We needed more, not less

Tim Russert's heart might have just wore out.

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Associated Press

He had so much love for his family, his sports teams, his friends, his profession and his country. And for 17 years, this tough, fair, prosecutor-like interviewer and host of NBC's Meet the Press swam gallantly against the tide.

The tide today in television news, of course, is toward partisan sniping and high-handed punditry and puffery. But Russert, from a rock-solid working-class Buffalo, N.Y., never gave in to the cult of personality. And though he once worked for Democratic Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Russert managed to make politicians of all persuasions feel like being on Meet the Press was like a trip to the dentist.

If you're wondering why all the fuss over his sudden, untimely death of last Friday at 58 to a massive heart attack, it's because he had become the gold standard for real television journalism.

It's because there isn't a Boy Scout alive who was more prepared, or a pit bull more civilized and jovial, or a television news figure more respected and loved.

His passion for his sports teams was endearing and legendary, his love for America worn on his sleeve like a cuff link. He was as dogged in his loyalty to his friends as he was in extracting answers from slippery pols.

But as much as anything, Tim Russert will be remembered for his love of his family -- for his wife Maureen, their son Luke and, most famously, for his dad, affectionately known as "Big Russ." In a best-selling 2004 book Big Russ and Me , Tim Russert put to paper the endless admiration and gratitude he had for his father and all of the Greatest Generation. The book made hundreds of thousands of baby boomers appreciate their parents more.

Indeed, it seemed fitting if sad to see Tim Russert eulogized on Father's Day's Meet the Press . Russert's life epitomized what the day is all about.

He once recounted how he and his wife were upset when they learned their son had gotten a tattoo. But when the younger Russert pulled his shirt up to reveal the initials of both Tim and Big Russ, the hardnosed journalist sank in a chair and cried.

Why all the fuss? Because Tim Russert represented a dying breed of passionate, patriotic-to-the-core, objective, tough, fair, well-read television journalists who could smell nonsense a mile away and respectfully, civilly, politely tear that nonsense to tiny shreds.

We needed more of him, not less.