Ethics

Damning Russert With Faint Praise

By Ed Brayton

Tom Brokaw has an article in the New York Times that praises the late Tim Russert while making a really unfortunate comparison:

Tim Russert was in the next generation of broadcast journalists, and his role model was none of the above. As he often told me, Tim was a John Madden man. Madden, the large, rumpled former coach of the Oakland Raiders who became the N.F.L.'s premier television analyst, is the guy at the end of the bar whom the patrons turn to when they need some working-class wisdom.

Tim filled the same role on "Meet the Press." Like Madden, he was determined -- no, he was fiercely committed -- not to let his celebrity and fat paycheck alter his South Buffalo DNA. I think he believed even a spritz of hairspray would deaden his brain cells (and who's to say he was wrong?).

Full post as published by Dispatches from the Culture Wars on January 01, 2009 (boomark / email).