Has Ronald Reagan Died Again?

By Baxter

Okay, we really don’t want to be insensitive or unfeeling. But is the death of Tim Russert worth all this?

We’re very sorry that anyone would keel over from an apparent heart attack at the young age of 58. (Even those of us with nine lives are chilled by this.) But we just don’t believe that Mr. Russert — as honorable a person as he may have been — is deserving of the wall-to-wall, over-the-top coverage that we’ve seen so far on T.V.

We come from the old school, in which journalists reported the news but did not make it. If that pigeonholes us as fuddy-duddies, so be it. But this rending of garments and gnashing of teeth over Mr. Russert's sudden death is utterly (and, we believe, unintentionally) emblematic of how inside the Washington bubble its perpetrators live.

Only a few journalists today will deserve this kind of attention when they die. In our humble opinion, they are:

Walter Cronkite, who broke the news of John F. Kennedy’s assassination to the world, and who kept his composure when he did it (his only gesture — taking off his glasses and pausing a moment to let the horrible fact sink in);

Daniel Schorr, who earned a well-deserved place on Richard Nixon’s enemies list and who is still going strong at age 90-plus;

Helen Thomas, who has been a White House correspondent for going on 60 years — a legend who, we suspect, never made it in television because she is not beautiful;

Ben Bradlee, former editor of The Washington Post, who merits far more than the inevitable obituary reference “played by Jason Robards in All The President’s Men"; and

Seymour Hersh, whose reporting for The New Yorker and other outlets has, since the My Lai massacre, kept the defense community’s feet to the fire.

And let’s not forget Jim McKay, who recently also died, but without the fanfare accorded Mr. Russert. We can still remember Mr. McKay’s on-air composure in 1972 when the Israeli Olympic team was slaughtered: “They’re all gone.” Anyone who can carry off an iconic moment like that is definitely Cronkite material.

Again — we don’t want to sound mean. But on day when thousands of people (and animals) are drowning in Iowa — when we’ve wasted another zillion dollars fighting in Iraq — when hundreds more American families are being foreclosed out of their homes — we just can’t get all exercised over the death of a Washington insider who helped George W. Bush become an acceptable choice to the American electorate.

Sorry. Really sorry.