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Edited on Mon Jun-16-08 05:04 PM by Crisco
Here at THE HOWLER, we didn’t know Tim Russert, although we have no trouble believing that he really was, on a personal basis, the nicest guy in the world, as so many have said this past weekend. He was nice enough to take part in the 1997 “Funniest Celebrity in Washington Contest,” a charity event in which we’re semi-vaguely involved. (Chris Matthews won that year, though we’d have voted differently. Lieberman took the prize the next year, in an obvious win.) The last time we interacted with Tim was at another comedy event, up in Manchester, the weekend before the 2000 New Hampshire primary. (Given the location, impressionist Jim Morris got to do his superlative bit in which Tom Brokaw tries to interview Paul Tsongas—and can’t quite make out what he’s saying.) Shortly before the hilarity started, Tim sidled up to us and said, “So what’s going on, Somerby? Heh heh heh heh.” We were a bit surprised when he did that; given his massive influence, we could also see why people inside the Washington sphere would want to be friends with this very cheerful, very powerful person. In his insinuative “heh heh heh heh,” we recall the spirit of fun we’ve heard described all weekend.
Based on what we saw first-hand, we would guess that Brother Russert really was the nicest guy in the world.
Sometimes, though, “nicest guys in the world” are the last to challenge conventional wisdom—even when it desperately needs to be challenged, examined, hollered about. In Tim’s case, we think he showed poor judgment in various instances over the years, as we’re all inclined to do. Chris Matthews touched on one possible error in judgment in his comments from Paris on Friday’s Countdown (text below). For once, we think Chris’ lack of impulse control served the public understanding—although he’s getting beaten up for his comment at various spots on the web.
Over the weekend, other members of the mainstream press corps did the thing that comes natural inside their group; they went on the air and told Group Tales, tales which reflected quite wondrously on Tim’s journalistic work—and, of course, by extension, most importantly, on them. Telling the truth is pretty much the last thing that enters these people’s heads. And so, they handed out novelized tales about Tim’s always brilliant work—failing to make the slightest attempt to be balanced, objective or truthful.
For the record, we’re talking about the way they described Tim’s work—not the way they described his decency as a person, a person they loved.
This isn’t really the week for such topics, though Tim’s death—more precisely, the torrent of industry propaganda it unleashed—demands that such topics be discussed. We’ll plan to look at some of those issues next week. In the meantime, we’ll suggest that you ponder a real possibility: The possibility that a guy who showed a fair amount of bad judgment—as we all do—may also have been the nicest guy in the world, just as you’ve seen him described.
We know—being “nicest guy” wasn’t Tim’s job. But then again, it’s also not nothing: “But what has gone is also not nothing/by the rule of the game something has gone.”
The guy who wrote those books about dads is the same guy who gave those embarrassing answers in that interview with Bill Moyers. (In fairness, we’re inclined to think that Moyers overstated one alleged problem.) Predictably enough, Tim’s colleagues told you about the books; that interview got disappeared—along with the (inevitable) human shortcomings behind it. And no, they didn’t necessarily do that out of respect; it’s what they do in every circumstance. The instinctive refusal to tell you the truth lies at the heart of their culture.
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