Tim Russert. I met him when I was a graduate student and was doing free-lance work for NBC-News in Lebanon. He was the rising star in the network then. I did not know him at all but he represents something not necessarily good or impressive about U.S. media. He was talented and was a good interrogator and was very well-prepared: but these are basic qualities that all journalists should possess; and journalists in Europe, for example, possess those qualities.

But he also represented this tendency that you have be chummy with politicians, and that it is all a big joke--the political differences and the disagreements. Russert has a horrible record on the Bush administration: he was least critical and least skeptical. How can you take his coverage seriously, when he would interview the president one day, and then take his son to take his picture in the Oval Office the next day? He really did that: or when he marvels about how "a kid from Buffalo" is sitting in the Oval Office. What is the big deal, I don't get it. He represents that annoying tendency in the U.S. to indulge in self-praise and self-congratulations. He is one of those who have to say "only in America" several times a day. He also represented patriotic journalism --according to which you should not question an administration in a time of war.

He also has this nostalgic view of parents and grandparents: the glorification of the past, with little regard for the plight of women, minorities, homosexuals in this past. The "greatest generation" that Brokaw wrote so much about was a generation that practiced segregation, that confined women to their homes, that watched lynching of blacks, that blatantly beat homosexuals, that spoke about "the others" only in vulgar and pejorative terms. Yesterday, Chris Mathews outed him on MSNBC: he said that Russert was a supporter of the American invasion of Iraq. No kidding. It was quite obvious. Russert started his career by working for one of the worst (and most politically racialist) Senators: Daniel Patrick Moynihan.

It is also that common revolving door policy: to have journalists moving from the corridors of power to the newsrooms. Russert worked for Mynihan and for Mario Cuomo before coming to NBC-News. On Israel, Russert was horrible: he would always challenge politicians if they have the slightest skepticism toward Israel and its crimes. The standards of political courage are so different in the U.S. from what they are in Europe, for example. Here, if they ask one mild question (the standard for questioning being Larry King), it is considered courageous. Look back at Russert's interviews with Rumsfeld and Bush after Sep. 11: they did not show hints of skepticism. He was a war promoter.