He died the semi-ultimate upper-class white male's death

[Miss Authoritiva]

For Tim Russert: He died the semi-ultimate upper-class white male’s death*

Bob Somerby at The Daily Howler has far more class than I. He is dutifully waiting http://www.dailyhowler.com/dh061308.shtml">a respectful period following Tim Russert’s http://uk.reuters.com/article/UKNews1/idUKN1338241920080614">sudden death before once again waging war against the awfulness that is corporate media in America, including NBC, including MSNBC, and including Tim Russert.

My condolences to the Russert family. At least you won't be waging battles with the US Department of Veterans Affairs.

However, since MSNBC and other news outlets are playing pretty much nothing but Canned Yam all day today, screw the respectful pause. They’re just catapulting the propaganda about the guy who catapulted the propaganda.

At the time of his death, Tim Russert had a very, very cushy job -- complete with contracts and clauses and subclauses and pension funds and bonuses and, ironically, excellent medical insurance. He was not worried about foreclosures on any of his houses; his son had gone to college; his elderly father was being well attended.

It was good to be Tim Russert.

It was especially good to be Tim Russert in the America that Tim Russert helped to create by enabling the political facilitators and facilitating the political enablers. Propaganda doesn’t just catapult itself, you know; media narratives don’t just create themselves and endlessly repeat by themselves, you know.

Tim Russert did not die of malnutrition or dysentery or cholera or untreated cancer or untreated diabetes or friendly fire in a war zone or unfriendly fire in a war zone or drowning due to broken levees or PTSD-related suicide. Nor was he mistakenly gunned down to nothing but shredded human skin, as this little Iraqi girl’s family was.

No, Tim Russert died the honorable if wasteful death of so many middle-aged Americans: coronary artery disease. In Russert’s case, I suspect his arteries were clogged not with the usual cholesterol but with the detritus of so many decades’ worth of political bullshit.

The hack is dead. Long live the hack.
_______________

*The ultimate upper-class white male's death would, of course, involve coronary artery disease, a fatal drug interaction with Viagra, and a high-class prostitute (male or female).


By Grace Nearing @ Scriptoids

[Miss Authoritiva]

1. This is the now-orphaned Iraqi girl referenced in the post.

[Madam Mossfern]

2. Well, that was cathartic for *someone*

Sounds more like sour grapes. I guess his death is lesser because he was privileged with a good education, a keen mind and good connections. Is his life any less important because of his celebrity? I don't think anyone is forgetting those less fortunate by mourning his passing. Yes there is more media coverage because many Americans felt like they know him personally.

[nomorenomore08]

7. I thinks it's more a reaction to his life being viewed as more important than thousands of others.

With all the suffering in the world, it does seem out of proportion to devote so much media coverage, and so much grief, to one mediocre TV journalist with a penchant for kissing the ass of evil (e.g. Cheney).

I'm not glad Russert is dead, but I'm also not glad about all the American soldiers and Iraqi civilians who've died as a result of a trumped-up war cheered on by most of the media.

[Benhurst]

9. Which all goes to show how fractured and disfunctional our society

has become. Isolated, lonely people who think have they have a personal relationship with an obscenely over-paid corporate shill they see on the boob-tube, spewing out propaganda for the military/industrial complex.

"GE brings good things to you." Yeah. Sure.

Wake up, America!

[eleny]

10. "many Americans felt like they know him personally"

Right. And he misused that familiarity.

He was a Bushie and as a Bushie he helped a destructive agenda because he knew how to get people to trust him. That's my view of him. I gave him a "RIP" but that's all he'll get from me.

It has nothing to do with sour grapes. It has to do with the deaths of thousands of American soldiers and countless innocent Iraqis and Afghanistani.

People who use their influence for evil deserve no respect from me.

[Madam Mossfern]

12. You're missing the point.

His political views and actions are open to criticism, but to bash him because he was a well off American is a bit over the top.

Many people are influenced by celebrity. I'm not one of them, but you can't deny it. Why else are people so interested in Brittany Spears or Madonna or Paris Hilton? There are pundit groupies as well. The article in the OP was just mean spirited.

[eleny]

14. The original point was that Russert made his money shilling for GE

It was obscene given the deaths that resulted.

Go ahead and take the last word if you wish. I'm done with you.

[Tangerine LaBamba]

3. Feel better?

I hope you do. I hope Grace does, too.

But something tells me the anger that propels people who need to do this sort of thing never subsides and is always - as here - misdirected.

Good luck.

[monmouth]

5. I would have to agree that was a bit harsh. I was no fan whatsoever, but......n/t

[ironrooster]

13. I know I feel better -

Not sure if the little girl in the photograph does. LaBamba - Russert did enable some of the worst people our government has seen. Go look at some of the transcripts at MediaMatters. Fer Crissake - call it like it is. I'm sorry for his family - but all this eulogizing is a bit much in view of his record (and it is a record - on tape and in text). My mother-in-law would agree with you about the "inappropriateness" of some of the comments and how we should respect the dead - but how can we respect the dead in a culture that disrespects the living? This anomie directed to Russert is perfectly natural and not so much about cartharsis - it's more about setting the record straight.

[Tangerine LaBamba]

16. Enabled?

I think you'd best find out what the word means before you try to apply it to what Russert did for a living. If you think it's the duty of TV news personalities to divine somehow the truth behind whatever the guest is telling you, when the guest has already put into play a brilliantly subversive and evasive game plane, then you should go get a job as a special commentator, if you happen to possess that psychic gift.

It's telling, I think, that you somehow inferred "inappropriateness" from my post, and saw fit to quote something that wasn't there, and wasn't intended to be there. Your agenda got in your way and you tripped over it.

To imply that Russert and his colleagues were there to find out what the Bush cabal was really up to is to misunderstand in a profound way the job of the news media. I do believe that a much better job could have been done, but that original post, and its attendant and hateful outrage, coupled with your confused, but, I'm sure, well-intentioned response, just leaves me wondering if some people in this country really understand the respective roles of the executive, judicial, and congressional branches, as well as the role of the Fourth Estate.

You would do well to figure out what exactly it is you want from network news people and then figure out if that expectation comports with their job descriptions. Sometimes it will match up, if you have any kind of basic understanding about how these institutions work, but, if you're as adrift in terms of hard information and background as you appear to be, then you would do well to get familiar with the old Rolling Stones refrain: You can't always get what you want.

[Submariner]

4. Russert was part of the Club

Tim Russert, Brit Hume, Charlie Gibson, Chris Matthews, Dick cheney, Scooter Libby, Wolfowitz, Pearle, Billy Kristol, Bill O'Reilly, Chris Wallace, Fred Barnes, Mort Kondrake, et al all had something in common. ALL of those Vietnam era chickenhawk drum beaters NEVER served a minute of military service.

Thus, they could not draw a perspective of real life in a battle zone, didn't have the requisite life experiences that would give them the foresight to ask the right questions about Iraqnam, so being ignorant they all piled onto the Bush/Cheney bullshit wagon. It felt to me like that aforementioned crowd felt validated that they could come out of the draft-dodger closet, when world-class losers like 5-deferment Chaney and AWOL Bush came on the scene.

[Royal Oak Rog]

6. Great Post

Not only was he the messenger, he also developed the message. I am just sick of the privledged talking heads who will sell anything, including their country to get access to power...Chris Matthews is another one that comes to mind. The only problem with Russert dying is his replacement will be a bigger bag man (and by bag man I mean selling the public a bag of shit) than he was.

[bluestateguy]

8. Classy

and accomplishing nothing either, but hey if it makes you feel good to post this, why not?

[HamdenRice]

11. Excellent, well said: "catapulting the propaganda about the guy who catapulted the propaganda"

is a great phrase. I just don't understand the respect being shown by progressives for this guy. If Goebbels had died in 1944, I don't think the German underground would have said we need a period of respectful mourning for the Nazi propaganda chief.

Russert was a liar.

A liar in the pay of a movement to destroy the Constitution and our democratic republican system of government -- a professional liar playing the role of a journalist, well paid, indeed, to guarantee his continued ability to lie.

Good riddance.

Bury the stinking carcass already and let's move on to more important things.

[Gman]

15. And it's Russert's fault because...?

Why do some people just sit in their own misery and hate others because they do well for themselves? Russert was a good and decent man. Why can't you stand it that people respected him and acknowledged him as one of the few remaining credible journalists around?

Then we've all grown to expect that there are always going to be people that make comments like this and the inappropriate and messed up thinking behind it.

[Miss Authoritiva]

17. Well, the Bush administration sure viewed him as a useful tool.

If Tim Russert was "one of the few remaining credible journalists around" then American journalism died before Russert did.
Remember how Dick Cheney's office viewed Russert? He was a useful tool. This is from a Dana Milbank WaPo article from the Scooter Libby trial.

Memo to Tim Russert: Dick Cheney thinks he controls you.

This delicious morsel about the "Meet the Press" host and the vice president was part of the extensive dish Cathie Martin served up yesterday when the former Cheney communications director took the stand in the perjury trial of former Cheney chief of staff I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby.

Flashed on the courtroom computer screens were her notes from 2004 about how Cheney could respond to allegations that the Bush administration had played fast and loose with evidence of Iraq's nuclear ambitions. Option 1: "MTP-VP," she wrote, then listed the pros and cons of a vice presidential appearance on the Sunday show. Under "pro," she wrote: "control message."

"I suggested we put the vice president on 'Meet the Press,' which was a tactic we often used," Martin testified. "It's our best format."

[Gman]

20. Deeper and wider thinking than that is something you should work toward

I won't even get into to why. You need to figure that out.

[Skittles]

19. some of us do not buy the bullshit that is sold

some of us SEE THROUGH PEOPLE

[samsingh]

18. the GOP has lost a great friend.