greenman3610 (1000+ posts) Sat Jun-14-08 09:19 AM
Russert exemplified everything that is wrong with journalism in America
Edited on Sat Jun-14-08 09:42 AM by greenman3610
Russert became a hollow caricature of the hard hitting journalist, by
knowing exactly how far to go in any encounter, with a keen
eye for just which players in the power structure could be challenged,
exactly how much he could pretend to challenge them, and above all,
those lines that must never be crossed.
By following these rules, he defined the modern millionaire
media star journalist -less the hard bitten investigator, and
more the courtier in the palace - laughing the loudest at the president's
jokes about missing WMD - making sure always to
be one of the in crowd, the coolest kids in school, and making his program the place to go
for an administration that wanted "message control", - saying in
a moment of candor, "principles are for paupers.." --
the tenet he lived by to the end.
The reason his death became a media festival far beyond it's importance,
like Reagan's funeral or OJ's trial - is that the tight knit society
of like minded journalistic shills, for the last several years a dark sense
has been growing, despite all attempts to ignore it, repress it, of
having crossed into a dark area of the soul, betraying their country, their
people, the constitution, the truth, and even the planet in selling
their souls to the journalist-as-celebrity culture that has
taken over New York and Washington.
So, here is their idol, their model, their archetype,
all too soon being called to final account, whether
in a spiritual judgement, or even if only that final
heart clutching moment, where, for Tim, there might have been a
flicker of recognition of just who he was, and what
he had become.