Why The Fuss Over Tim Russert?

Okay- Tim Russert died. Big deal.

I don't understand what all the hoopla is about.

Like his Irish Liberal Democratic media colleague in the NBC/Universal world, Chris Matthews, Russert apprenticed to a well-known Irish pol- Pat Moynihan.

But Russert is no Pat Moynihan, just like Matthews is no Tip O'Neill.

Being part of the ultra-liberal NBC family of media brands, Russert never got much viewership from me. I think the most I ever saw of him was with Tom Brokaw on the election night coverage of November, 2004.

What I saw turned my stomach so badly that I never bothered to view Russert for more than a few seconds of accidentally running across his Sunday morning interview show.

Every time that Brokaw, the prototypical NBC liberally-biased news anchor, would solemnly intone some liberal opinion about Kerry's evolving loss to President Bush, as if it were fact, Russert's jowly face would nod vigorously up and down like some big, live bobble-head.

If he were smaller, he could have sat on Brokaw's lap and looked like Charlie McCarthy. As it was, he just aped whatever Brokaw said or did, grinning in that somewhat idiotic fashion he seemed to sport the few times I saw him on air.

Just because Russert grew up in a non-white collar family in Buffalo, and wrote a book about his father, people seem to feel he has some special claim on how 'America' feels.

Well, judging by his politics, he never represented my feelings. And I was not from a particularly wealthy or elite class, either.

Instead, rather than being raised in the type of blue state liberal household that blamed others for what we didn't have, I came from a Midwestern home where education and opportunity were seen as there for the taking, to do with what you would and could. Lack of performance was and is seen as a failure of the individual, not the system.

Thus, Russert's tear-jerking rise from humble origins was nothing special from where I hail.

It's not like he was, say, David Brinkley or Chet Huntley- real NBC news titans. Russert seemed to me to be just another one of those modern day, pale, third-generation talking-head descendants of the once-great, first television newsmen of the 1950s and '60s.

Perhaps that's why I find the sentiments over his death so misplaced.