On Tim Russert

A few months ago my friend, Steve, asked me if I had seen “Meet The Press” the day before. I responded that I limited myself to This Week. The reason being that I really didn’t have time to watch all three of the major network’s Sunday morning shows and since I didn’t care much for Tim Russert’s style, he didn’t make the cut.

Within milliseconds of the end of that exchange I thought about what I had said. Did I really not like Tim Russert’s style?

Al Franken, whose last three books I have read, was very critical of Russert. I can’t even remember exactly why beyond the fact that he didn’t care for what he considered his mock bewildered style of delivering follow-up questions. I also recall that Franken was not happy with the way Russert structured his questions to Bush administration officials during the time leading up to and just after the Iraq invasion.

The truth is I consider myself to always be about ten years behind where I should be in my maturity. An indication of this would be my willingness to agree with Al Franken simply because he was the first to really open my eyes to the facts behind the corruption in the Bush administration. Simply put since I believed he was right about one thing, without thinking about it, he must be right about everything.

More truth be told, Franken also has an interest in being funny so he probably wasn’t near as perturbed with Tim Russert as his satire seemed.

Within milliseconds of the question I asked myself, I answered myself, ” I have absolutely no problem with Tim Russert.”

I began recording Meet The Press again. Schedule be damned.

It is an interesting confluence of events that I was watching a golf tournament with my father while my two-year –old son wandered about when Tom Brokaw broke in with a special report to say that Russert had died suddenly.

Golf is not something I generally enjoy watching. In fact, I seldom watch it unless my dad is present. During those times I watch it without him, I’m thinking about him while I’m watching. I only enjoy golf as a connection to my father. My guess is just as many people ,maybe more, know about Tim Russert because of his books about and his devotion to his father and son as know about his influence on political news reporting.

It was a fitting way to learn the news.

It was also far too soon.

Later that night, after the day’s personal events, I turned on the T.V. back in my hotel room to find that CNN and MSNBC were doing “wall to wall coverage” on the death of Russert. NBC did a one-hour special during the final primetime hour on his life hosted by Tom Brokaw. Even Fox News never wandered too far from the story.

I began thinking, “This is too much.” But then I decided to give all these reporters slack when I realized that almost all of them on all these different stations had either, at one time, been hired by Tim Russert or had worked with him.

These were human beings in shock over the loss of a truly beloved coworker who happened to be reporters. It was an indulgence…yes, but what other way could they be expected to act out their grief?

As opposed to overreaction to other stories, this seemed somehow appropriate.

As for me, I cannot claim to have been intelligent enough to realize what kind of power and influence Tim Russert had. Everything I realized about him I have only realized in retrospect.
I realized that his face was one of the ones that appeared in my mind whenever I heard the word “mensch”.

I realized that as I would watch the primary coverage, over the last five months, that I would have to record due to performances, auditions or rehearsals, I would sometimes have to fast forward to ensure that I would get at least a little sleep.

I would always stop to listen when Tim came on the screen.

Along with that, it is a morbid admission on my part that since 9/11, I almost always keep the T.V. on a 24 hour news network with the sound down while I’m home. During those times that the network happens to be MSNBC, if Tim Russert came on—and I believe this is the greatest compliment a simple television viewer can pay to him--, I would turn the sound up.

If you would have caught me doing it at the time and asked me why I was suddenly interested, I wouldn’t have said, “because he’s the NBC Washington Bureau chief, or that he was a vice-president of news or even because he was a powerful voice.” I wouldn’t have said it, because I didn’t really know any of that.

What I knew was that he was from Buffalo, NY. That he loved the Bills and the Sabres. That he loved his father and his son. And that he hosted Meet The Press. None of this alone but maybe all of it together plus something more-- but also intangible-- would have contributed to my answer.

I think all I would have said is,” I like listening to what he has to say.”

Goodbye, Tim Russert. Thank you for loving your family. Thank you for loving your hometown. Thank you for the subtle way you added to my understanding of politics.

…And Go, you Buffalo Bills!

J.A.L.

Let's Make a Deal

Tell you what, George. Let's increase to full production all those existing offshore platforms--that includes the ones that just sit out there dormant and only produce when the price of gas is high and then immediately shut down when the price starts to lower even a little bit.





If the supply of oil is still dangerously low and expensive according to independent investigative groups, and if they continue to produce at full capacity even after supplies rise and prices come down, then we'll talk about building more platforms.





More platforms, which by the way, probably won't have an effect on oil supplies for five to ten years.





On second thought, wouldn't it be better to invest in research in renewable energy sources during that time instead?





Oh, I forgot, if you did that a great number of your post-presidency income would dry up because the oil companies would be less inclined to put you on their boards and pay your huge lecture fees.

J.A.L.

AN OPEN LETTER TO TINA FEY

FOREWORD:

The following is something that I was going to post on February 27, 2008.

I decided to wait when I saw the news that morning and heard that the Clinton campaign was planning to throw the “kitchen sink” at Barack Obama in preparation for the Texas/Ohio/Rhode Island/Vermont primaries.

I was concerned that I might not still feel the same sentiments I express in this writing after the onslaught. I was right.

By the time we reached the day before the Indiana/North Carolina primaries and Barack Obama’s nomination still seemed in doubt, at least to me, I was fairly certain I was going to find it impossible to vote for Hillary Clinton in the general election. Even so, I had pledged to myself that I wouldn’t stay home on election day. I recognized that there was a strong probability that John McCain would say something in the ensuing five months in the interest of solidifying his base that would make the idea of his presidency far more odious than the idea of having to wonder if Hillary Clinton actually meant to keep a single promise she made during the next four years.

I could envision me standing at a voting booth in November absolutely at a loss. My guess is that the vacuum would have been filled with an exasperated vote for Clinton.

I could fill a whole new post with her transgressions over the last couple of months but instead I will only list the one that bothered me the most: Her insistence that the Michigan primary counted when there is actual tape of her stating that the primary did not count. I never quite understood why that tape was not played at least as much as the Bosnia clip. I have absolutely no doubt that the entire primary schedule would have played out exactly the same if, rather than these antics, she would have accepted a 50/50 split of the delegates in Michigan and implored the voters to be mad at the representatives of their state who chose to risk disenfranchising their constituents to prove what might have been a valid point. As valid as it might have been, they should have come up with a solution that would have not taken such a gamble. If she had done so—just this one thing among all the rest—she might have made her inclusion on the ticket far more palatable to all.

That being said, I hold no opinion either way as to whether she should be on the ticket. I am simply interested in the name at the top. I do however want to take issue with one argument: the one that says Obama will undermine his entire stance on “change” by including her.

One of the worst status quos in Washington D.C. is the inability to political enemies to work together. Although they are in the same party, at the moment, the strongest animosity in the Democratic Party is between Clinton and Obama supporters. Clinton’s inclusion on the ticket would be consistent with the message of change--as would her exclusion.

Well, enough of that.

Time to jump in the time machine and see what I was thinking in late February.

Enjoy.

AN OPEN LETTER TO TINA FEY

You are right.

There are many who are not voting for Hillary Clinton because of the reasons you listed on Weekend Update.

I’m not one of them. As I have written before I am voting for someone and not against anybody.

That being said it is pretty clear that what I do on a personal level is perceived differently on a statistical level. I knew pretty early on that, regardless of how I voted, if my vote went with the majority of my cultural subset my vote would be seen more as a vote against a wronged group rather than a vote for an individual.

I am a white American male, over 40 years of age. How ya doin’? Quite a conundrum me and my kind were put in. Oh, don’t get me wrong we deserve it. We’ve made several dick moves throughout our history. Sure, we’ve done some good things too, but let’s face it, we’ve made an art out of oppression.

In oppression in American History, when I think of Blacks, I think of slavery and Jim Crow, of course. With women, the images that spring to mind are the, too long, struggle for suffrage and events such as the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire. Yep, we were pretty much responsible for all of that.

By the way, lest you think I’m trivializing the oppression of women by comparing centuries of bondage to a decades-long movement and a really awful Friday afternoon, let me see if I can even the scales by taking it world wide:

The oppression of Blacks has gone on mainly over the last 500+ years and has been focused, for the most part, in the Western European Empires and the United States. The oppression of women has gone on, in one form or another, around the globe and started …oh…pretty much at the beginning of time.

My point is that maybe guys like me are paying a comparatively small price by being occasionally placed in damned if we do damned if we don’t situations.

My other point is that both groups have just about an equal claim to being way past due to have someone from their ranks hold the office of President of the United States.

I believe the Hillary and, by extension, woman bashing, started innocently enough and from yet another case of misperception.

For me it happened in early Fall when a couple of friends came to visit from Texas. One of them, a moderate Republican—yes they do exist and they are far from an endangered species—asked me who I thought the Democratic nominee was going to be. Since I had recently read Obama’s first book I said, “You know, I kind of like this guy but I don’t see any way that it won’t be Hillary.” He agreed saying that he felt like the Clinton machine was just too powerful. Please don’t think that this notion bothered him. He has always admitted that he enjoyed the money he made during the Bill Clinton presidency.

I’ve thought about that conversation a great deal since I saw Saturday Night Live last week. I’ve also remembered what I said to myself after the results from South Carolina came in. I still believed Hillary Clinton would be the nominee but I just wanted to live in the euphoria that my candidate was making a game of it. I remember thinking, “Just let me live the dream another day.”

In fact, it probably wasn’t until the Ted Kennedy endorsement and the reaction released by the head of the New York chapter of NOW that I started to become aware of something that many supporters of Hillary including yourself had been feeling for a while. That the rest of America was a bunch of woman haters. It must have been especially hard for you since you were essentially gagged by the writers’ strike.

I have to admit that even at this moment, I still feel like Hillary Clinton has the inside track to the nomination even though everyone around me assures me that this is not so. Because she still seems like such a leviathan to me, I assume there are others that feel that way and they will continue to do what they have done and attack.

The day of the South Carolina primary is pretty much the last time I’ve felt unabated joy about the triumph of my candidate. He still seemed like a long shot and back then many of us felt like it was Hillary who was doing the bashing. I admit that I was so annoyed with her that I considered voting for McCain in the general election. But I got over that.

Since then with every victory there has been an uneasy feeling in the pit of my stomache. That even though I feel excited someone else is feeling wronged and maybe disenfranchised. It’s sort of like Lao Tzu said, “Conduct your triumph as a funeral.” Someone out there cares just as much about Hillary winning as I do Barack.

Even though I’ve got a great deal to be happy about during this campaign there is a great deal I’m disappointed about.

I wish everyone was voting on sound, educated principles. I wish the opportunity presented to the Democratic Party could be fully realized--that the media and the electorate could be mature enough to let every state and territory in the union cast their vote before the nomination was decided. When I read the message boards on websites like MSNBC and see what awful thing Clinton and Obama supporters are saying to each other, I lose hope. It would be great if such a thing could happen without tearing the party apart and exhausting the fortunes and bodies of the participants.

I wish the candidates would not do such damage to each other that the notion of them serving together was not viewed as an act of hypocrisy. I remember nineteen debates ago in April. I looked at all the candidates on the stage and thought how great it would be if all these guys were part of the same administration. (Gravel could be ambassador to Bali.) I also remember thinking, they will tear each other apart so bad that it will never happen.

It is our fault, not theirs, that we only remember, if we remember anyone at all, the presidents. I want Hillary Clinton in my government I just prefer that Barack Obama was the president.

Please don’t hold that against me or belittle my candidate or all of us who support him. And please don’t feel that my vote is a vote against women. A friend of mine who may not vote for either pointed out to me that the fear that his mother has that Hillary Clinton may be the only woman in her lifetime that actually has a chance to be president may be completely unfounded. Things are changing very fast. There are women governors, senators and representatives from red states and blue states in much greater numbers than even eight years ago. There is a woman Speaker of the House, and two women, Democrat and Republican, have already been Secretary of State.

I am mindful that the tone of all I am writing today could come off as similar to the tone of the scene in “Saving Private Ryan” where the German soldier drove the knife into the chest of the American while calmly shushing him as he died. (An image that kept me awake for nights, by the way.) I don’t intend it to be so. I don’t believe this race to be over.

When I started imagining this posting I tried to think of a way to make it comedic and as wonderfully sarcastic as the stuff you write. I’m a huge fan of yours. I think you are the funniest person in America today, which is why I gave up on that plan. The posting I entitled “Huh?” and that fact that I quoted Lao Tzu should be strong indications that I made the right choice.

I’ll end with one more quote. One of my favorites:

“We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic cords of memory will swell when again touched as surely they will be by the better angels of our nature.”

--Abraham Lincoln

J.A.L.

LION

Senator Kennedy,

You're Boston Irish...

What else do you need to kick anything's ass?

Who is this again?

INTERVENTION

The day after George W. Bush’s final State of the Union Speech, I was speaking with a friend and asked her what she thought about it. She responded that she felt sorry for him. I almost spat blood but I contained myself and simply asked, “Why?”

The response was, “I just feel like he screwed things up so badly.” I could agree with that but it seemed that implicit in the two statements was the sense that Bush had intended to do great good but had been either inept or simply unlucky.

I chose not to argue this point even though my opinion was that he either knew exactly what he was doing or was swayed by others who did. Either way, I felt no pity--no sense of “There but for the grace …” which I often feel for people who have come to difficult moments. I also didn’t argue because this friend, a Republican, had shown similar compassion for Democrats and Republicans for the entire time I have known her. Every part of me wanted to argue that this was a different situation and this man wasn’t worthy of anybody’s pity. But I also didn’t feel that I had adequate evidence to convince her on that day nor did I want to disturb the new era of good feeling I was experiencing with my Republican friends during this time. The election season had started and it seemed that all around me were entering into a period of honest discussion about the difficulties facing our country. And implicit in these discussions was the sense that both sides cared about this nation.

The evidence I needed to rebuke my friend presented itself to me this morning just after I woke up. The first voice I heard on the television was of George W. Bush. The first image I saw was of that same creature standing before the Israeli Knesset making a speech in celebration of the sixtieth anniversary of that country. The words I should have heard should have been a celebration of a people who faced complete extermination only to form a strong country that has survived into its seventh decade. Instead, I heard a base, cynical, Rovian political speech, complete with a strawman tactic, asserting that anyone who would look to diplomacy in dealing with Iran or other enemies of Israel was equivalent to an appeaser of Nazis. Implicit in this speech was an attack on Barack Obama. It didn’t matter that Bush’s own Secretary of Defense was quoted in this morning’s Washington Post as saying that we need to negotiate with the Iranians. It doesn’t matter that his Secretary of State has said the same thing over the past few weeks. It doesn’t matter that his administration negotiated with the leader of Libya even though he has been an avowed enemy to Israel and has been involved in many terrorist acts including the blowing up of an airplane over Lockerbie, Scotland with American college students aboard. It doesn’t matter that his administration is in constant contact with the government of North Korea a government he listed along with Iran and Saddam Hussein’s Iraq as the “Axis of evil.” It doesn’t matter that this hypocrite committed treason today for the purpose of scoring a few political points and protecting his despicable legacy. It doesn’t matter because in George W. Bush’s tree lizard-sized mind he is living some very remedial version of the Arthurian legend where he and his country are one. How can he commit treason against himself?

This morning I knew that any good feeling I have extended toward any Republican does not reach out to George W. Bush. It is also being slowly drawn back from anybody who would continue to support him after this day and that includes John McCain and Joe Lieberman.

In retrospect all that we ever needed to know about Bush can be seen in a short clip from the 2000 campaign. The moment occurs during a commercial break on the Letterman show. Bush is looking at his glasses, he notices they are smudged. A segment producer is leaning over Letterman’s desk completely unaware of the candidate to her left. He glances, indifferently, and reaches out to use what appears to be either the woman’s shirt or scarf as his glass cleaner. He never asks or even acknowledges her. When I watched the clip again about an hour ago, I was reminded of a scene from Showtime’s “The Tudors” where a commoner goes down on his hands and knees and Henry VIII nonchalantly steps on his back to climb upon his horse.

Certainly this clip was not enough to vote against him at the time. Nor does it even constitute a slap to the head now as if we should have known. But as the bodies continue to pile up and the wounded come home, as the lies and denials continue to spew forth, as the phones continue to be tapped and the detainees continue to be tortured, as the generals continue to be fired and the bill for the war escalates, as we remember how he squandered a huge surplus just after he took office as a way to score political points for the congressional elections—a surplus which could have been used on our infrastructure or simply saved for an emergency such as the 9/11 attacks which he was warned about on 8/6, as he danced at his daughter’s wedding never thinking about how “romantic” it would be to send them to a honeymoon in Afghanistan, it kind of makes me wish that we all could have been otherworldly perceptive about that first impression.

Years ago, I asked that same friend I mentioned above, why are you Republican? The response was that “Democrats believe that the government solves all our problems. Republicans believe that government complicates things and is the last resort.” This sounded reasonable to me although it didn’t sway me from being a Democrat. I had a feeling I was with the right party for me even if I couldn’t voice it at the time. I knew it had something to do with social issues but I also knew that my response would be far more convoluted and thus less succinct and decisive.
The era of Bush the Dictator has finally given me my succinct answer: Democrats believe that the government is the people. Republicans believe in pure power.

The truth is the Bush administration believes in this. But since they have hijacked the Republican Party, they have made it over in their image and they insist that all including John McCain abide by their design.

The more I think about it today, I am so very glad the Democratic primary has gone on so long. In it’s best moments it has shown that smart people can be very different and disagree but still come together for a good beyond any individual. At its worst…well …it has resembled George W. Bush.

I pray we choose the better and I believe we will. Today, when I decided to write this, I still had some other things to do. But when I turned on the computer I read what Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, John Kerry, Rahm Emanuel, Harry Reid, and Joe Biden said. All of them had very different approaches unique to who they are but implicit in those statements was the realization that Bush and his administration are nothing but a group of thugs and bullies. And the only way to deal with such monsters is to punch them in their mouths every time they open them. Not to appease them.

Meanwhile, I read McCain and Lieberman’s responses. They read like the memos handed out daily at Fox News. Meanwhile, Bush, like the punk he has always been went running behind his aides and press secretary who said the equivalent of, “Oh, he didn’t mean Obama. Where did you get that idea?”

Oh, yes he did. And we will not put up with these scare tactics any more.

These past eight years have been a constant sometimes losing battle to contain my contempt…disgust…revulsion…heavens, give me the word!…against this nothing who has occupied our White House for the past eight years and, but for the luck of the stupidest impeachment of all time preceding his reign, and the much challenged good will of the American people, should be dragged out of the presidential mansion on January 20, 2009 in chains to stand trial for crimes, foreign and domestic, against humanity. I will try to contain it no more, forever.

As this election season has dragged on, I have often contemplated re-registering as an independent. But as I read the responses by my fellow Democrats both elected and private I find that, at least today, I am very proud to be a member of this imperfect, quarreling group of misfits who love their country.

I wonder how my Republican friends feel.

J.A.L.

"I KNOW THEE NOT, OLD MAN..."