You're a tough guy to please. Is that one of your virtues or vices? If your definition of greatness hangs on taking on the Administration or something else that is popular but has an undercurrent of stink, then I say let's get ready to celebrate the life of Daniel Schorr or maybe (posthumously) I.F. Stone or, better yet, Lincoln Steffens.

LAMBERT: I'll contribute to the statue fund for any of those gentlemen.

Another name I would add to the list in this burgeoning discussion of proportionality in the wake of the waking of the late Tim Russert would be that of Texas broadcaster and folklorist, John Henry Faulk.

Mr. Faulk, while not a journalist in the strictest sense, was, like Mr. Russert, an interviewer of great renown, as well as a beloved storyteller whose tales contained as much truth as any news story of his time. Sadly, some of your older readers may recall him only for his cameo appearances on Hee Haw. Preferably, others may know him for his Christmas Story, http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1115979 .

Elected vice-president of the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, when Mr. Falk became aware that some of his friends were being denied work for their political views, he made it his business to use his position to make certain that his union take an unequivocal stand against the McCarthyite practice of blacklisting entertainers and broadcasters with alleged connections to the Communist Party.

For his courageous stand in an atmosphere of systematic fear-mongering and rampant paranoia that infected post WWII America when Sen. Joe McCarthy and others had Americans convinced there was a Communist in every pot, Mr. Falk found his own career at a sudden and decisive end due to what we would today refer to as the Swifboating of his honorable efforts as an AFTRA officer to defend his union peers from the corrosive, coercive and libelous tactics of AWARE, Incorporated.

AWARE, Inc., for a fee, would "investigate" the backgrounds of entertainers for signs of Communist sympathy or affiliation and provide the information to major media advertisers and radio and television networks for the purposes of scrubbing themselves clean of performers and broadcasters of questiobale leftist leanings.

In 1955, Faulk attracted the enmity of AWARE, Inc. when he and other members ousted officers of the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists who'd enjoyed the backing of AWARE. In reprisal, AWARE labeled Mr. Faulk a Communist, and he suddenly and irrevocably found himself blacklisted and persona non grata in radio and television.

Bankrupt and unemployable, Mr. Faulk, with the help of attorney Louis Nizer, and the financial backing of friends the likes of Edward R. Murrow, filed and won, after a publicly-humiliating six-year battle, the largest libel judgment ever awarded at the time. That record judgment, $3.5 million, was subsequently reduced to $500,000 by an appeals court, an amount immediately reduced to essentially nothing by legal fees and debt.

The main branch of the Austin, TX public library is named for Mr. Faulk. The book, Fear On Trial, which was later made into a television movie, tells the fuller story of Mr. Faulk's courageous stand against demagoguery and fear mongering in the name of patriotism. I needn't point out the echoes of Mr. Faulk's battle in our own times.

Mr. Faulk, at the apex of his national popularity, sacrificed it and his entire career on the altar of the First Amendment. Legally, he won, but he never really recovered in any terms a careerist of today would count as adequate compensation for his risk. His sacrifice brought no personal benefit to Mr. Faulk, but the fruits of his self-denial and courage are enjoyed to this day, especially now, by those who've followed him.

Isn't this kinda M.C. Escher-like ? Another story commenting on why there are so many stories pointing out there are too many stories about the death of a man who -IMHO- reported too many stories ?
Oops...I guess this comment adds to the pile on.

LAMBERT: If we don't comment on ourselves what would we do all day?

The thing that has me scratching my head is that not a single one of your regular contributors here pointed out that the Russert coverage has been excessive. Thank heaven you've again led us to a clear perspective on things!

LAMBERT: According to the rules I am allowed to contribute to my own blog.

Interesting - I read about Mr. Faulk by virtue of your post here Jim.

Of course, I have no reason or standing to doubt that account. I just continue to wonder how the left could maintain its worldview, such as it is, if it didnt have Joe McCarthy to kick around.

I also wonder why we don't reserve similar scorn for Hubert Humphrey, who blacklisted communists from the party rolls during the merger of the Minnesota Democrat and Farmer Labor parties.

I also wonder how it came to be that the narrative for all the blacklisted is, they werent really communists! - they were all wrongly accused! Not a darn Communist in the bunch! Give credit to Pete Seeger for crying out loud, who in hindsite admits his culpability and naivete.

I of course understand the irony of having a 1st Amendment and having a political party outlawed, all that. But if your a useful idiot of Stalin, you shouldnt really be shocked that the American government will look at that with some skepticism - you know, whether you believe all the right things and have all the right motives and high ideals.

LAMBERT: Do I even want to know who you're referring to as "a useful idiot of Stalin"?

If we knew who you were, "108," we'd have you to kick around. A Joe McCarthy apologist. You don't meet many of those. For what could you possibly have been granted a masters degree, one wonders?

And, yes, next to his desperate support of the Viet Nam War, it was certainly Humphrey's nadir.

What's Seeger got to regret, exactly? Who got hurt in this country by a single alleged "communist," or, horrors, "leftist," or, shudder, "unionist"? Who suffered for Woody Guthrie's balladiering? Who're the victims, again of these alleged villains?

The lists of the people whose lives were destroyed by their craven and opportunistic pursuers are well documented, of course. But train your masters-level academic skills on the victims of the horrid left. Edify me.

I thought it was Lenin who was a useful idiot of Stalin.

Anyway, Pete Seeger readily admits he had it wrong about Stalin. But he was right about civil rights, workers' rights, women's rights, etc. But he got communism wrong. Yup. And as a result of his huge impact on the culture, in what circles is Stalin thought well of these days?

Read all about it:

By DANIEL J. WAKIN
Published: September 1, 2007
A front-page article in The New York Sun yesterday trumpeted what seemed to be a striking fact: Pete Seeger, the quintessential leftist balladeer and a former Communist, had denounced Stalinism.

Skip to next paragraph
Related
The Old Left (January 22, 1995)
Times Topics: Pete Seeger
Past articles about the musician.

"Seeger Speaks," August 31, 2007 (from the New York Sun)
The article centered on a letter from Mr. Seeger to the writer, Ron Radosh, a historian and adjunct senior fellow at the conservative Hudson Institute. “I think you’re right I should have asked to see the gulags when I was in U.S.S.R.,” Mr. Seeger wrote.

He also included the lyrics to a song he wrote several months ago called the “Big Joe Blues”:

He ruled with an iron hand.

He put an end to the dreams

Of so many in every land.

He had a chance to make

A brand new start for the human race.

Instead he set it back

Right in the same nasty place.

Mr. Radosh, who once studied banjo with Mr. Seeger, said in an interview that he had idolized him, but he has become a dogged critic of Mr. Seeger’s politics. Mr. Radosh wrote that he was “deeply moved” that the singer, “now in his late 80s, had decided to acknowledge what had been his major blind spot opposing social injustice in America while supporting the most tyrannical of regimes abroad.”

But in fact, Mr. Seeger, 87, made such statements years ago, at least as early as his 1993 book, “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?” In the book, he said in a 1995 interview with The New York Times Magazine, he had apologized “for following the party line so slavishly, for not seeing that Stalin was a supremely cruel misleader.”

But Mr. Radosh said that Mr. Seeger’s comments before had been little noticed and had never gone as far. And Mr. Seeger had never written a song condemning Stalin until now, Mr. Radosh said.

Mr. Radosh said that a public renunciation of Stalin was important because Mr. Seeger had made a powerful impact on the culture. “He’s a cultural figure who’s so identified with that, and is breaking with tradition,” Mr. Radosh added.

If anything, the interest in Mr. Seeger’s views on the Soviet Union shows the durability of cold war ideological debates. But Mr. Seeger, speaking by telephone from his home in Beacon, N.Y., seemed mildly amused by the matter.

“I certainly should apologize for saying that Stalin was a hard driver rather than a very cruel leader,” he said. “I don’t speak out about a lot of things. I don’t talk about slavery. A lot of white people in America could apologize for stealing land from the Indians and enslaving Africans. Europe could apologize for worldwide conquest. Mongolia could apologize for Genghis Khan. But I think the thing to do is look ahead.”

When a documentary filmmaker asked Mr. Seeger to suggest a critic of his views, he suggested Mr. Radosh. But the critical comments were not included in the movie. Mr. Radosh took note of that in his June review of the documentary in The Sun. The film, he wrote, had whitewashed Mr. Seeger’s silence on Communist crimes.

Mr. Seeger said he wrote Mr. Radosh after that to apologize for the exclusion of the critical remarks.

In the letter, which Mr. Radosh provided along with the lyrics, Mr. Seeger gives more insight into his cold war thinking. Mr. Seeger said he had concentrated on showing what the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had accomplished “without using guns.”

“But I still hoped that someone like Khrushchev or Gorbachev could open things up,” he writes. “But I underestimated (and probably still do) how the majority of the human race has faith in violence.” The “basic mistake,” he adds, was “Lenin’s faith in discipline.” He closes warmly: “Well, you stay well. Keep on.”

In the interview Mr. Seeger said Mr. Radosh had made a career out of exposing the crimes of Soviet Communism. He said the focus on his own past was “kind of funny.”

“I’m sure,” he added, “there are more constructive things he could do with his life.”

LAMBERT:In certain circles Mr. Seeger's larger crime would be admitting he was wrong.

I'm thinking like Lillian Hellman.

LAMBERT: Oh hell, throw in Dashiell Hammett for good measure.

so with absolutely no disrespect to Mr russert - I was plenty ticked at you on Friday Brian, so callous and all, the body was not even cool before you started in - in the 24/7 cycle, if they talk about it enough, does it become reality? "what the voters are saying is . . . ";I appreciate and get weepy about the family man, collegue and mentor - - but after a certain point I don't like being told what to feel and think and what started out as important and meaningful becomes dull and dictated . . . ya get me?

LAMBERT: I think so. I hope I'm conveying my fundamental points. Which are that A: It is possible to to be respectful of so public a man's death and offer a "balanced" view of his professional life, and that B: A dispiriting ritual of modern media life is the commercialized overkill that through repetition and hype diminishes both the deceased and the alleged mourners.

Brian: Good perspective on your part. Can't believe that bureau chief Russert would have allowed NBC's monument in the making kind of self-indulgent coverage. He seemed more like a no nonsense, get the job done, just the facts please person. Maybe the excess is a way for NBC to cope with its own corporate sense of guilt for letting a nice guy work himself to death: (1) DC bureau chief, a full-time job (2)Meet The Press host, something close to a full-time job even before he doubled it in length to an hour (3) MSNBC/CNBC 1-hour Russert interview show he invented/hosted (in his spare time?), 4) five months of day and night 2008 campaign analysis every Tuesday primary-election analysis for MSNBC, next morning (when sleep?) Today Show, day-of, next-day and every poll Nightly News amounting to his 3rd full time job for NBC. In the meantime, this good person coordinates by phone 24/7 neighbor and friend home-care for his dad, takes part in his son's graduation from college, and then returns home early from a week's vacation with wife and son to prep for another Meet The Press. Lord have mercy. Whatever else it may be, Russert's sad and untimely passing at 58 is a big yellow caution flag for me/us all to slow down.

LAMBERT: The guy was a monument to "positive" compulsivity.

While I'm a bit surprised by the level of coverage over Russert's death, it obviously struck some sort of chord with the public. At least, if you judge it by the number of average folks who walked by his casket yesterday.

In some ways, his death is one of those 'perfect storm' stories. It happened just after a tough primary fight when Russert was even more of a presence on tv. It's a slow news cycle, and other than the flooding, there isn't much in the way of a competing ongoing story.

And for a lot of people at NBC, Russert was their Cronkite. I can count at least a half dozen NBC and MSNBC regulars who owe their TV careers to Russert. Even Gwen Ifill (host of the PBS show "Washington Week In Review") mentioned that she would not have been on tv without Russert's encouragement. He was obviously much more of a presence behind the scenes in Washington than most of us realized.

And then there's his son Luke, who is articulate and media-savvy and willing to talk about his dad.

I agree that the coverage is a bit much at times, but if it pushes out a roundtable or two about Hillary Clinton's chances for a VP spot, I'm all for it.

LAMBERT: I have wondered how NBC would handle this if the primary race were still in full fury?

Jim asks: Who got hurt in this country by a single alleged "communist"?

Answer: JFK is one.

I have a masters in software. I'm a Tommy, like you.

LAMBERT: Right. Gunned down by a lone nut Commie in the most right-wing city in America. Don't get me started on that one.

Jim, that was exactly my point about Pete Seeger. I find him compelling.

Well, 108, by your standard (single acts of violence), "Commies" are vastly less dangerous than garden-variety Americans who perpetrate murder and violent mayhem at a rate unmatched by ANY of our industrialized/post-industrial peers.

I was eluding more to the systematic and orchestrated desruction through nakedly self-serving demagogury of someone's life, someone's career, someone's family, someone's ability to simply live their life in this freest of nations that the likes of your man, Joe McCarthy, perpetrated on a fear-saturated nation still reeling from a Great Depression and a world war.

There will always be murderous, self-pitying, self-righteous narcissists with guns in American.

So...to sum up so far... Will Brian now blast Uncle Walter - while his body is still appraoching room temperature - for no real investigative reporting on the murder of JFK ?
...and let's not forget that Uncle walter "turned away" from Vietnam about 13,14 years into the conflict.

LAMBERT: Nothing gets by you, Mr. Leyland. But Uncle Walter did stick it to LBJ.

Late to reading this, been glued to the new videos on the Strib.

I ripped you last week on Russert and I'll compliment you this time. Well written piece.

For me the beginning of the end was the Princess Diana mess. Ever since, the media has turned celebrity deaths into a first class circus. I think it was the celebrity that was the talk this weekend, not the journalist.

LAMBERT: imagine what happens if Amy Winehouse dies in the doldrums of early August?

Believe me, I'm tryin to say this as respectfully as possible. Enough already about Russert -- either way.

In general, the United States seems to have lost its sense of proportion.

The term "giant" should be reserved for folks who really showed skills or leadership of, well, *gigantic* proportions in a field or profession, etc.

I would definitely consider Morrow and Cronkite worthy of that appellation. Russert? Nope.

The show had been going since 1947 and is "the longest-running television show in worldwide broadcasting history".

Russert took it over in 1991 and it was apparently renamed "Meet the Press with Tim Russert" the following year. Someone please try to tell me what the heck Russert did in one short year (or his entire MtP career, for that matter) that deserved such a venerable program to be tagged with his name and personality?

Maybe now the program will get back to actually meeting the press instead basically meeting Russert.

Longest-serving MtP host? Yes. "Decent guy" who did his job competently? Probably. Giant? I think not.

LAMBERT: Of course research shows American viewers are tired of Iraq reporting.

Clarification: We are tired of the erroneous Iraq "reporting", and would like to see the truth (we're winning) being told.

LAMBERT: Who's "truth" are you seeking?

Contrary to some of the other posters, I think you should do another Russert column - this one about his successor. I nominate David Dimbleby, the BBC broadcaster who conducted a contentious interview with Donald Rumsfeld two weeks before the invasion of Iraq. The contrast between his open skepticism and the questions of the cowed pentagon reporters was refreshing, especially at that time, when Christian Nationalism here in America was at its zenith.
If Dimbleby isn't available, I'd get another BBC journalist, a guy I saw on election night in England in 1990. I don't remember his name, but his style was indelible. His sessions with the politicians that night were more like interrogations than interviews. He was openly contemptuous, treating them like the spineless weasels they often are. But he had standing, had become some sort of institution, and they all submitted to his abuse.
Of course neither of them and no one like them will get the job. I think the only thing that could change television news would be for some obscenely wealthy progressive (George Soros?) to buy a news network and be willing to run it at a loss for years on end. And no, I don't believe that will actually happen.

LAMBERT: There is a great aversion in American society to a truly contentious confrontation, even over matters as "epic", as the kids like to say, as a fraudulent war. The pressure on any major network -- none of which are controlled by "progressives" would be intense. But i agree -- somewhere -- there ought to be an actual "call it as it is" political interrogator who will pursie a line of questioning with unapologetic follow-ups, etc.

Mentioning Tim Russert in the same sentence as Walter Cronkite is pretty disgusting.

Hey, I feel sorry for Russert's loved ones, but the guy was one of the biggest enablers of the Bush Regime out there.

I will never forget the look of elation on his face on Election Night 2000 when he thought Bush was going to win.

Anyone who sucked up to Bush and his gang of thugs has blood on their hands.

LAMBERT: Hey ... don't hold back. But the multitude of crimes of this administration, from Iraq on down, is so far beyond the usual standard of political scandals that a professional journalist's response to it SHOULD be a primary criteria for assessing the sum value of his or her career.