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| Home Front: Culture Wars |
| Tim Russert: exceptional because he was normal |
| 2008-06-20 |
| Peggy Noonan, Wall Street Journal One of the greatest statements, the most piercing, was something Chuck Todd said when he talked on a panel on MSNBC. He was asked more or less why Tim stuck out from the pack, and he said, "He was normal!" In a city, Washington, in which many powerful people are deep down weird, or don't have a deep down, only a surface, Tim was normal. Like a normal man he cared about his family and his profession and his faith. Pat Buchanan later said they're not making them now like they used to, Tim's normality is becoming the exception. The world of Russert—stability, Catholic school, loving parents, TV shows that attempted only to entertain you and not to create a new moral universe in your head—that's over, that world is gone. He had a point, though it's not gone entirely of course, just not as big, or present, as it used to be. Which got me thinking about one way in which Tim was lauded that, after a few days, was grating. And what's a column without a gripe? Tim, as all now know, was a working-class boy from upstate New York. But the amazement with which some of his colleagues talked of his background made them sound like Margaret Mead among the indigenous people of Borneo. An amazing rags-to-riches story—he was found among an amazing Celtic tribe that dragged its clubs across the tangled jungle floors of a land called "Buffalo," where they eat "wings" and worship a warrior caste known as "the Bills." Here he is, years later, in a suit. This reflected a certain cultural insularity in our media, did it not? Tim came from a loving home, grew up in a house, in a suburb. He went to private Catholic schools. His father was a garbageman, which when I was growing up was known as a good municipal union job. Tim's life was as good as or better than 90% of his countrymen in his time. His background wasn't strange or surprising—it was normal. |
| Posted by:Mike |
| #1 He also worked for Pat Moynihan, who wrote more books in a year then the rest of congress would read in their lifetime. Moynihan was a true intellect and independent politician sponsored by the Democrat party much like Sam Nunn and Scoop Jackson. There are no more Moynihan's or Nunn's or Jackson's jut Reid's, Boxer's and Durbin's which shows how much the US Senate has slipped in 20 years. Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma is one of the few out there that talks common sense just like Moynihan did. I didn't agree with Russert on a lot of stuff but he did seem like a nice guy with a blue collar way about him. I believe he may have been a social liberal but was a patriot just the same and wasn't a defeat monkey. |
| Posted by: Jack is Back! 2008-06-20 13:49 |