It is little more than 5 minutes since I found out that Tim Russert has passed and I have not allowed enough time to process his loss, discover what he meant, or form a cogent thought about it. I imagine no time will ever be sufficient.
But Mr. Russert seemed like my friend, or more truthfully, like my dad. I looked forward to Sundays intensely. Meet The Press made politics relevant for me; I rarely legitimized any political story until Mr. Russert covered it. As a student of politics and of journalism, I saw no greater steward of those traditions than Tim Russert. No politician earned his or her mettle unless he or she sat down for an hour with Tim. I will miss him and journalism has lost its best today.
Stop talking. No, seriously, you are still talking somewhere to someone as I type this. Shut the fuck up.
You are helping no one (with the possible exception of the media). You are not helping Senator Obama, someone for whom you claim some affection. You are not helping Americans or our democratic process. You are not even helping yourself, which is painfully apparent now that is all you care about. Also, astonishingly, you have no historical perspective--your words, either 30 seconds from a sermon seven years ago, or from your continuous and unending blather over the last 72 hours, matter.
Note: I am Media Coordinator and Netroots and Rapid Response Committee Co-Chair for the Tampa Bay O-Train, Florida's largest, most organized, and active presidential grassroots organization.
It was a thing like hope.
It was a thing like hope that began this movement on the steps of the Illinois State Capitol on a cold day last February.
First, a short memo to Karl Rove: Before you start giving our candidates primers on how to conduct themselves, perhaps you should first tend to your own party's disastrous gaggle of fearmongers, bloviators, and racists. That should be enough to keep you occupied.
Sadly, that is the least offensive part of Rove's drivel in today's Wall Street Journal. His commentary smacks of the desperation his party feels in the face of an Obama nomination and, in that solitary desperation, borders on overt racism.
