He was a good man, a devout man, a family man, a patriot. His origin was in a blue collar family in a blue collar town. He was not an elitist, not condescending, not pretentious.

Yet he rose to the top of a disappointingly elitist, condescending and pretentious profession: the network news media. Russert was truly the uncola. That is what I really liked about the guy.

He was a sports fan like most of us. He was never afraid to let the rest of us see him as he really was, a peek behind the curtain if you will. No show, no image, no self-promotion. A very rare individual in a very distorted profession.

Yet he was admired, liked and respected both inside that profession as well as everywhere else. Why? He was real, authentic, just one of us who had the good fortune (he acknowledged that) to get the opportunity to move up the ladder in a very competitive industry.

How? Another virtue Russert brought to the table: hard work. He apparently learned that from his father and made it a part of his everyday life. Always prepared. Always doing his homework. Never slacking off from his responsibilities.

Additionally, as an author he wrote about fathers and families. The video at this link, IN HIS OWN WORDS, gives us some insight how important his dad and his son were to him. If you have not yet read his second book, Wisdom of Our Fathers: Lessons and Letters from Daughters and Sons (Random House, May 2006), make sure to do so very soon.

The article that follows is classic Russert. It is further illustration of just what kind of person this wonderful man really was in life. He stuck out like a sore thumb in the world of media elites yet he became one of the best ever. His story is a truly American story and as he and his father said on many occasions, "What a country".

Too bad for the rest of us that he is gone.


Russert's Career Advice: Just Do It
By ROBERT COSTA

Sitting in RFK stadium in Washington, D.C., one evening in 2006, I was watching the Philadelphia Phillies lose to the lowly Washington Nationals when I spied Tim Russert going to get a beer.

I had to say hello to my Sunday-morning hero, so I hustled to the concession stand for a soda.

Russert approached, hulking in an orange golf shirt. "Keep grillin' those S.O.B.s," a passing man yelled as Russert stepped into line behind me. He laughed while grabbing a bag of peanuts. I introduced myself as "Bob Costa, a big fan from Notre Dame."

"Notre Dame?" said Russert, smiling. "Didn't we just beat you guys two years ago?" Yes, the Fighting Irish football team had been clobbered in 2004 by Boston College, where his son Luke was attending college.

I told him I was interning at ABC's "This Week with George Stephanopoulos."
"Why isn't an Irish kid like you working for us?" he asked while tipping the beer guy. "Keep at it," he went on. "You guys over there at ABC are giving us a real run for our money."

At the time, "Meet the Press" led "This Week" by a few million viewers. But Russert's graciousness made me feel for the first time that maybe this journalism thing my mother warned me against falling in love with was not far-fetched after all.

I'd first met Russert that June, while interning for PBS's "Charlie Rose" in New York. He had come to Mr. Rose's oak table to talk about his favorite subject outside politics, his dad, and the release of his book, "Wisdom of Our Fathers." My important duties that day were to get Russert coffee and walk him out of the Bloomberg building after the taping. I told him I'd love to work on "Meet the Press."

"You're being too nice," he said at the time, laughing. "Guys like you should want to host the show." More seriously, he added, "Look, you just have to get out there and do it." Russert took in the swarm of people on Lexington Avenue and asked "Where are you from, son?"

"Bucks County, Pennsylvania," I said. Russert gestured to the people rushing by.
"All of these folks," he said, "don't let them intimidate you. When I first started working for Pat Moynihan, I thought all of these Ivy League guys were ahead of me, that I could never catch up. Then Senator Moynihan took me aside one day, when I told him I didn't think I had it in me to compete in the big leagues, and he said, 'Tim, what they know, you can learn. What you know, they'll never understand.'"

Russert stopped by Notre Dame this April, a month before my graduation, to give the Red Smith Lecture in Journalism. He talked about the need to prepare for every interview. "It is essential that I do what I didn't do when I was in college," he said. "I had been taught that if I read my lesson before class, show up in class on time, review my notes after class, then the exam would be easy.

They were right. I did not do that, but it is what I do now, each and every day."
Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart are often credited for inspiring interest in politics among young Americans. For me, it was Tim Russert. He was an icon with wit and gravitas, who thought that politics should be more than fodder for a hip joke or a clever aside. It was about ideas and choices that mattered.

Russert saw politics as a vital and enjoyable discourse on America's future – a future to be greeted with vigor, not cynicism. Debate livened Russert's show, and he told us at Notre Dame to challenge ourselves to think critically about what we saw and read. "It is not enough to confirm your political views by only accessing and reading outfits that reinforce your views but do not challenge them," he said.

Russert will be remembered for his remarkable career. But I'll remember him as the famous journalist who gave counsel to an intern, and who told me to "get out there and do it."

Mr. Costa is a Robert L. Bartley Fellow at the Journal's editorial page.

URL for this article:http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121358081155576223.html
Copyright 2008 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved

How can you tell if someone is truly on the far left of the political spectrum? Their sense of humor.

One of two circumstances exist for leftists. Either they have no sense of humor, cannot take or make a joke and find life around them anything but funny. Or the humor they attempt is so warped and infantile that it is impossible to believe that it came from a mature adult human being.

Those on the left think it is funny to advocate the assassination of leaders they do not agree with, make comments about race if they are attacking a black person not on their side of the political divide or demean the spouses and children of those they hate.

Hate is the key word. Real humor is not motivated by hate yet the far left brand of humor is anchored in deep and abiding hate. It is a sick and twisted usage of one of the more positive attributes of human nature.

Below is an example from the world headquarters of the far left, San Francisco. The concept has some humor to it but the fact that action is being taken to make it a reality goes way past the humor line and ventures far into hate territory. Viewed from the outside looking in it is clearly a hateful and childish exercise that will ultimately bring further shame and embarrassment to the City by the Bay.

Ironically, for most San Franciscans and for most all of the rest of the nation, this is really just standard operating procedure. Or as they like to say in the military, this is SNAFU.


An Honor That Bush Is Unlikely to Embrace
By JESSE McKINLEY

SAN FRANCISCO — Reagan has his highways. Lincoln has his memorial. Washington has the capital (and a state, too). But President Bush may soon be the sole president to have a memorial named after him that you can contribute to from the bathroom.

From the Department of Damned-With-Faint-Praise, a group going by the regal-sounding name of the Presidential Memorial Commission of San Francisco is planning to ask voters here to change the name of a prize-winning water treatment plant on the shoreline to the George W. Bush Sewage Plant.
The plan, naturally hatched in a bar, would place a vote on the November ballot to provide “an appropriate honor for a truly unique president.”

Supporters say that they have plenty of signatures to qualify the initiative and that the renaming would fit in a long and proud American tradition of poking political figures in the eye.

“Most politicians tend to be narcissistic and egomaniacs,” said Brian McConnell, an organizer who regularly suits up as Uncle Sam to solicit signatures. “So it is important for satirists to help define their history rather than letting them define their own history.”

Not surprisingly, those Republicans in a city that voted 83 percent Democratic in 2004 are not thrilled with the idea. Howard Epstein, chairman of the ever-outnumbered San Francisco Republican Party, called the initiative “an abuse of process.”

“You got a bunch of guys drunk who came up with an idea,” Mr. Epstein said, “and want to put on the ballot as a big joke without regard to the city’s governance or cost.”

The renaming would take effect on Jan. 20, when the new president is sworn in. And regardless of the measure’s outcome, supporters plan to commemorate the inaugural with a synchronized flush of hundreds of thousands of San Francisco toilets, an action that would send a flood of water toward the plant, now called the Oceanside Water Pollution Control Plant.

“It’s a way of doing something physical that’s mentally freeing,” said Stacey Reineccius, 45, a software consultant and entrepreneur who supports the plan.
“It’s a weird thing, but it’s true.”

Taken from (surprise): The New York Times