert's studio one Sunday morning blurting out a headline from that morning's New York Times, a headline based on information fed to the New York Times almost certainly by Cheney's White House staff (see Lewis "Scooter" Libby" further below). This interview became one of the two dramatic terminuses of Tim Russert's political destiny, the other being his personal run in with Libby himself "who claimed Russert leaked the identity of CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson to him. Russert went to the grand jury to deny it and Libby went to jail," an exposed liar. (Nancy Henry). Important to add that Russert, when he interviewed Dick Cheney, said he had not understood that the White House had leaked the same story to the New York Times that Cheney the same morning "delivered" on Meet the Press, "a record for America," as Lawrence O'Donnell states. (see video below).

In a word, the most honest and succinct praise and revelation about the late Tim Russert might have been: "Tim Russert was a working class Catholic guy from Buffalo" who went on to become a celebrity himself, a Washington "insider" journalist. Again, that he personally operated by a strict code of ethics, no doubt, but that his professional ethics remained as flawless, leaves doubt. In any case, let us be clear, Tim Russert plainly compares not to the plutocratic dissemblers, war mongers, and war profiteers that we know manifest as Scooter Libby and Dick Cheney. While we may love Russert for trying, and understand the inflated praise coming from authentic friends and colleagues who themselves operate in his insular journalistic world, we may conclude that the two Vulcans, Libby and Cheney, preyed upon an honest naïf, used him. Chris Matthews' own description of Russert: "If he was anything, he was you and me, he was America." This sounds right to me. Cheney and his gang fooled America, and he fooled the journalist Russert, our said, avatar operating in Washington.

More on Libby, who couldn't have proven healthful to Russert's heart:

"What few have realized at this historic moment is that for the past four-and-a-half years, Libby has been "scooting" from scandal to scandal. Libby has been at center stage for the other major national security scandals of the Bush administration, including the Iraq intelligence debacle, the secret meetings about Halliburton contracts, and doubtless others we have not heard of yet.

It was Libby - along with Paul Wolfowitz, Doug Feith, and a handful of other top aides at the Pentagon and White House - who convinced the president that the U.S. should go to war in Iraq. It was Libby who pushed Cheney to publicly argue that Saddam Hussein had ties to al Qaeda and 9/11. (emphasis mine).

For a now historic look at Tim Russert's destined drama with Dick Cheney see the video from Bill Moyer's Journal, the PBS television program in which he questions Russert on Russert's famous interview with the vice-president. Or should we say, the deputy president of vice:

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