Earning Respect: Tim Russert

From author and Vanity Fair contributing editor Christopher Hitchens, the above quote echoes exactly what I have been thinking since Friday night around 8:00 PM, when I turned on the television and learned, sadly, that Tim Russert had died instantly of a heart attack. That evening all news programs, both “real” and “fake,” ran (on-air and/or online) the story of Tim’s unexpected death. The following day coverage was still devoted to Russert as one could see by turning to Today, Fox News, MSNBC, and/or Larry King. Then, on Sunday morning television offered the same as Meet the Press, the show Russert hosted impeccably for 17 years, honored its host through stories, clips, and a few laughs. 

It is now Monday morning, when one would think, from the media’s track record of reporting other similar incidents, that the time for tributes would be over. After all, legendary comedian Harvey Korman, who died a couple of weeks ago, was venerated in the media for only 15 minutes as was film director Sydney Pollack, who died last month. Moreover, even the recent surprising death earlier this year of young Heath Ledger lasted no more than two days. But this is not the case with Tim Russert, a man who was arguably much less of a “star” than Ledger (or Korman or Pollack).

Again, it’s Monday, three days after the fact; and on the television, in newspapers, and on the Internet, Russert is still being honored, which brings me back to Hitchens’s point that hardly anything in the world of media, particularly Washington media, has “equal[ed] the shocked sense of loss that’s been inflicted by the death of Timothy John Russert Jr.”

And it’s not that the journalists are running this story because they have nothing else on which to focus; after all, there are major flooding problems in Iowa, and not to mention, this is the country’s most significant presidential campaign in 50 years. Furthermore, it’s not that NBC is running this story because NBC is where Russert was employed; as mentioned above, all of the major networks and their affiliates have been virtually as fervent as “the peacock network” in honoring Tim’s professional and personal legacy. It can only be, as Hitchens concludes, that “professional respect of this kind has to be earned, and earn it he did.”

I will miss watching Tim Russert moderate Meet the Press and joke with Matt Lauer on Today. With that said, however, Tim’s death and the ongoing tributes suggest something positive and comforting: that in our current world — one full of racism and sexism, broken families, war, terrorism, as well as corrupt businessmen, politicians, and clergy — respect for humanity, family, faith, and the love of one’s profession can still be earned and properly celebrated.