Obsequious Sorrow

With all due respect to Tim Russert, who by all accounts was a superb journalist and a stand-up guy, I found the coverage of his death to be nauseating.

It combined two of the most distasteful elements of our society: the incessant self-regard of the media when one of their own dies, and the obnoxious solipsism of the baby boomers when confronted by their own mortality.

Was Tim Russert's death a bad thing? Obviously. Anyone dying suddenly and before their time is a tragedy for their friends and family. But he was the host of a TV show, not the president. Breaking into regularly scheduled programming to announce his death with the same tones that used to be reserved for such earth-shattering events as the Kennedy assassination or the Moon landing was just ridiculous.

And it's only going to get worse later today, as the Sunday morning chat shows lay it on with a trowel -- which is why I'm not going to be watching them.

A good man died. You announce it, preferably at the end of the broadcast, and you let it go at that. To perserve with such an orgy of "obstinate condolement," as Claudius once said to Hamlet, bespeaks "an understanding simple and unschooled."

That's a pretty good capsule description of America at this point in time. Simple and unschooled.

Tom Moran