Cutting review of Tim Russert's stupid book

[Cocoa]

I wonder what Big Russ thinks of the Plame case?

http://www.newyorker.com/critics/content/?040524crbo_books

<snip>

“Big Russ & Me” is not so much a self-examination, or even a dad-examination—very little in it could be honestly described as interesting—as it is a highly effective extension of the Russert brand. The book is written with Bill Novak, the celebrity ghostwriter, who is credited as “full partner.” The brand wouldn’t be so successful if it weren’t genuinely appealing, and Russert in these pages is characteristically forthright, unpretentious, respectful, and values-laden. And Big Russ himself functions less as a vivid character in a book than as an enhancer of his son’s mystique. Big Russ, it turns out, is a name conferred by Tim Russert on his father, not something that his friends called him. The senior Russert’s real name is—Tim Russert. At least nominally, he’s an invention of his son. Big Russ fades out somewhat as the book goes on, but every appearance, while presented as being illustrative of his good qualities (no filial ambivalence here!), literarily performs the function of making Tim look good, by reassuring us that he’s permanently connected to a father lode of realness.

“Hardly a day goes by when I don’t remember or rely on something that Big Russ taught me,” Russert writes. Big Russ’s credo entails simplicity, thrift, hard work, and moral clarity. He taught Russert how to shake hands firmly and how to tie a necktie, and conferred on him the ideal-typical nineteen-fifties American boyhood. Tim watched “Howdy Doody” and “Gunsmoke” and “I Love Lucy,” trudged to school in the snow, worshipped baseball, minded the priests and nuns, and ate hearty: the butcher, he fondly recalls, had a display case that perfectly evoked Buffalo’s version of multiculturalism and good health, full of “pork neck bone, smoked pork neck bone, jellied tongue, Polish bacon, slab bacon, double smoked hunter bacon, German-style wieners, Italian sausage, pork roll sausage, hot or mild beef sausage, barley sausage, beer sausage, double smoked hunter bacon . . . chopped ham, smoked hocks, turkey gizzards, smoked turkey parts, chicken feet, chicken liver, chicken fat, fresh ox tails, and ribs of every type.” Buffalo itself had “a powerful, simple strength.”

As Russert gets older and more successful—as when he first appears on “Meet the Press,” as a panelist, in 1990—Big Russ regularly pops up to reiterate his teachings. “‘Just be yourself,’ Big Russ said. ‘Pretend you’re talking to me. Don’t get too fancy. Don’t talk that Washington talk. You’ve got to talk so people can understand you. Ask questions that my buddies at the post would want to know about.’” In particular, Big Russ displays a magic touch by taking perilous moments at which his son might reveal himself to have become just another privileged jerk and turning them into pure Buffalo gold. Russert goes to dinner at Spago, in Los Angeles, with Maria Shriver, and Big Russ comes along and tries to order a Genessee or a Labatt’s. Russert offers Big Russ the fancy car of his choice as a birthday present, and Big Russ picks a Ford Crown Victoria. Earlier, Russert’s decision not to fight in Vietnam doesn’t put him in the category of contemptible baby boomers, because he is merely taking Big Russ’s advice. (“For this war, right now, if you have a chance to get a college education, take it.”) Big Russ is a kind of personal amulet guaranteeing that Russert will always retain his common touch, a matter not lacking in relevance to Russert’s career: “Big Russ is the least expensive and most accurate focus group around, which is why I call him every Monday morning for his reaction to Sunday’s show.”

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[cestmoi]

1. How many people have interviewed him about his stupid book?

The review is really interesting. I particularly liked:

"To be voluble and bright but also an authority figure, to be morally aware but in the end practical, to subject power to the test without undermining it, to question assertively within a conventional frame—that’s the job description.'

I have never really liked Russert and the review clarified for me why I don't like him.