{"id":2709,"date":"2008-06-13T15:10:27","date_gmt":"2008-06-13T20:10:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=2709"},"modified":"2008-06-13T15:13:41","modified_gmt":"2008-06-13T20:13:41","slug":"russert","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=2709","title":{"rendered":"Russert"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tim Russert dead at 58<\/a>\u00a0of an out-of-the-blue heart attack:<\/p>\n

Russert was recording voiceovers for Sunday\u2019s \u201cMeet the Press\u201d program when he collapsed, the network said. He and his family had recently returned from Italy, where they celebrated the graduation of Russert\u2019s son, Luke, from Boston College.<\/p>\n

No further details were immediately available.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

While Russert’s politics were rarely in question, he differed from so many of the hamsters that clog TV news (and news in general) today by having a facility for detaching himself from the story, and actually acting for the good of the story itself<\/em>.\u00a0NBC’s initial obit for Russert sums up Russert’s sadly-rare approach:<\/p>\n

\n

Of his background as a Democratic political operative, Russert said, \u201cMy views are not important.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cLawrence Spivak, who founded \u2018Meet the Press,\u2019 told me before he died that the job of the host is to learn as much as you can about your guest\u2019s positions and take the other side,\u201d he said in a 2007 interview with Time magazine. \u201cAnd to do that in a persistent and civil way. And that\u2019s what I try to do every Sunday.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

And, as a fire-breathing Republican speaking of a former Democrat operative,\u00a0it is a sincere compliment when I say\u00a0Russert did it well.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In this dismal season for the media, he will be missed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tim Russert dead at 58\u00a0of an out-of-the-blue heart attack: Russert was recording voiceovers for Sunday\u2019s \u201cMeet the Press\u201d program when he collapsed, the network said. He and his family had recently returned from Italy, where they celebrated the graduation of Russert\u2019s son, Luke, from Boston College. No further details were immediately available. While Russert’s politics […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2709","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media","category-memoriam"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2709","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2709"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2709\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2709"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2709"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2709"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}