Sherry Chandler

7 Comments

• 1. sherry replies at 15th June 2008, 7:38 am :

  NYCWeboy has an interesting reflection on Tim Russert and his influence on political coverage:

  Neither of those, I think, really speak to what made Russert so successful, which was really about personality. Russert was a prime example of news reader celebrity, and almost everything - his role as political commentator, his hosting duties, his role as “Washington Bureau Chief,” was subsumed to his star quality. Buoyant, gregarious, full of that manly bonhomie that people seem to like so much, Russert filled up the space - literally - and the room. I may not have loved Meet The Press… but I always liked the guy. How could anyone not?

  Still, as I said only today, I think NBC News - and especially the role(s) Russert played - has been damaging to our news media overall. I’ve long thought that Russert wore too many hats at NBC - there he was interviewing and moderating in an “objective” way on Sunday morning… and come Monday, there he was on the Today show, offering his take on the weekend’s political developments. It was unseemly… and one role tended to undermine the other. And his control over the NBC political operation - certainly as was suggested by that “Bureau Chief” title - always seemed a little, er, heavy. He’s the one, at least my impression, who seemed so keen on pushing Chuck Todd as a political analytical genius, on pushing folks like Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews, and really seemed most comfortable in formats where everything was guy-ish: the sports metaphors and grizzled old “Washington hands,” mainly white men, who really only let a woman in who could be one of the guys. His moves to integrate MTP with more women, and more people of color were respectable… but really overdue, often grudging, and tended to reflect a type of tokenism that’s all too common in Washington, where the same 4 or 5 (colorful) faces are supposed to show broad-mindedness.

  Far more troubling, and indicative of the mindset, was the lack of ideological diversity on his show…

  As is usual with the weboy’s writing, you need to read the whole post.

• 2. Taserboy replies at 19th June 2008, 3:49 am :

  I agree that the tragedy isn’t Timmy but the dead soldiers. However, lamenting their not having a chance to have sex glosses over the astonishingly high rates of sexual abuse in the military to the extent that female soldiers are too terrified to make the walk to the bathroom when it’s dark…

• 3. charlie w replies at 19th June 2008, 7:53 am :

  I saw Tim Russert’s eyes light up like high-powered l-e-ds when he delivered the “got’che” on Hillary in that interview. Speaking of sex, I think something happened in Tim’s loins at that moment. charlie

• 4. Falconer replies at 19th June 2008, 8:16 am :

  @Taserboy: I agree. How dare I lie here making love to my wife?! Don’t we both know there’s too much rape in the world for us to enjoy some nice, consensual nookie?[/snark]

  Seriously, Taserboy, rape isn’t about sex. It’s about attitude. Our boys in khaki need to understand that no woman owes them sex, and that women aren’t there for them to take advantage of. Lamenting the fact that just about 4,100 of our brave men and women won’t get a chance for a full life, or even a full adulthood in many cases, and yes that includes nice, consensual nookie with a partner of choice, is in no way detrimental to or contradictory of the effort to reduce the incidence of rape in our armed services.

  Forgive me, I’ve run on at the mouth. But these things are never simple to explain, are they?

• 5. sherry replies at 21st June 2008, 4:58 pm :

  Charlie W., it’s good to see your name here. You’ve been quiet for a while.

  I have spent the last two weeks concentrating on family affairs and have missed news of floods, FISA, and Tim Russert. But yesterday when I was sitting in a hospital gown in the waiting room of the Comprehensive Breast Care Center, the women had the television tuned to Martha Stewart’s show and I was reminded of another woman who was punished heavily while the men who did far worse either escaped or got off light. I don’t care much for the things Martha sells but I do think any woman who gets power in this country is a target for the world’s Tim Russerts.

  And yet, Wednesday night in a poetry workshop I’m taking, a woman wrote a long sort of elegy mourning Timmy and his contribution to the nation.

  Still Martha, like Hillary Clinton, handled her loss with a great deal of grace.

  And the mammogram was negative.

• 6. charlie w replies at 22nd June 2008, 8:14 am :

  Congratulations on the negative test.

  Here is a tidbit or two that your blogees might find interesting.

  Sometimes when floodwaters recede they leave debris at the high water mark. Sometimes they do not. I do not know if it’s a fast or slow sinking of water that takes the debris with it. I can make an argument for either.

  In my part of the world there is a legend, old wives tale, superstition, etc. that says that when floodwaters recede and leave debris high on the banks, the river will eventually come back and get it.

  Thinking about this folktale prompted me to dredge up this poem a few years back.

  FLOOD STAGE

  Stealthily, the river slips
  Among the barren willow tips,
  And bends them with the current’s swirl
  At every ripple, roll, and curl.

  Through apprehensive, April eyes
  I stop to watch the steady rise,
  And see the lines that separate
  A liquid earth from solid state.

  The river comes as if designed
  To seek the treasures left behind
  Another year in early spring
  When warm rain sent her pummeling.

  Legends tell of nature’s schemes
  Bizarre as any midnight dreams
  That what the river leaves on high
  She will return for, by and by.

  Charles M. Whitt

• 7. sherry replies at 25th June 2008, 2:53 pm :

  Here’s another interesting reflection on Russert’s journalism from Gene Lyon

  Back to Russert and Washington journalism: In the sport of beagling, two bad faults can get a hound disqualified. One is “cold-trailing.” I had a beagle named Leon who’d hoot down scent trails so old the rabbits that left them were probably being digested by coyotes. Leon made so much noise about nothing that my pals dubbed him “The Journalist.” Then there’s “ghost-trailing.” Unable to keep up, a hound will sometimes invent a fictitious rabbit and make a great show of running it. Other dogs learn to ignore him. Washington courtier-journalists have done plenty of both recently. Russert was among the worst. Like most, he obsessed over Bill Clinton’s sexual sins, but handled the Bush administration’s Iraq war propaganda like the Baltimore Catechism: Memorize, regurgitate. Linda Hirshman nails it in The Nation: “The political leaders who did the best answering Tim Russert’s questions in the last seven years—Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney and Colin Powell—are the authors of the most disastrous American foreign policy since the Vietnam War, and maybe since 1776. The Russert Test was a disaster because it rewarded people willing to lie unabashedly on TV.” And that’s the truth.

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