All about his image

There's a telling insight into the mind of America's Pundit, Tim Russert, in an angry letter to the editor of the New York Times Sunday Magazine from him today. Russert complains about the short interview segment with him that appeared in the mag a few weeks ago; we noted at the time his claim that, in effect, he doesn't ask tough questions on his Sunday talk show because it would make his guests seem sympathetic. Russert's complaint however concerns the sense from the interview that he has an obsession with the contribution of fathers at the expense of mothers -- a conclusion that one might draw from the scoring of number of books he has written about the two: Fathers 2 -- Mothers 0.

Russert claims that the interview was condensed to create this impression, and manages to sound aggrieved:

I told her [interviewer] how my mom would wake me with a soft "Tim, Tim." To me this proved you could be heard without yelling, something I hope is reflected each Sunday on "Meet the Press." ... My mom was a central figure in my life. This was my first Mother's Day without her. Your writer's deliberate mischaracterization of our conversation and her feeble attempt at humor made it a particularly painful day.

Two things to note. First, the plug for his show, yet another installment in his repeated use of his (Irish-American) family heritage as a badge of his street-cred for his elite lifestyle. Second, the claim that mean words from the NYT could cause all this hurt, while thousands of families in the US, the UK, and Iraq deal with the consequences of a war that was most heavily promoted on Meet the Press. Just one example:

MEET THE PRESS
Sunday, September 8, 2002
GUEST: Vice President DICK CHENEY
MODERATOR/PANELIST: Tim Russert - NBC News

MR. RUSSERT: What, specifically, has he obtained that you believe would enhance his [Saddam's] nuclear development program?

VICE PRES. CHENEY: Well, in the nuclear weapons arena, you’ve got sort of three key elements that you need to acquire. You need the technical expertise ... Secondly, you need a weapons design ... The third thing you need is fissile material, weapons-grade material ... And what we’ve seen recently that has raised our level of concern to the current state of unrest, if you will, if I can put it in those terms, is that he now is trying, through his illicit procurement network, to acquire the equipment he needs to be able to enrich uranium to make the bombs.

MR. RUSSERT: Aluminum tubes.

VICE PRES. CHENEY: Specifically aluminum tubes. There’s a story in The New York Times this morning-this is-I don’t-and I want to attribute The Times ...

Russert specifically tosses Cheney the aluminum tubes story that Cheney's office had likely leaked to the NYT in the first place. Russert has never expressed anything like the anguish for being being a platform for war-mongering that he claims to feel from the segment not about his mother.