Usually when I get an email from one of the local TV station’s about breaking news, it’s not very important. Most of the time, it’s about a conviction or acquittal in a trial I don’t really care about. That, or another UT football player got arrested for drugs, assault or DUI. But I keep it because, occasionally, something important happens, and I want to know right away.
I’m an inveterate news junkie. I spend hours most days reading news and opinion from all over the world about a wide variety of topics that range from politics to tech-geek to architecture. So when I got the “breaking news” email at work this afternoon, my heart just about fell out of me.
Tim Russert is dead. No if, ands or buts. He’s gone.
It felt like losing a favorite uncle, the one who talks to me like an adult, even though I might be still learning how to be one. The one who tells great stories, but is ultimately more interested in what I have to say.
I looked forward to our weekly visits: I didn’t miss one unless I was really sick. As in “I-can’t-get-out-of-bed” sick.
I don’t know what I’ll do on Sunday mornings at 10:00 any more.
He never knew, I think, the impact he had on such a large scale. And not just on admitted news-junkies like me. He asked the same hard questions with everyone, always in a way the did not belie his own political positions. In fact, I’m not sure what his political positions are after years of watching him on TV.
What they were, that is.
I will miss him sorely, but he was not ours to keep.
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