I have to admit that when I first learned of Tim Russert’s sudden passing, the thought went through my head that Mother Nature had taken her revenge : one NBC/MSNBC male chauvinist down, two to go.
My second reaction was bewilderment with the media’s preoccupation with Russert’s ethnic and religious background: he was Irish Catholic and thus, part of the wealthiest, largest and most powerful ethnic group in the United States. Okay, so what? Is that supposed to tell us something we didn’t know about Tim Russert, or is it just another example of the media’s recent obsession with religion: Obama’s Trinity United Church of Christ, Mitt Romney’s Mormon faith.
Before he jumped on the Olbermann/Matthews misogyny bandwagon, Tim Russert was someone I looked forward to seeing on Sunday mornings. Up until his red-faced reaction to Hillary Clinton (watching his last interview with Senator Clinton on Meet the Press, I honestly thought he was going to stroke), his “gotchas” seemed reasonably unbiased, and his good-humored, intelligent affliction of the comfortable was both entertaining and instructive.
His ungracious interview with Clinton and the embarrassingly mucked-up moderation of the Democratic candidate debate should have warned all of us, though, that something was seriously wrong with Tim Russert.
As it turns out, not only did he suffer from cardiovascular disease, but according to some reports, he was diabetic, an illness which is notorious for causing personality changes as well as potentially serious physical disability.
Thus, it makes me angry that the treatment Tim Russert received, the conventional “solutions” to his very common illnesses, was so ineffective, perhaps hastening his death and certainly impacting his quality of life. As a result, the public, and more importantly, his family and friends, have been deprived of his presence.
I hope the media gets that particular message.