The tributes just keep coming for Tim Russert. This from President G.W. Bush: "[Tim] was an institution in both news and politics for more than two decades. He was always well-informed and thorough in his interviews." Link. Numerous colleagues and politicians lauded Tim as a tough but fair interviewer. Our boy Keith Olbermann has become completely unhinged in his praise of Russert. On the day of his death, Olbermann said on his MSNBC show that we shouldn't have the 2008 election without Tim Russert. Please send the guys in the white jackets for Keith. Perhaps a few rounds of electroshock therapy may restore his sanity. I am sickened by even the suggestion that a single Sunday talk show host is more important than a US presidential election.
Here is my view of Tim Russert: he was a loyal boy scout, an altar boy publicly uncritical of the powers that be. He lacked a cynicism for government that anyone so long in Washington surely should have developed. He was promoted to a position where this character weakness caused great damage to our nation. I am referring to September 8, 2002. This is the date the White House launched its blitzkreig to sell America on its preordained invasion of Iraq. The rallying cry: Saddam has WMDs! Journalistic whores at the New York Times (you know their names) prostituted White House dribble about Saddam having restarted his nuclear weapons program as fact. The same day, VP Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice and Donald Rumsfeld hit the public airwaves to reverberate the false NYT story they themselves had planted. Darth Cheney was point man in the propoganda campaign. Which Sunday talk show did he choose to appear on? Tim Russert's Meet the Press. Here is Bill Moyers interviewing Russert about this event.
Tim Russert, along with the entire Washington press corp, fell down on the job. They were MIA, dereliction of duty at time of war. It resulted in a destructive and harmful war that has greatly damaged the entire world. Tim Russert was the interviewer targeted for big neocon interviews to sell the war over and over again in 2002. Tim dutifully played host to the public deception. To my knowledge, it was not until 2006 (four years too late) that Mr. Russert pulled his head out and started critically questionning the administration.
In his own defense, Russert pointed the finger two places: (a) the New York Times and (b) the Democrats. I'll not defend either. Both are surely even more culpable than Russert in this disaster. But since when is it not the duty of the Washington Press Corp, the so-called 4th estate, to question information fed to them by our government? Tim was heard to say, I wish dissenters from the administration's view had called me. Say what? You see as your job to sit on your ass and wait for the news to come to you? How hard did you look for the opposing viewpont Tim???
But other journalists, a small minority, not only saw the patent deception at work but actively tried to question the administration lies. Most notable were CBS foreign correspondent Bob Simon and the Knight Ridder Washington news bureau. Again, from Bill Moyers of PBS.
Tim Russert played off his failure to present opposition information on the case for war in Iraq or to ask the tough questions as if he never had an inkling that he was being used by the administration as part of a sophisticated propaganda campaign to sell the war to the American public. Why did the neocons favor use of Russert? Precisely because of the boy scout image. The alter boy couldn't see through the veil of incense burning at the government propoganda machine. Don't send boy scouts to do a man's job. Would Mike Wallace (CBS) or Seymour Hersh (New Yorker) shirk from critical analysis of stories the White House tried to plant with them? Never. These guys might be dicks on a personal level while Tim Russert was an avowed everyman liked by all but that is beside the point. The national news media holds a trust with the American public to critically analyze the news it presents to us. Tim Russert failed in this job reporting on the Iraq War, the biggest story of his career. We can't forget the wrong as those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
The tributes just keep coming for Tim Russert. This from President G.W. Bush: "[Tim] was an institution in both news and politics for more than two decades. He was always well-informed and thorough in his interviews." 
