I was thinking of writing something unpatriotic about Tim Russert, who was a talented broadcaster but also, I believe, a destructive force in American journalism and politics, but then I saw this video of his son, Luke, being interviewed by Matt Lauer, and I figured I’d up the ante.
(You don’t have to watch the whole thing to get an idea of what I’m talking about).
I mean, isn’t Lauer just repellent here? Isn’t his eulogizing of Russert just transparently self-congratulatory (oh Luke, you wonderful, folksy boy, let me tell you how wonderful and folksy your father was, and about how we talked about folksy things and he was great and you’re great, and, oh, well, doesn’t that just mean that I’m great too. Aren’t we all wonderful, all us bona fide, upright, family and apple-pie loving Americans).
As for Luke, and his disturbing peppy-ness, he’s either in shock, which is the likeliest explanation (and which means Lauer’s grief-whoring is even more grotesque), or he had a very strange relationship with his father (which I have no evidence of, but which seems plausible considering the extraordinary degree of sentimentality which Tim Russert brought to his descriptions of his relationship with his father and son; Luke’s tattoo of his father’s initials, which he talks about in the interview, fits with this theory).
