He is seated at the right hand of the Lord

These days the USA is in the grip of two full scale personality cults. One of course surrounds Dubya himself, and forbids any mention of policy costs, lies, or mistakes within his orbit. But the second, which has facilitated the first, surrounds Tim Russert. Now on its face, this is bizarre, because Russert has no formal place within the structure of government -- he is NBC's Washington bureau chief and host of Sunday morning's Meet the Press TV show.

We have paid special attention to the growing cult around Russert because of its extensive use of Irish supporting material: Russert has repeatedly invoked his Irish-American background as evidence of his populist credentials, even when, as his more dispassionate reviewers have noted, he has become a quintessential Washington establishment figure. The cult has many aspects: laudatory reviews of Russert from Washington Post/CNN media "critic" Howard Kurtz, a promotional blitz for Russert's current book, and a news cycle driven by the revealing willingness of Cabinet members to appear on his show.

But the surest sign of the cult is the enormous ego at its centre, and that's where the evidence is most damning. Other websites have been documenting this phenomenon much better than we ever could so we'll just point to a few things here. The incomparable Daily Howler deconstructed the episode from a few weeks ago when Russert's interview with Colin Powell in Jordan was cut short by a Powell staffer. What was initially dressed up as Russert's persistent chase of answers from the top and his fearlessness of power turned out to be a sign that his ten minutes of blather with Powell was considered by him more important than that of other interviewers, upon whose time he encroached.

Now there's the flap over a picture in the Boston Globe showing some Boston College students sensibly snoozing through Russert's graduation speech. Being caught sleeping through one of Stalin's speeches would of course have much more serious consequences, but it's a dent in the cult nonetheless, and a price must be paid. So the Globe was attacked, not directly for having dissed the Great One, but for being anti-Catholic. No, we are not making this up -- the complaints hinge on the fact that Boston College is Jesuit. And of course, as a frequent player of the Irish-Catholic card, Russert himself gets to feel wronged by this supposed arrival of Oliver Cromwell to the pages of the Boston Globe.

As we said above, the dual existence of personality cults around Russert and Dubya is no coincidence. Two more links to support this: Roger Ailes collects three instances of Russert's hypocrisy, revealing of Russert's crypto-reactionary tendencies, and today's Daily Howler captures his on-air sanctioning of criticism of Dubya (scroll down to the item about the interview with Nancy Pelosi). Let's leave the last very promising words to Howler:

Somehow, Russert has come to think it’s his job to make Democrats say nice things about Bush. This was an embarrassing "journalistic" performance by a man who has lost his professional way...we’re reading his self-glorifying new book, and we’re reviewing his endless promotions for same. Russert is so important a figure that his outlook should be examined in detail. We expect to start next week.