The Cable Gamer has resisted saying anything about the death of Tim Russert over these past nine days. It was a shame, for sure, to see him--or anyone--cut down at the age of 58, which (gulp) doesn't seem that old anymore. As John Donne reminded us, "Send not to know for whom the bell tolls, for it tolls for thee."
But I resisted commenting in this blogspace, because I didn't want to fall into the Scylla and Charybdis of a) seeming dismissive, or b) seeming overly publicly traumatized by his demise.
It would appear as though most commentators fell deep into b), defined as overmuch public rending of garments. NBC and its various vassal networks, including MSNBC, treated Russert's death as if a Pope or a head of state had been lost. And Sally Quinn, who is famous and prominent for no good reason that I know of, went even further over the top, all the way into the deep end, declaring, "I feel almost like we did when somebody—when Jack Kennedy or even Katharine Graham died."
But on the always must-watch "Fox News Watch" last night, Jim Pinkerton put his finger on something that The Cable Gamer has been thinking, too.
And that is, paraphrasing here: Anytime that some public event is this excessive, this far out of the norm, this overwrought, well, then it has to be a clue to some larger puzzle, the key to a larger lock. What caused the excess? The bubble of emotion? The frenzy of exaltation for a man who was cool, but no giant? I mean, quick--what will Russert be remembered for, other than being a prominent TV journalist in his time? Did he leave behind a school of thought? A new way of looking at the world, like, say, Edward R. Murrow, or even Hunter S. Thompson?
Pinkerton was telling us, if we can figure out the riddle, open up the gateway to meaning, then some pattern will become apparent, some vast storeroom of meaning revealed. Because, of course, any funeral is not so much for the living, as for the dead. What we, the living, did over the last week speaks volumes about us, not about Russert.
As Jim said, the commemoration of Russert's life was ritualistic, a kind of secular liturgy. OK, that's clear enough. But for whom did this bell toll? And Jim's answer was a zinger: It was a wake for the Mainstream Media itself. And so the hours and hours of histrionics were a kind of narcissism. Heck, they weren't a kind of narcissism--they were narcissism, plain and whole.
That is, there probably won't ever again be a figure in the broadcast media as powerful as Russert. And the media know it. MSM RIP? That's worth a good sobby wet wake, isn't it? I mean, stop all the clocks!
Interestingly, Rolling Stone's Eric Bates, a guest panelist on "FNW"--and a good one, in TCG's view--agreed with Pinkerton. Bates said that Russert was more powerful than say, the late Peter Jennings, whose passing, three years ago, was much less noted than Russert's. Bates' point was that Russert was an agenda setter for politics, more than any of the nightly broadcast news anchors, even though, of course, the anchors get a bigger audience. But in terms of clout, it's quality, not quantity, and Russert got the cream of the political crop. If it's Sunday, it's "Meet the Press." I mean, where else could you possibly be. Yup, Russert was the Big Lebowsky.
But now Tim is gone, after two decades at the top, a span of time that began in the peak of Roone Arledge-style super-duper news production and is now fallen to the downsized depths of layoffs and TiVo. Indeed, now there is no top to the media, because the great cathedral of the media has come crashing down, crumbled into bare ruined choirs.
Which was Pinkerton's point: Given the fractionalization of the media, nobody in broadcast news will ever wield the kind of muscle that Russert wielded. And that's a sad thing for newsies to realize. Not only is Tim gone, but there won't be another Tim. So they'll have to have a good cry before they pick themselves up to trudge on into this stiller world.
As A.E.Housman, most definitely not a Cable Gamer, put it a century ago, something that's done is done: "Duty, friendship, bravery o'er/Sleep away, lad; wake no more."
It's over guys. It was a great run, but all things must pass.
