This is a fantastic article about Tim Russert, Barack Obama and how we idolize and deify our political courtiers. Because how else can a Tim Russert make $5 million as a (sic) journalist, unless he caters directly to money and power? Of course, the last half about Obama is so very true. It will be funny to see the Obamaphiles in 2012, chanting "Woe is me" instead of "Yes, we can". http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20080623_the_hedonists_of_power/ Washington has become Versailles. We are ruled, entertained and informed by courtiers. The popular media are courtiers. The Democrats, like the Republicans, are courtiers. Our pundits and experts are courtiers. We are captivated by the hollow stagecraft of political theater as we are ruthlessly stripped of power. It is smoke and mirrors, tricks and con games. We are being had. The past week was a good one if you were a courtier. We were instructed by the high priests on television over the past few days to mourn a Sunday morning talk show host, who made $5 million a year and who gave a platform to the powerful and the famous so they could spin, equivocate and lie to the nation. We were repeatedly told by these television courtiers, people like Tom Brokaw and Wolf Blitzer, that this talk show host was one of our nation’s greatest journalists, as if sitting in a studio, putting on makeup and chatting with Dick Cheney or George W. Bush have much to do with journalism. No journalist makes $5 million a year. No journalist has a comfortable, cozy relationship with the powerful. No journalist believes that acting as a conduit, or a stenographer, for the powerful is a primary part of his or her calling. Those in power fear and dislike real journalists. Ask Seymour Hersh and Amy Goodman how often Bush or Cheney has invited them to dinner at the White House or offered them an interview. All governments lie, as I.F. Stone pointed out, and it is the job of the journalist to do the hard, tedious reporting to shine a light on these lies. It is the job of courtiers, those on television playing the role of journalists, to feed off the scraps tossed to them by the powerful and never question the system. In the slang of the profession, these television courtiers are “throats.†These courtiers, including the late Tim Russert, never gave a voice to credible critics in the buildup to the war against Iraq. They were too busy playing their roles as red-blooded American patriots. They never fought back in their public forums against the steady erosion of our civil liberties and the trashing of our Constitution. These courtiers blindly accept the administration’s current propaganda to justify an attack on Iran. They parrot this propaganda. They dare not defy the corporate state. The corporations that employ them make them famous and rich. It is their Faustian pact. No class of courtiers, from the eunuchs behind Manchus in the 19th century to the Baghdad caliphs of the Abbasid caliphate, has ever transformed itself into a responsible elite. Courtiers are hedonists of power. Our Versailles was busy this past week. The Democrats passed the FISA bill, which provides immunity for the telecoms that cooperated with the National Security Agency’s illegal surveillance over the past six years. This bill, which when signed means we will never know the extent of the Bush White House’s violation of our civil liberties, is expected to be adopted by the Senate. Barack Obama has promised to sign it in the name of national security. The bill gives the U.S. government a license to eavesdrop on our phone calls and e-mails. It demolishes our right to privacy. It endangers the work of journalists, human rights workers, crusading lawyers and whistle-blowers who attempt to expose abuses the government seeks to hide. These private communications can be stored indefinitely and disseminated, not just to the U.S. government but to other governments as well. The bill, once signed into law, will make it possible for those in power to identify and silence anyone who dares to make public information that defies the official narrative. Being a courtier, and Obama is one of the best, requires agility and eloquence. The most talented of them can be lauded as persuasive actors. They entertain us. They make us feel good. They convince us they are our friends. We would like to have dinner with them. They are the smiley faces of a corporate state that has hijacked the government and is raping the nation. When the corporations make their iron demands, these courtiers drop to their knees, whether to placate the telecommunications companies that fund their campaigns and want to be protected from lawsuits, or to permit oil and gas companies to rake in obscene profits and keep in place the vast subsidies of corporate welfare doled out by the state. We cannot differentiate between illusion and reality. We trust courtiers wearing face powder who deceive us in the name of journalism. We trust courtiers in our political parties who promise to fight for our interests and then pass bill after bill to further corporate fraud and abuse. We confuse how we feel about courtiers like Obama and Russert with real information, facts and knowledge. We chant in unison with Obama that we want change, we yell “yes we can,†and then stand dumbly by as he coldly votes away our civil liberties. The Democratic Party, including Obama, continues to fund the war. It refuses to impeach Bush and Cheney. It allows the government to spy on us without warrants or cause. And then it tells us it is our salvation. This is a form of collective domestic abuse. And, as so often happens in the weird pathology of victim and victimizer, we keep coming back for more. Chris Hedges, who was a Pulitzer Prize-winning foreign correspondent for The New York Times, says he will vote for Ralph Nader for president.
I was stunned by the sourness, jealousy, and political tint painted on an individual who just passed away. Even more striking was how it was placed on an individual who received enormous positive response. That came not only from the people who knew him, but from people who watched Tim Russert. He was an ever positive person who was a pleasure to view. He added absolutely attractive human qualities in his professional efforts by regularly commenting on his beloved father, a sanitation man, his family, and his beloved Buffalo Bills. He exuded a combination of personal optimism and everyman common traits in his reporting and analysis. On a professional level he exuded a sense of effort, research, knowledge, and very even handed approach in trying to get the people he interviewed to respond to challenging questions. Commentators have repeatedly asserted his fairness in this report. It was astounding that highly partisan and political Washington turned out in mass to honor and memorialize him in his passing. It was more astounding to see the article writer and the OP author attack him for his salary. NBC is a part of the entertainment world. Entertainers make enormous salaries. NBC was incredibly profitable with regard to Meet the Press. Why shouldn't he have made an enormous salary. The company made many many millions annually from this individual show. Tim Russert was its star and main attraction. He appears to have been paid appropriately. This particular blog piece I saw described a person's one time meeting with Tim Russert. It describes reactions that most humans with typical human reactions expressed after Tim Russert's passing.....
This is the part where you are wrapped up in him being a courtier. This is the part where you are being irrational. Was he an entertainer, or a journalist? Are we applauding an actor, or an investigator? It's been well documented that the White House liked to use his show to softball positions and get them out into the public sphere for discussion. I think you're right (at one point in your post). He was an entertainer and not a journalist. His show was comedy, fiction and propaganda. And that is why he made more by many factors, than journalists like Bill Moyers, Amy Goodman etc. Because he was paid well to sell a product. No one is doubting that Russert was a good family man and possibly a very warm person. But he still was a courtier as per the OP. And the issue with the courtiers are that it is a commentary on us, on how a legit entertainer and American icon like George Carlin dies to a small amount of fanfare, and yet this so-called political commentator passes, and it's like the King has departed. We're obsessed with our Obamas and our Russerts. Our Bushes and our Clintons. And it's our undoing.
I'm not surprised, Earl; after all, the OP also chose to take Rebecca's thoughtful memorial day thread to pursue a similar tack. To those of us whose relatives were vets, and who died, whether in war or as a result of its effects (I have 4 - my maternal great grandad, my father; my eldest brother, and a good friend, another Vietnam vet, like my brother). I respected Russert, and enjoyed his show. Actually, with very few exceptions, I take a note from John Dunne: "any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind." Peace to his ashes and his family.