http://wsws.org/articles/2008/jun2008/russ-j16.shtml
By David North and David Walsh
16 June 2008
Tim Russert, longtime moderator of NBCs Meet the Press and the
television networks Washington Bureau Chief, died June 13 of a heart
attack in Washington at the age of 58. Russert also hosted a CNBC/MSNBC
weekend interview program and was a frequent correspondent and guest on
NBCs The Today Show and Hardball.
Russert was comparatively young, and he leaves behind a wife and grown son.
It is appropriate to extend sympathy to his friends and family. However,
inasmuch as the death of Russert is being treated by the political
establishment and the media as a major national political event, one must
treat it on those terms.
Indeed, tributes to the NBC newsman have filled the airwaves since his
death on Friday. President Bush as well as Democratic presidential
candidate Barack Obama and his Republican counterpart John McCain have all
gone before the TV cameras to mourn his passing. The coverage of his death
and the tributes themselves have been vastly out of proportion to the real
significance and accomplishments, such as they were, of the deceased.
The treatment of Russerts demise, in its own peculiar fashion, speaks more
eloquently about the state of American journalism and the milieu of which
he was a part than it does about Russert. No doubt there is shock over the
abruptness and unexpectedness of his death, for it is a troubling reminder
to the social elite that success, celebrity and immense amounts of money do
not bestow immortality, or even, necessarily, a long life.
In the end, after all, Russert was a celebrity, little more than that. Was
he an important or insightful journalist? Or a serious political thinker?
There is no evidence to support such claims. In spite of his lengthy tenure
as anchor of a major news program (he was the longest-serving moderator of
Meet the Press), it is not possible to link Russerts name to a
significant journalistic work or even an instance of acute political
analysis. On the contrary. He was a typical representative of what passes
for journalism in the United States corporate-controlled media: conformist
and philistine in his views, a purveyor of received wisdom who had no
doubts whatever about the values and legitimacy of the political
establishment.
One has only to consider certain of the events that occurred on his
watch: the Clinton impeachment, the stolen 2000 election, September 11,
the Iraq war and its aftermath. None of these events evoked from Russert a
critical examination of the claims of the state and its representatives.
In each case, Russerts essential role was to bolster the establishment and
lull the population to sleep. His role in the Clinton-Monica Lewinsky
scandal, an episode that did a great deal for his career, was particularly
filthy. In the first days of the crisis, Russert breathlessly asserted that
if the allegations about Clintons sexual impropriety were true, the
president would have to resign. Whether it will come to that, Russert
continued, I dont know, and I dont think its right or fair to be in the
speculation game. But I do not underestimate anything happening at this
point. The next 48 to 72 hours are critical. The population largely
rejected the media campaign.
As the WSWS wrote in 2000, in a survey of television personnel: Russert
was one of those who claimed to be taking the moral high ground,
castigating Clintons behavior, while spreading the salacious gossip put
out by the right wing. (Typical Russert sound-bite: There are lots of
suggestions coming out of people close to Ken Starr that perhaps the Secret
Service facilitated [i.e., pimped] for President Clinton. Remember that
code word?it was used by state troopers in Little Rock.... Was the Secret
Service?was a Secret Service agent?an accomplice in trying to cover up a
relationship with Monica Lewinsky? The fact that this story, and dozens
like it, attributed to unnamed sources, proved to be false, never stopped
Russert and his media cohorts.)
It is pathetic to hear eulogists praise, as a moment of unsurpassed
inspiration and an indication of his uncanny ability to summarize
complicated events in a popular manner, Russerts holding up of a white
board with the word Florida written three times on election night 2000.
This on the very night when FOX News was rigging the election outcome.
The notion that Russert asked the tough questions of those he
interviewed, advanced by a host of former colleagues on a tribute broadcast
this Sunday in place of Meet the Press, is absurd.
During the run-up to the war, Russert, along with the rest of the media,
provided a platform for Vice President Dick Cheney and others to present
their lying claims about Iraqs weapons of mass destruction without
seriously calling any of them into question.
On March 16, 2003, only days before the US-led invasion of Iraq, Russert
virtually handed his program over to Cheney, providing the latter with a
propaganda opportunity in front of a large national audience, much of it
skeptical about the administrations claims. Russerts particular role here
was to politely raise certain doubts and allow Cheney to allay them.
For example, Russert asked Cheney: What do you think is the most important
rationale for going to war with Iraq? The vice president replied, Well, I
think Ive just given it, Tim, in terms of the combination of his
development and use of chemical weapons, his development of biological
weapons, his pursuit of nuclear weapons. Russert responded: And even
though the International Atomic Energy Agency said he does not have a
nuclear program, we disagree?
Cheney: I disagree, yes. And youll find the CIA, for example, and other
key parts of our intelligence community disagree. ... And I think if you
look at the track record of the International Atomic Energy Agency and this
kind of issue, especially where Iraqs concerned, they have consistently
underestimated or missed what it was Saddam Hussein was doing. I dont have
any reason to believe theyre any more valid this time than theyve been in
the past. That matter being settled, Russert was on to the next question.
In Bill Moyers documentary, Buying the War, Russert claims that he didnt
raise sufficient doubts about what Cheney and others were telling him
because critics and skeptics werent contacting him. He tells Moyers: To
this day, I wish my phone had rung, or I had access to them.
Millions were protesting in the streets, United Nations inspectors, the
International Atomic Energy Agency, various foreign governments, not to
mention the World Socialist Web Site and other left-wing publications, were
refuting the Bush governments claims, but none of this was accessible to
Russert. In this, hes probably being honest. Attuned to what the powerful
thought and considering left-wing opinion to be illegitimate, Russert only
had ears for Cheney and his fellow conspirators.
In any event, Russert learned nothing from the Iraq war. His program
continued to provide a platform for the powerful and the cruel. In July
2006, in the immediate aftermath of the Israeli massacre in the southern
village of Qana, in which dozens of women and children perished, he played
host on Meet the Press to Israels ambassador to the United Nations, Dan
Gillerman, who proceeded in a predictably cold-blooded fashion to blame the
atrocity on Hezbollah.
It is revealing, in its own way, that Russerts celebrity credentials were
burnished with a bestseller about his father, Big Russ. It is worth
recalling that William Shirer?the old CBS hand who worked with Edward R.
Murrow in the 1930s and 1940s?established his reputation with Berlin Diary,
his account of Germany in the first years of the Nazi regime. He later went
on to write (after he had been witch-hunted out of the broadcast media) The
Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. Other reporters from that era, such as
Eric Sevareid, left behind memoirs that contained interesting social
commentary.
Russerts Big Russ, on the other hand, was nothing but a saccharine account
of an America were traditional values were honored, where men were men,
etc. In other words, a fictionalized America, conceived in the mind of a
conformist. The book is part of a marketable genre, which includes Tom
Brokaws The Greatest Generation, a self-deluding slap-on-the-back account
of life in post-war America. It was fitting, in its own way, that Brokaw
broke the news of Russerts death.
Russert was born in Buffalo, New York in 1950, at the height of the Cold
War and the anti-communist hysteria in the US, and grew up in an Irish
Catholic, working-class family. In his various comments and writings there
was not a hint of protest or rebellion against the upbringing. Russert had
nothing but praise for the Jesuits and the nuns. He intended to become a
lawyer or teacher in Buffalo, and had not political and media history
intervened, Russert would most likely have become one more figure in and
around the corrupt Democratic Party machinery in Erie County.
According to Maria Shriver, former colleague of Russert at NBC and
presently wife of the governor of California, Russert had faith in God,
faith in country, faith in family. There is no particular reason to doubt
it.
If one wants to get some picture of life in the Buffalo area in the early
1950s, it is worth turning to Joyce Carol Oates You Must Remember This. In
one of the key early scenes, the father of the lead character, the owner of
a furniture store, is hauled in by police on charges of suspected
subversion and promulgating of Communist propaganda, and interrogated
for hours, for pointing out in an argument with a customer that the USSR
and China constituted a significantly larger land mass, in toto, than did
the United States.
There were however, others from similar backgrounds, particularly from
Russerts generation, who developed quite differently. Their formative
experiences were the Vietnam War, the urban rebellions of the 1960s and the
Watergate crisis, and they came to reject the hypocrisy, social
conservatism and anti-communism of the church and state. There was never
any indication in Russerts public persona that he drew any critical
conclusions from these experiences.
In 1976, after graduating from university and law school, Russert worked on
the senatorial campaign of Democrat Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who made his
name by attacking the poor and blaming them for their own poverty, and
served as Moynihans chief of staff for five years. Russert then worked for
Democratic Gov. Mario Cuomo, before leaving politics and going to work for
NBC in 1984. One of his initial accomplishments was arranging for Pope Paul
IIs first interview on American television.
Russert became a household name during the period of the severe decline of
the American media, when ignorance, superficiality and cynicism became the
hallmarks of all that passed for news and analysis. It is worth noting that
in its original format Meet the Press had a single guest and a panel of
questioners. It went through various permutations, until Under Russert,
as one commentator notes, the show was expanded to one hour, and became
less of a televised press conference and more focused on Russert, with
longer interviews and Russert hosting panels of experts.
He became immensely wealthy in the process, like many of his media
colleagues. Russerts 6,220-square-foot vacation home on Nantucket Island,
for instance, was valued at $7.2 million in 2008. When reminded of his
humble beginnings and eventual success, Russert would apparently exclaim,
What a great country! No?what bad times!
The media, especially NBC, MSNBC and CNBC, has devoted hours to coverage of
Russerts death. Why? What is being mourned? Human beings, even famous
ones, die every day. There are individuals who have made significant
contributions in the arts, sciences and even journalism whose deaths go
largely unnoticed.
In the case of Russert, it would not be possible for his eulogists to
produce a single one of his broadcasts that would evoke a significant
emotional, let alone intellectual response?where one would watch and
appreciate his insight. There is no moment remotely comparable to
Murrows denunciation of Sen. Joseph McCarthy or Walter Cronkites
criticism of the Vietnam War on CBS. There is not even a narration of an
honest television documentary into some troubling aspect of the American
social reality. There is next to nothing.
*************************************************************************
THE HIDDEN HISTORY OF 9-11, P.Zarembka,ed., Seven Stories Press, Jun.2008
$14 pre-sale at www.amazon.com/gp/product/158322825X/ref=cm_cr_asin_lnk
********************** http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/PZarembka
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