You know I'm not even sure what year I started watching Meet the Press with Tim Russert. I believe it was in the early 90's, sometime around the time when I was newly married and had a new baby daughter. Watching all the Tim Russert tribute shows this weekend I figured out that it was only in 1991 that Tim took over the show. For years and years now it has just been an assumption that nothing happened on Sunday morning until after 11:30 when MTP was over. Has driven more than one girlfriend in the past crazy (until the invention of Tivo!).
You know I completely forgot I had this blog thing. At some point it just seemed to be me yelling into the big "nothing." Either that or me just way too enthralled with my own thinking that night. I think i remembered it tonight because I just want to record how much i hate, absolutely hate the fact that Tim Russert is gone. I loved MTP with Tim Russert. LOOOOVED it. I would never miss it if I could help it. Friday was just an absolute shock. Tim Russert was just an "assumption," just part of my Sunday morning.
Lots of people have talked about how good he was at interviewing people and I agree with all of that. Now that he's gone, what I think about is just the "comfort" factor. There were certain things that were just part of the experience: "Our issues this week," and "If it's Sunday, it's Meet the Press."
I saw some thing on Drudge or somewhere that linked to an article that had mild surprise at the reaction, that Tim was being treated like a head of state. I can't believe there would ever be anything but such a reaction. I mean really - Tim was the guy that kept those bastards on Captial Hill honest, right? I know they're not all bastards, but plenty are. He was just such a good guy, and we trusted him to be fair.
When my daughter was young she would come to visit me on the weekends, and she knew the TV rules on Sunday morning. She would moan about MTP and leave the room. I used to joke "Tim Russert is like your second father!" She never really went for that, but I took some pleasure in that just this year, as a teenager, she'd started to "not mind" MTP so much. She even watched with me. I hope her ongoing "A+" in world Civilization (closest thing to civics in high school) is a tribute to some of her forced watchings of the goings on in the world on MTP.
My friend Cara and I argue on IM all the time (for fun!) She is very liberal, and of course I am an "enlightened free market conservative." We don't agree on much of anything...ever. She IMed me the news on Friday. My first and only reaction was just, "NO!" On one thing we agree- we know that Meet the Press will never be the same.
I remember famous people passing away and feeling sad before. I felt bad when Johnny Carson died. I felt bad when President Reagan died. The fact that Tim Russert was so, so young, and had so much left. I don't remember the last time i felt so, truely sad when someone I've never met passed away.
