Same as I posted on my own blog

Some of you are not going to understand. "OK, the Moderator of Meet the Press died, who really cares?" Well, I do. There are very few people from the media or pop culture who have a deep meaning to me, and to be honest, there are no other journalists who I would give a rats ass about. The next in line to Tim Russert in my mind was Tom Brokaw/Peter Jennings, and with both of those guys, I would read the obit and move on (That is what I did with Jennings.

But Tim Russert had a much more significant meaning to me. In case you didn't know, Tim Russert was from Buffalo, South Buffalo to be exact (So is Wolf Blitzer I found out tonght. If any of you have been to Buffalo recently, Buffalo is a town down on its luck. Since 1983 (and I can still remember the headline in the Buffalo News the day it occured, the Steel Mill closed and the City has been in decline ever since. Kids graduate from High School, leave and never come back. But saying your from Buffalo is not embarrassing. It is a source of pride. Its a blue collar town with blue collar roots. It is like the difference in saying you grew up in St Paul rather than MPLS, or if you grew up in MPLS, saying you grew up in Nordeast. Or saying your from the South Side of Chicago, or Brooklyn, or your a Southie from Boston. There is such a sense of pride with those areas, and if you watched Tim Russert, you knew he never forgot his roots. He loved the Bills, Beef on Weck, Chicken Wings, Grilled Bologna, the Bisons, Sabres, grilled hot dogs, and Genesee Cream Ale.

Russert wrote a book called Big Russ and Me 5 years ago for fathers day, in dedication to his father, an Irish Catholic garbage man with four kids growing up in South Buffalo. It was a best seller, and people loved his dedication to his father. For me, it had a special meaning. My father didn't keep a journal from ages 4 to 15. Through the first 4 chapters of his book, Russert dialoged what it was like to be a Catholic going to Catholic School in South Buffalo in the 50's amd early 60's. He described what it was like to be a kid in Buffalo at that time. For me, there can be no better gift from the book than to know how my dad grew up. Throw in a lot more baseball, and you probably have my dad's childhood.

I remember three politicians from my childhood, Reagan, Daniel Patrick Moynahan, and Mario Cuomo. Reagan, I remember crying when we bombed Grenada (The look on my mom's face when I screamed at her "What did they do to us?" was priceless, and I was the only 11 year old who watched the Iran-Contra hearings. (Casper Weinberger lied through his teeth. But Cuomo and Moynahan were the last democrats that I actually respected. Moynahan, a democrat, was at the forefront of school vouchers/charter schools. My entire collegiate economics tenure was spent on education and the disenfrachised, and I wrote many papers and my thesis about it. Moynhans work on the subject definitely framed my point view. And Russert was a key staffer to both Cuomo and Moynahan during this timeframe.

But the greatest influence that Russert had on me was his lawyeresque handling of politicians.
He would ask the toughest question he could pose, and let them handle it without interupting. it is how I handled a bank examination after reading his book. It is so much easier to read a person, when you ask them the toughest question youve got and see how they respond. Meet the Press will never be the same. When you podcast it for your long runs on Sunday morning, you know you respect the interviewer.

But Russert and that book had so many other influences on me. He stated that although he couldn't afford to, he paid back his student loans as fast as he could so somebody else could go to school. After reading that, I upped my monthly student loan payment to $750 a month and got it paid off in 4.5 years. He was a blue collar kid that made it to the top. It gives hope to all of us that if we live in the USA and have the drive/passion/talent, we can all succeed in our own way.

I don't know, it is just sort of sad to see Russert pass away when my son and father are in CO so I can train peacefully this weekend. I miss my father, I miss my son, and I have a 75 mile ride in the morning. Russert was a guy that I saw on Sunday morings and I thought of my dad when I saw him, as well as my kid. I actually thought I might brush elbows with him somewhere in DC.

Like I said, it is only a journalist. But the Kaufman family from Hamburg, NY will be thinking of him this weekend.

jpk