Tim Russert dead???

wtf

surely not

Heaven needed more condescending lectures about Big Russ.

wtf

seriously i hope this is a joke

fuck anyone who hates on this guy

source Alex?

just popped up this second on drudge

oh wow. buffalo sheds a tear :(

http://www.nypost.com/seven/06132008/news/nationalnews/tim_russert_dies_from_apparent_heart_att_115384.htm

now it is on the new york times, source being his family

agh. :( :( :( :( :( :( :( :( :(

RIP

no fucking comment.

wikipedia already on it

I have no use for him, but RIP.

RIP

RIP

Extremely sad. My Sunday revolves around Meet the Press.

RIP big guy.

how is David Goddamn Broder still alive?

he seemed like a genuinely good guy who also squared the balance between passive & aggressive more perfectly than any political interviewer ive ever seen, certainly better than anyone else out there right now

very sad news RIP

man that sucks, he's a good guy. I was jus talking to some friends like two nights and we went on about him for a strangely long time....so weird

msnbc hasn't mentioned it

nnnooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!

weird. well, not weird. but, out of nowhere, anyway. i have mixed feelings about tim, but i did enjoy his show.

very sad to see that russert didn't get the perez hilton photo treatment

http://img.perezhilton.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/wenn914444.jpg

huh. That's sad. Weird.

NYT has a little breaking-news blurb at the top of its site.

I always get a sad feeling when I hear of a parent outliving their kid.

xp (Already mentioned, sorry.)

i saw him speak at a legal dinner last year but i can't remember what he said.

Tom Brokaw is talking about it on msnbc right now. I'm stunned.

i saw him speak at a legal dinner last year but i can't remember what he said.

Kinda like the questions he asked politicos.

it's weird though, cause i think i remember really liking it. apparently none of it stuck, though.

he seemed like a good guy. my mixed feelings are basically the mixed feelings i always have about anyone so cozy/insider with politicians acting or trying to act like some objective observer of events. i just picture half of his guests playing golf with him after the show.

my mixed feelings are basically the mixed feelings i always have about anyone so cozy/insider with politicians acting or trying to act like some objective observer of events. i just picture half of his guests playing golf with him after the show.

You ain't kidding

apparently none of it stuck, though.

^The key to modern "TV journalism" (along w/ golf outings)

yeah, even though it was a banquet speech, not on tv... same difference i guess.

if I ever get access to a photo scanner, maybe someday I'll post gabbneb_Russert.jpg

-- gabbneb, Tuesday, February 26, 2008 11:05 PM (3 months ago) Bookmark Link

Jeez, can't you wait at least an hour before the backlash?

RIP

I just like his face. His big florid excited about something face.

Such a cool guy. i miss him already.

he was a Bills fan. RIP.

http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/06/13/russert-dies-of-apparent-heart-attack/index.html?hp

I figure David Gregory (or Chris Matthews) will replace him on MTP.

please be david gregory

That's terrible! He was young. Rest in peace.

yeah, i think we can assume gregory, at least temporarily. matthews already has his own sunday show.

Chris Matthews

"God, you took the wrong Wilbury"

I have no use for him, but RIP.

-- Alfred, Lord Sotosyn, Friday, June 13, 2008 3:31 PM (36 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

^^^

he didn't want to live in a world where the bills played in toronto horseshoe.

scott isnt that sorta what russert so great? he was always likeable & reasonable but never shied away from asking the tough questions - he let his guests be themselves & let his audience form their own opinions about them

RIP fellow alum.

que ok but russert was kind of an example of a guy who was specifically NOT that imo, i assume you agree

lol. from Tom Shales WP article from last Saturday

Not that Russert lacked ambition. He was keenly competitive and played to win. MSNBC's Keith Olbermann recalled that Russert often concluded memos to staff members with a gung-ho "Go get 'em." When he was named "Meet the Press" moderator, one NBC News staffer noted, one of Russert's first official acts was to have a large framed photograph of himself placed among those of other NBC luminaries in the hallway of the network building on Nebraska Avenue in Northwest Washington.

I think that we shouldn't discount the possibility that one reason the Russert passing is getting head-of-state-level coverage is that people are watching it. It's kind of a perfect storm of media convergence: an endless assortment of media personalities who knew the man and can speak about the "Tim Russert they knew", a figure who was well-known and well-liked by the TV news audience - ie., the same exact audience for the coverage of his death, and the sort of self-fulfilling effects of a media event. But I would bet the ratings of the coverage of his death have been pretty good.

SIREN SIREN
overachiever 'played to win'
SIREN SIREN
framed himself next to people he respected

xp

celebrities mourning one another and asking us to share in their grief is sort of lame when it gets to be this ridiculously protracted. when i heard the news it was surprising and i thought, 'aw he seemed alright. rip big fella.' but now it's like "never forget 6/13".

Jack Shafer:

In my research, I encountered only a couple of reporters who proved resistant to the woe-inducing fumes emitted by the funeral bouquets. My friend Mark Leibovich of the New York Times didn't make a playpen of Russert's bones in his Week in Review piece, nor did he flinch from writing it straight. A couple of samples:

In a sense, Mr. Russert seemed to have an intuitive grasp of all the petty concerns, Big Doings and peculiar rhythms of (Washington). …

[Washington is] a town of revolving doors, for which Mr. Russert was something of an exemplar, for better or worse. …

Mr. Russert liked to seem sheepishly above-it-all, but was also as acutely status-conscious, befitting the local water. He was always mindful of not appearing too often on MSNBC, NBC's cable cousin, for fear of diluting his big-league brand. ...

Writing in his blog today, New York Times reporter Adam Nagourney recalled the early 1980s, when Russert worked as a bare-knuckled counselor to New York Gov. Mario M. Cuomo and Nagourney covered the Cuomo administration for the Daily News. Nagourney reveals nothing ugly, nor does he shine Russert's halo as he sketches a portrait of the young highhanded political operative.

And in the Saturday Los Angeles Times, columnist Tim Rutten knocked the press for its saccharine assessment of Russert, writing:

Watching the cable news networks in the hours after his death, one was struck by the outpouring of admiration and affection from across the political spectrum and from journalistic colleagues of every sort. It was impossible not to be struck—once again—by just how incestuous and claustrophobic the Washington-based nexus of politics and journalism has become.

I wonder whether the media grievers gave a moment of thought to how this Russert torrent they produced played with viewers and readers. Did the grievers really think Russert was so important, so vital to the nation's course, and such an elevated human being that he deserved hour upon hour of tribute? I wonder whether any of the responsible journalists paused to think, Hey, this is really weird. We're using our unchecked editorial power to soak the nation with our tears about our friend, and that's unseemly!

On days like this, I, too, hate the press.

yeah deez, a lot of the talkin heads at nbc are white working class irish catholics (now with houses on nantucket) and none of them can quit talking about his "background" and how that made him so awesome and special and unique.. just like them

I'm sure my story is like that of a lot of people who are also deeply interested in Russert remembrances. In 2000, I was a politically challenged 26 year old who was drawn in by Russert's coverage leading up to and, especially, on election night. The dry erase board is pretty much joke material now, but that night it was great. That was the moment I became not only a political junkie, but especially an election politics junkie. So much so that I've finally figured out what I want to do and have gone back to school to graduate with a degree in tv/broadcast production with the hope of landing in one of the DC bureaus of one of the networks (with a preference for NBC/MSNBC).

So yeah, it means a lot to me. Tim Russert is basically why I am where I am now. And when I read people saying that it's just a bunch of the media having a big circle jerk at the expense of the viewers, I take it personally. Because if he had that impact on me, someone way out here in tv land who'd never personally met him, I imagine there are lots of other people with a similar story.

< /emo >

OK, Godspeed on your joining the media-industrial agitprop Leviathan.

there's also such a thing as decorum in these matters but that's pretty euro to say isn't it

Morbs, much luck on remaining a bitter and unloved asshat until the day you die alone and forgotten.

dudes what did I just say

Not in "TV Land."

(xxpost)

Omar so totally on the money. I was sad, although I also joined in the critiques here. And even on Friday, it was starting to be a bit much, as I noted above. Six days later . . . oy. Yesterday, Omar, I was thinking about that Firesign Theatre joke: "Benjamin Franklin, the only president of the United States who was never president of the United States."

"alone and forgotten" beats being eulogized by C Matthews and all the pols who loved my fake-news show, J Fever.

You're just jealous that Mary Matalin won't speak at your eulogy.

I bet I haven't seen/heard her in 10 years.

Mr. Que so on the goddamn money that anything else is guilding the goddamn lily

I've been as surprised as anyone by the outpouring over Russert's death, but people whose intelligence and judgment I generally respect have been swept up in the coverage, so who am I to judge? I guess lots of people really liked the big, smiley, bug-eyed doofus. Who knew?

My wife and her mom and aunt apparently thought I was a bit cold-hearted for sitting in the other room and missing the Russert montage on the TV last weekend. When it was over and they came back in the room, I swear there wasn't a dry eye among them. "He was a good man", said my wife's aunt. They thought I was joking when I said that I didn't recall this level of coverage for Bo Diddley's passing the other week.

"Russert has received TWICE the amount of coverage Comrade Diddley deserved."

http://mattsanchez.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/2008/02/19/castro.jpg

as Dennis Perrin wrote, this was JUST Russert. Imagine the Saint Cronkite coverage, even tho he's been retired for 27 years...

THAT'S THE WAY IT WAS.

A big part of this is the suddenness. If he'd announced four months before his death that he had lung cancer, like Jennings, I believe the reactions and coverage would have been similar.

(Sorry if this has already been said. I'm not following this thread in detail.)

i thought the same thing this morning. i keep catching maria shriver on the today show, she looks all botoxic. this morning she was speaking from a podium, i guess at his funeral, casting her eyes skyward and addressing "Tim" up there in "heaven" and i was like oh for christs sake and hurried on to the shower.

i imagine shriver rotating her ridiculous jawbones on her stalk of a neck towards the skies, like a satellite dish tuning in

"Tim's death made my cheeks contract -- like so."

http://bittenandbound.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/maria-shriver.jpg

going after shriver in re to TR = LCD BS

"You're just jealous that Mary Matalin won't speak at your eulogy."

i swear to god i read this as marlee matlin and i laughed so hard. i'm mean.

Morbs, there's no sense in hating on Russert just for meeting the low standards and banal expectations of his loathsome network bosses. Hate on the people who kept him on the air and paid his salary.

Russert was just a dweeb who made good money for filling the airwaves with puffery and nonsense. He died before he made old bones. That's too bad for him and those who loved him. RIP.

There is a lot of sensing in attacking his mourners for praising Russert for what he wasn't.

Those aren't mourners, per se. Those are his colleagues, which is to say, they are mostly shameless shills. Even if they felt genuine grief over his passing, they would probably supress it in public in favor of rouging the cheeks of his corpse.

If a link hasn't been posted yet, plz to read Jon Swift's take:

http://jonswift.blogspot.com/2008/06/russert-rule.html

there's no sense in hating on Russert just for meeting the low standards and banal expectations of his loathsome network bosses.

As someone pointed out above, he was Wash. bureau chief for NBC News. A boss, if not Mr. GE.

He didn't promote himself to that position, morbs.

http://img2.timeinc.net/people/i/2008/video/080630/cvr_06_30_08.jpg

A Family's Heartbreak - Mario Lopez Bares All

Wikipedia Updater Fired For Scooping NBC on Tim Russert's Death

So Brokaw's replacing Timbo.

Lopez is looking BUFF.

lol i saw an episode of access hollywood abt the lopez article - he was supposed to get the cover!

So Brokaw's replacing Timbo.

for 4 months, at least

and it looks like mitchell and harwood will be the key roundtablers, though obv chuck todd is gonna play a role in the campaign season

they're protecting the brand first, and using a team to add up to russert

i don't think we should expect todd to take over any time soon

Hitch: miracles seen at Russert funeral:

When the late Tim Russert actually became the late Tim Russert, I wrote an appreciation for the Vanity Fair Web site and said what I genuinely thought: that he was a nice and generous man and a first-rate journalist and one of nature's democrats. I added that he'd been very fair-minded to me when it came to our own greatest difference, which was his highly devout Catholicism. He'd always made room on his cable show for opinions that clashed with his own and had in fact positively sought out people like me who disagreed with him. And then I added, because I may have had some kind of premonition, that the journalistic profession sometimes overdoes things when one of its senior members dies, and it has a tendency to bang on as if some great and irreplaceable saint or statesman has passed away.
A few days after I published this innocent little appreciation, one could already detect a slight feeling that the media "tribute" industry had gone a tad far. Surely Tim can't have been the only person ever to have done well after being born into a working-class family in Buffalo, N.Y., for example? And other people must have served on the staff of Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan (even if not so brilliantly able to imitate the crusty old solon). The job of hosting Meet the Press was a job that a mere mortal could actually do, otherwise Tim would not have been able to do it. The seat would be filled soon enough. In a moment of irreverence at the Russert memorial service, Tom Brokaw pronounced that the largest group present was composed of people who thought they should be filling his shoes; I notice he's now landed the job.

^^ the entire essay is the best thing der hitch has posted in dogs years. just when you think the old soak has finally lost his marbles he manages to redeem (pun intended) himself.

I think he's more generous when angry – any target inspiring this much eloquent vitriol should be grateful, not offended – but this was cute. Just when you think he's about to take a shot at theists, he hangs fire.

the job Brokaw landed is interim caretaker of the program, including helping to decide who the new host will be. he doesn't want a permanent job in Washington, even a weekly one, i'm pretty sure.

Brokaw already putting a Western stamp on the show

http://thepage.time.com/2008/06/27/on-the-sunday-shows-32/

Show's going to be broadcast from WGA meeting in Jackson Hole.
http://www.westgov.org/wga/meetings/am2008/index.htm

http://politicalwire.com/archives/2008/12/02/gregory_picked_for_meet_the_press.html

http://www.fanoguitars.com/photos/davegregory.jpg

only if