Could anyone be a Tim Russert?
I think so, but it wouldn’t be easy. Whoever tried it would have to forfeit possession of all personal time. All available time, 24/7, would be allocated to three relationships: work, family, and friends. Then, you would have to acquire several hundred associates and friends, call them all “pal,” and really mean it.
Such a commitment to people, I think, can arise from one of only two places. One, Russert felt the commitment instinctively, in his heart and soul. Or, it came from a conscious decision made in his mind. Either way, the active word is commitment. Anyone who has had to become a caregiver knows what that commitment feels like. Before making the commitment, we may feel resentment at being cast into a caregiver role, and our lives become conflicted by it. But as soon as we make the commitment, step over the line into acceptance of the role, the resentment disappears, and our lives become easier, and more filled with love.
I wasn't aware of Tim Russert's acceptance of that commitment until I watched the steady coverage of his death. I have not seen mourning of this intensity for a public figure since the assassination of John Kennedy.
My immediate shock and loss was of the journalist I had come to accept as the key figure in the coverage of the 2008 presidential election. Russert, in 2008, had become another kind of television news "anchor." Brian Williams, Katie Couric, and Charles Gibson held down the traditional anchor positions, entrusted with delivering balance and objectivity in their reports. Chris Matthews, Keith Olbermann, Sean Hannity and Bill O'Reilly were entertainers with news as their act. Russert was a bridge between the two.
It was troubling to see hard-news journalists like Tom Brokaw, Andrea Mitchell, Howard Fineman, Eugene Robinson and others appear on MSNBC shows like "Hardball" and "Countdown," which were shows, and not newscasts. They were commentaries, and based in opinion, as commentaries always are. As long as everyone understood that, it was okay for hard-news types to appear and offer their opinions, but the line was always in danger of being blurred.
Except with Russert. I have read that Russert kept his MSNBC appearances to a minimum. If he lost the trust of the people to be objective, he lost everything. He recounted talking to Lawrence Spivak, the moderator of "Meet the Press" before Russert got the job. Russert asked Spivak: what is "Meet the Press"? Spivak told Russert always to learn everything he could about the guest's politics and conventions, and then to take the other side.
Russert was so believable in his dedication to balance – the "other side" – that he could operate on either side of the news/entertainment line without losing credibility. There is not another journalist like him. His loss is going to change the debate between now and November. That is troubling, given the magnitude of this election, and that is what I thought about as I watched the conversations about his loss.
Then I started to hear a theme. Russert's loss was not a single event, but a multitude of individual events, between this or that colleague, relative, or friend, and Russert, taken one at a time, and adding up to the whole. Feeling this, I remembered that I was once a pal, among hundreds of pals, of a Tim Russert prototype. His name was Otto Bos.
Otto's direction was the reverse of Russert's. He began as a journalist and became a pol. Otto was covering city hall for The San Diego Union when I started work there as an intern in 1972. He didn't treat me so much as an intern as he did an equal who got a late start. We were both about the same age, 27 or so, so young, but Otto was already building a special reputation. Pete Wilson was San Diego mayor at the time, and one council meeting was dragging far into the night. About 8:30, up in the pressroom overlooking the chamber, Otto got a handkerchief, attached it to a ruler, and waved a white flag at the council down below.
Otto was tall, black hair, extremely handsome, Dutch, all-American soccer player but curiously accident-prone. He was committed to work, family and friends. Warmth came out of him like heat from an early-morning sun. Pete Wilson recognized this depth. When he moved on to the United States Senate, and later California governor, he took Otto with him as press secretary. I didn't see Otto very often after that, but when I did, it was always as if he had just left the room and now was walking back in.
In June, 1991, Otto was playing soccer on a Sunday afternoon when he suffered a heart attack and died. He was 47. There were several hundred people at his memorial service, held in San Diego's Balboa Park, and the speakers, led by Pete Wilson, all told of a life more filled by love than most. There were many stories told, and this week the Russert stories have sounded like echoes. I think my favorite Russert story was one told by Mark Liebovich in The New York Times:
"I hardly knew Tim Russert personally, and I hesitate to even relay this for fear of appearing to. We probably had about a half-dozen conversations over the years, invariably on politics, his beloved Buffalo Bills or the Boston College sports teams (his son went to school there). My last encounter with Mr. Russert was at a Democratic debate in Cleveland, which he was moderating. I was with his colleague Mr. Matthews — I was writing about Mr. Matthews for the New York Times Magazine — and we ran into Mr. Russert in the lobby of the Cleveland Ritz Carlton. He had just worked out and was wearing a sweaty Bills sweatshirt and long shorts and black loafers with tube socks. An MSNBC spokesman who was with us tried to declare Mr. Russert’s attire “off the record,” which I found hilarious, and which I was of course compelled to include in the story. When I called Mr. Russert to tell him this, and he laughed so hard, I had to move the phone away from my ear.
“ 'Just do me one favor,' Mr. Russert said. " 'Say they were rubber-soled shoes, will you?' ”
That was so like Otto, who taught me the secret of dealing with officialdom: "Never let the bastions get you down." Now Russert has stepped out of the room, but it is easy, as it has been with Otto all these years, to think about him coming back. At the end of it all, I feel like a fan, sitting in the stands, watching this magnificent election with my pal Russert. But now his seat is empty. The biggest fan of the 2008 presidential election is not going to get to see who won. That is so sad.
June 18, 2008
June 06, 2008
The fourth name
Yes, this is personal. I am living in a time of fear of the fourth name. The fear I have, of the fourth name, is specific to me as a citizen of the United States living in a specific time and space. Young Americans, under age 40, won't feel the dread that follows me along this summer like an undercurrent of daily living, just as I am indifferent, relatively, to political assassinations (Caesar, Ferdinand, Lincoln, Garfield) occurring before my lifetime.
It affects the way I feel about hope. The morning after he secured the Democratic presidential nomination, Sen. Barack Obama started acting presidential. I believe that any proven leader on the globe today understands that Barack Obama is a leader. You can't fool leaders, with leadership-like behavior. That warms me with hope, and chills me with fear, because the leaders will break into two camps. Barack Obama is about to come under furious attack, from leaders who are also chilled with fear.
But furious attacks over the direction of leadership is not unique to my time and space. I do not fear the fourth name rising from the ranks of the leaders. I dread names that would otherwise spin anonymously, forever.
Obama published a book, "The Audacity of Hope." Ultimately, in his view, hope held up against chill can warm the atmosphere enough to bring the hopeful and the chilled together around the same leadership table, or the same kitchen table, so that Americans "are becoming more, not less, alike." Where do the Americans go from there? Towards united.
After the last seven years, hearing hope expressed thusly makes me feel downright toasty. Obama's confidence in that hope is not a plank in a platform, but a cornerstone in a foundation, I believe, that allows him to transition so smoothly from candidate into leader. It has had a democratizing effect. I am not going to vote on the bases of party, race, gender, or religion. I am going to vote on the basis of leadership, which happens to be available this time.
It makes me nervous. Americans living in my space and time are committed to living in an America whose history in our lifetimes has been edited by three names.
What would America be like, if John F. Kennedy were 91 years old this year? That reality is lost to us, because of a man's name, which, in that reality, would be unknown to us today.
What would America be like, if Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., were 79 years old this year? That reality is lost to us, because of a second name, which, in that reality, would be unknown to us today.
What would America be like, if Robert F. Kennedy were 82 years old this year? That reality is lost to us, because of a third name, which, in that reality, would be unknown to us today.
This week, 40 years to the week after Bobby Kennedy went down, Obama stepped so effortlessly into national leadership on a foundation – no longer a message – of hope. The media has already noted that the Democratic nominee's acceptance speech at the convention in August will be 40 years to the day after Dr. King's "I have a dream" speech. This is what America is like in the summer of 2008. A dream of hope. God, I hope. I'm not sure America can endure a fourth name, in one man's lifetime.
It affects the way I feel about hope. The morning after he secured the Democratic presidential nomination, Sen. Barack Obama started acting presidential. I believe that any proven leader on the globe today understands that Barack Obama is a leader. You can't fool leaders, with leadership-like behavior. That warms me with hope, and chills me with fear, because the leaders will break into two camps. Barack Obama is about to come under furious attack, from leaders who are also chilled with fear.
But furious attacks over the direction of leadership is not unique to my time and space. I do not fear the fourth name rising from the ranks of the leaders. I dread names that would otherwise spin anonymously, forever.
Obama published a book, "The Audacity of Hope." Ultimately, in his view, hope held up against chill can warm the atmosphere enough to bring the hopeful and the chilled together around the same leadership table, or the same kitchen table, so that Americans "are becoming more, not less, alike." Where do the Americans go from there? Towards united.
After the last seven years, hearing hope expressed thusly makes me feel downright toasty. Obama's confidence in that hope is not a plank in a platform, but a cornerstone in a foundation, I believe, that allows him to transition so smoothly from candidate into leader. It has had a democratizing effect. I am not going to vote on the bases of party, race, gender, or religion. I am going to vote on the basis of leadership, which happens to be available this time.
It makes me nervous. Americans living in my space and time are committed to living in an America whose history in our lifetimes has been edited by three names.
What would America be like, if John F. Kennedy were 91 years old this year? That reality is lost to us, because of a man's name, which, in that reality, would be unknown to us today.
What would America be like, if Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., were 79 years old this year? That reality is lost to us, because of a second name, which, in that reality, would be unknown to us today.
What would America be like, if Robert F. Kennedy were 82 years old this year? That reality is lost to us, because of a third name, which, in that reality, would be unknown to us today.
This week, 40 years to the week after Bobby Kennedy went down, Obama stepped so effortlessly into national leadership on a foundation – no longer a message – of hope. The media has already noted that the Democratic nominee's acceptance speech at the convention in August will be 40 years to the day after Dr. King's "I have a dream" speech. This is what America is like in the summer of 2008. A dream of hope. God, I hope. I'm not sure America can endure a fourth name, in one man's lifetime.
June 04, 2008
Al JaCoby
I am fortunate to be a small chapter, near the back, in the book of Al JaCoby's life. Many other people have their chapters, too, some small, some huge, some tinged with fame. If the chapters were ever put together in a book, it would be heavier than "Remembrance of Things Past." JaCoby always bragged about having more Rolodexes than anyone else in the city room, and I have a romantic image of those Rolodexes leaking tears on learning the news of his death Monday morning.
JaCoby was The San Diego Union's city editor when, or maybe shortly after when, I reported for work in the summer of 1972. He was gruffish, which was a natural characteristic of newspaper city editors, particularly in the old days, but JaCoby was gruffish with a G. He was also interested, with an I, in life, and jovial with a J. You could hear it in his voice, which had in it a note of a finger being dragged across a string of chimes.
JaCoby – when we became friends, I always called him JaCoby and he called me Mockull – had a very low threshold of pleasure, and I worked on that. Reporters try to get remembered favorably by an editor; you get more interesting assignments that way. He made no secret of his fondness for Mark Twain, and so in my copy I was always trying to turn a phrase. He actually reacted one day when I wrote Carole Channing's voice was like "champagne surf."
He called me Mockull in acknowledgement of my Texas accent. When I started writing a column, he learned of my lifelong mission to proselytize about Texas barbecue. Our friendship broadened. JaCoby liked – hell, celebrated – the good things in life. We had this in common. We embarked on years of lunches. Talk about interesting. You haven't lived until you have lunched at Piret's with JaCoby, Dick Growald, Don Freeman and some visiting dignitary like Dan Jenkins.
His circle was vast, and I was at some of the fabulous dinner parties he and Pat threw, but I never fell into the upper levels of the social ramble, where JaCoby was known and sought-after. Our common turf was the newspaper. When we left the paper in the 1990s, we didn't see each other so often, meeting once a month or so for lunch, barbecue usually, at the Real Texas Barbecue on Miramar Road. We decided to appoint ourselves the resident barbecue critics and actually got paid by San Diego Magazine to find "the best barbecue in town." I have a huge photo of JaCoby and me, at a table laden with platters of barbecue, hard at work in our research.
I hadn't seen him in maybe four years; don't know why, we just had other stuff to do. Some people, though, remain in your mind in a specific way. Every time you think about them, you hope they will never die. I remember a photo of JaCoby, taken at one of the fabled San Diego culinary contests hosted by the restaurateurs George and Piret Munger, over which JaCoby presided with genial authority and aplomb. In the photo, he is 50 feet aloft in a tethered hot-air balloon, leaning against the side of the basket, flute of champagne brandished high, his features triumphant, as if challenging all the gods of pleasure to come down and have half the fun he was having. I know of no other single soul who could have completed that image the way that JaCoby did.
JaCoby was The San Diego Union's city editor when, or maybe shortly after when, I reported for work in the summer of 1972. He was gruffish, which was a natural characteristic of newspaper city editors, particularly in the old days, but JaCoby was gruffish with a G. He was also interested, with an I, in life, and jovial with a J. You could hear it in his voice, which had in it a note of a finger being dragged across a string of chimes.
JaCoby – when we became friends, I always called him JaCoby and he called me Mockull – had a very low threshold of pleasure, and I worked on that. Reporters try to get remembered favorably by an editor; you get more interesting assignments that way. He made no secret of his fondness for Mark Twain, and so in my copy I was always trying to turn a phrase. He actually reacted one day when I wrote Carole Channing's voice was like "champagne surf."
He called me Mockull in acknowledgement of my Texas accent. When I started writing a column, he learned of my lifelong mission to proselytize about Texas barbecue. Our friendship broadened. JaCoby liked – hell, celebrated – the good things in life. We had this in common. We embarked on years of lunches. Talk about interesting. You haven't lived until you have lunched at Piret's with JaCoby, Dick Growald, Don Freeman and some visiting dignitary like Dan Jenkins.
His circle was vast, and I was at some of the fabulous dinner parties he and Pat threw, but I never fell into the upper levels of the social ramble, where JaCoby was known and sought-after. Our common turf was the newspaper. When we left the paper in the 1990s, we didn't see each other so often, meeting once a month or so for lunch, barbecue usually, at the Real Texas Barbecue on Miramar Road. We decided to appoint ourselves the resident barbecue critics and actually got paid by San Diego Magazine to find "the best barbecue in town." I have a huge photo of JaCoby and me, at a table laden with platters of barbecue, hard at work in our research.
I hadn't seen him in maybe four years; don't know why, we just had other stuff to do. Some people, though, remain in your mind in a specific way. Every time you think about them, you hope they will never die. I remember a photo of JaCoby, taken at one of the fabled San Diego culinary contests hosted by the restaurateurs George and Piret Munger, over which JaCoby presided with genial authority and aplomb. In the photo, he is 50 feet aloft in a tethered hot-air balloon, leaning against the side of the basket, flute of champagne brandished high, his features triumphant, as if challenging all the gods of pleasure to come down and have half the fun he was having. I know of no other single soul who could have completed that image the way that JaCoby did.
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