Although Meet the Press is watched by a good deal of the DC area, I only know my boss and I to be the non-politicos who have a near-obsession with the show. We’re one step away from becoming Meet the Press groupies. My coworkers referred to Tim Russert as my boyfriend, bemused over how the joking would make me giggle and blush. Many Monday mornings, my boss would call and we’d passionately discuss that week’s show and guests.
The call she made last Friday afternoon was much different. The phone rang shortly before 4, just when I learned of Tim Russert’s death. “Are you seeing this?” she asked. “Ugh. This sucks. Bad,” I said, losing any shred of professional demeanor. We sat at our respective computers, staring at our CNN Breaking News banners, willing them to change. It’s not often that a stranger’s death can make such a personal impact.
I met Tim Russert at a book signing in 2004. I think I scared him. Suffice it to say, he was unaccustomed to such enthusiasm on his book tour. During the reading, I grinned like Charlie Brown in the presence of the little red-haired girl and cherished my front row-center seat as if I were at a Stones concert. When Tim Russert signed my book, I gushed about how much I admired him and enjoyed his program.
He was very gracious. I then asked him if he wouldn’t mind if I got a picture with him. His gratitude soon turned to wariness, and I realized that I just weirded out my news crush. But we got our picture, me and my kinda freaked-out hero. I brought it into work the next day. My boss taped it to her door.When I see the tributes being paid to Tim Russert, I get all the more angry that he died. He was a good one. We needed him. The style he gave to Meet the Press was more productive, civilized, and thorough than almost any other news show on television. Plus, he just seemed so damn nice. But the coverage is taking a turn that appalls me. What bothers me about the recent coverage of his death is the interrogation into matters of his health. His doctor has been on television all day, defending Russert as a “model patient” and insisting he enjoyed cycling. I hate that. It seems like whenever someone dies, we look for ways to prove to ourselves it won’t happen to us. If someone dies in a car crash, we want to know that they weren’t wearing a seat belt or that they were drunk. If someone dies of lung cancer, we need to know they smoked. The questions only seem to show that in a time of tragedy, we seek reassurance regarding our own survival. How horribly egotistical. We want death to make sense in a way that will allow us to use our wits to escape it. So when Tim Russert died of a heart attack, the questions quickly began: Did he watch what he ate? Did he exercise? Did he listen to his doctor? We seek explanations, reasons, causality. When death really comes down to a matter of this: someone is no longer with us; it’s sad.
And in this case, we lost Tim Russert. And it sucks. Bad.
