Remembering Tim
Remorsefulness I could feel no more
Everything is different than before
My thoughts now are the wonderful memories
Episodes when he interviewed celebrities
Meet the Press was a great addition to my Sundays
Dialogs well research and presented in fresh ways
Ever political leader invited for a chat
Respectfully grilled to discern fiction from fact
I think I learnt more from these interviews
No twisted focus and distortions as in the news
Got the fact straight once and for all listening
Tim’s Christian nature brought an unusual christening
I felt renewed interpretation when I listened to him
Meet the Press continues and in a way so does Tim
In Loving Memory of Tim Russert
Died June 13, 2008
I sure wish I had taken the opportunity and time to blog during the height of the primary. What exciting times!! I must admit, though, that I was getting tired toward the end. But we pulled through...
How sad it is that Tim Russert will not be here on Earth to witness the outcome of this election, which surely will result in Obama's presidency. I woke up every Sunday morning to Tim. And, if I couldn't watch, I recorded the program to view later. I'll still tune in to Meet the Press, but I know it will not be the same. You could just sense Russert's excitement and energy for the campaign. Yet, he remained unbiased and fair in his analyses of the issues. He will be missed, but I'm sure he's watching from heaven.
To many, a man writing in such terms about another man may seem inappropriate. And while I'm quite comfortable with my masculinity, I personally consider the occassion involving the passing of brother Tim Russert substantially significant enough to warrant such a comment.
I think it could b reasonably argued their exists a certain exotic, passionate relationship between the proletariat and the aristocracy, the democrat and the autocrat. These dualing, interactive relationships have always produced a medium of individuals that perceive, report and protect this internecine of human experiences. In times past called scribes, today they're called journalists. Tim Russert was a product of and personified that expression and experience. He assessed, analyzed, inspired, and defended with honor his devotion to the end.
While on the battlefield of this world, he exuded excellence with a heart of passion for the common ordinary human. It's with the analysis, reporting and exchange of ideas that truth and liberation are afforded the cast down and downtrodden. I think that is mostly why this world will miss our knight in shining armor. His battle this side is done. Like the scent of a rose at night, he's stolen our hearts. But on the other side he's gathered to be amidst that bouquet of roses presented on the "Great Wedding Day". The day of the "Rose of Sharon". Peace...be still!
Today was the memorial service for Tim Russert, as everyone knows was the 17-year anchor of Meet the Press on NBC. I wish I had some story about how watching his show changed my life in some way, but I can't because I never watched it. He was a great newsman and person, who will be greatly missed. I certainly will miss his objective and straight-forward interviewing style this political season.
But who can fill this great man's seat in the anchor chair of Meet the Press? An online poll included Tom Brokaw, Keith Olbermann, Chcuk Todd, and Andrea Mitchell (and "other"). Brokaw is retired from regular news programming, and as my favorite news anchor/commentator, he's doing a fine job in specials or random commentary. Olbermann is too biased in his current show, and I don't know if he'd be able to be as objective as Tim was; he'd have to leave his soap box at Countdown. My parents like Todd, but he's not someone I'm very familiar with, though he is in the lead in the poll. I don't like Mitchell that much, and she had the lowest votes in the poll. I personally think David Gregory would do a good job as well as Chris Matthews, though he has political ambitions so he couldn't start something new. What I'm sure of is that NBC will take its time finding an appropriate successor to one of the best interviewers in politics, Tim Russert.
Update (6/23): Tom Brokaw has been selected to moderate Meet the Press through the end of the election season when NBC will name a permanant successor. As mentioned earlier, Brokaw is my favorite newsman and I know he will be great. Maybe I'll start watching MTP more often.
Today will be the day they lay the great Tim Russert to rest. He was such a gracious man.
He didn't want to go on the air at first they say. He was Vice President of NBC News an considered himself an administrator, not a journalist.
I think what I will miss most about him was ability to be a moderator not by a list of rules set in stone, or copied from some other media guidebook. He just knew how to listen.
He also knew that freedom of speech was everything. He didn't quibble with semantics. However, he politely was able to get the answers he wanted by sticking to his own rules and not expecting his guests to do anything more than try their best to be prepared for his show.
As a moderator he was always fair and let everybody speak their peace.
He used editors to clean up mispeaks, rough spots or lengthy conversations. He didn't expect his guests to edit themselves.
I am a moderator here on MYBO, but I am no Tim Russert. There is such a fine line between being a moderator or becoming a censor. Tim Russert knew that. I am not perfect, nor do I expect the members of my group to be perfect. But Tim Russert was the ultimate moderator.
He was also the ultimate father, son and husband and so many other things. There is no replacement for him.
"So, goodbye my friend, I know we'll never see you again, but the love you gave us throughout the years will take away these tears. I'm ok now goodbye my friend.
You can go now.
Goodbye my friend."
The death of Tim Russert last Friday was a blow to journalism. He epitomized the finest of everything to be found in political reporting, emphasizing fairness and compassion with his incisive interviews of politicos and others who dared to face him across the table on Sunday mornings.
Russert is the model and ideal to which any hard-working American should aspire. Every interview found him well-prepared, eager, polite, civil, and compassionate. Even when he caught an interviewee off-guard or woefully under-prepared, Russert would go out of his way to allow the person the chance to recover. In a time when the media is looking for the sound bite that makes or breaks a politician, Russert made certain that his guests had the opportunity to correct their mistakes. If someone still managed to hang him or herself on "Meet the Press", they most certainly deserved it.
Talking about Tim Russert on this site dedicated to the election of Barack Obama has a purpose. The things I most admire about Russert are clearly evident in Obama. He has shown himself to have the same great love of family and friends. Obama supports and encourages people who have larger-than-life dreams. He listens, really listens, to what people have to say. That includes opposing viewpoints. That, more than anything, is what impresses me about Obama.
Barack Obama had the temerity to go on television before all of America to support and defend his Chicago minister. Even when he took the sad step of leaving the church, he did so in such a way as to minimize damage to the church and his minister. Before that moment, I was firmly planted in the Hillary Clinton camp, but his nobility in the face of that particular situation won me over. He showed me that he had a clearer understanding of both the failings and finest aspects of humanity than any other person running for office.
Obama, like Russert, doesn't seem glued to the sound bite. When he speaks, the audience really listens. His ideas aren't trivialized into three-second clips for the evening news. No, he expresses complex ideas and plans for the future in full sentences and clear rhetoric. We haven't seen such care and clarity in public speaking for more than three decades. I for one, want to hear more.
It is my sincere hope that when Obama is elected he will have the chance to implement his goals and vision for the future of America.
Lynne (16 June 2008)
The House That Tim Built
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The moderator's chair on NBC's "Meet the Press" stood empty on Sunday in remembrance of Tim Russert, the man who had occupied it for 17 years.
The moderator's chair on NBC's "Meet the Press" stood empty Sunday in remembrance of Tim Russert.
As the show's host, Russert became a mainstay of television journalism's political talk.
He died Friday of apparent heart attack, according to the network. He was 58. The network said Russert collapsed while at work.
Colleague and former NBC anchor Tom Brokaw, who broke the news about the anchor's death, spoke on Sunday the familiar first four words of the news program, "Our issues this Sunday." He noted that those were the same words Russert had been recording for the show when he collapsed and died.
"Our issue this sad Sunday morning is remembering and honoring our colleague and friend," Brokaw said.
"He said he was only the temporary custodian," of this program, which he called a national treasure, Brokaw said. "Of course, he was so much more than all that."
Brokaw sat among some of Russert's other colleagues in the front of the show's set, including Pulitzer Prize-winning author Doris Kearns Goodwin and political analysts Mary Matalin and James Carville, who is also a CNN contributor.
"This is where you separated the men from the boys," said Matalin, who is married to Carville. "You weren't a candidate until you came on this show."
A montage of clips from past years showed various politicians -- former President Bill Clinton, President Bush, former presidential candidate Ross Perot, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff -- sitting across the table from Russert. Watch politicians, journalists pay homage to Russert »
Some showed the politicians as they squirmed.
"Look, I was asked -- I shouldn't have said that," New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson said on the show in May 2007.
Richardson had appeared on the show as part of the "Meet the Candidates 2008" series, and was grilled by Russert about his contradictory positions on numerous issues.
"So you're - I've been in public life for 25 years, you're going to find a lot of these; it seems you found them all here," he said, smiling somewhat sheepishly.
"I'm just trying to set the record and trying to give you a chance to respond, which is fair," Russert had responded.
In another clip at the end of an April 2006 show, Sen. John McCain told Russert, "I haven't had so much fun since my last interrogation."
Russert had appeared as an unlikely icon for television news, with his cherubic face and dimpled chin, but he was a prolific interviewer and tireless journalist, one with an intimidating breadth of political knowledge and insight.
"It was a very easy show to prepare for in the sense that you knew he was not going to ask you any questions out of left field; you knew his thing was going to be entitlements, you knew his thing was going to be past statements, you knew where he was coming from," Carville said Sunday of "Meet the Press."
Matalin countered: "It was simple in the fact that there was no 'gotcha,' but it was not easy. Because you had to be 10 questions deep, because he was going to be 12 questions deep."
As news of his death hit the airwaves and Internet, tributes rolled in -- with nearly everyone praising his prowess as a journalist and as an interviewer.
Bush, in a written statement, called Russert "a tough and hardworking newsman."
"He was always well-informed and thorough in his interviews," Bush said. "And he was as gregarious off the set as he was prepared on it."
Longtime CBS news anchor Walter Cronkite said, "Broadcast journalism lost one of its greats today. Tim Russert was a giant in our field -- a standard-bearer of journalistic integrity and ethics. His masterful interviews and roundtable discussions are legendary. This is a tragic loss for journalism and for all who were privileged to know him."
But colleagues who knew him best also praised his warmth, and described him as a mentor.
"I think it's so poignant that we're talking about Tim on Father's Day because he was a father to so many of us," said California first lady Maria Shriver, who once worked for NBC.
On Friday, NBC chief foreign affairs correspondent Andrea Mitchell said, "He was always teaching each of us to be as rigorous as he was in looking at all the facts, examining everything and then being as balanced and fair and down-the-middle as anyone could possibly be."
In 2008, Time Magazine named him one of the 100 most influential people in the world. His two books -- 2004's "Big Russ and Me" and 2006's "Wisdom of Our Fathers" -- were both New York Times bestsellers.
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"Tim Russert was a giant among midgets. The United States needs more Tim Russerts. He will be very dearly missed." -- Steve Ford
I was very saddened by the news of Tim Russert’s sudden passing away on Friday, June 13. Russert was an exceptional journalist who put his heart and soul into getting the truth from people in leadership roles in politics and carefully analyzing political events as they developed.
Most American viewers of ‘Meet the Press’, moderated by Russert over the past 17 years, see this program on their TVs on Sunday mornings. As an American abroad in Spain and with Spain being 6 hours ahead of Eastern Standard Time, I wait with anticipation until Sunday evening each week to see the netcast of this always insightful program. It has been my best cure for the end-of-the weekend blues that can come in gearing up for the work week ahead. ‘Meet the Press’ will go on, but it won’t be the same without Russert at the helm.
In addition to ‘Meet the Press’, I also looked to Tim Russert first for his analysis of ongoing developments in politics and, especially, of this historic election of 2008. Living abroad, I got great comfort from being connected by Russert to events and people back home who have been part of this election all through the primary season. As Barack Obama said in his observations on Friday upon hearing of Russert’s sudden death, “Tim is irreplaceable.” I hope that the role he played as a “standard-bearer” of high-quality, balanced and ethical journalism will be heeded by those who survive him in reporting political news. I notice that many of my fellow Obama supporters are also fans of Russert, given the more than 1000 responses here on this website to Barack Obama's statement on our common loss of Russert's presence.
We could always count on Russert to get to the bottom of the issues and provide well-researched analysis. Furthermore, his own family background, coming from a blue-collar background of modest means is a great example of American Dream come true. The way Russert lived serves as an inspiration to do our best and put the same kind of enthusiastic energy into our own pursuits as he did into his. Above all, in everything he did and the down-to-earth way he presented himself, Russert's viewers always saw what a fine and decent human being on and off camera he was.
As Obama shifts gear from the primaries to the general election campaign, I am grateful for having had Russert’s reporting on the events in this election which I could see his genuine enthusiasm for in ‘Meet the Press’ and the debates he moderated, and the day-to-day political analysis he gave. Tim Russert will be sorely missed and never forgotten. My deepest condolences go out to his family, friends and colleagues.
