Tim Russert, the mircale man...

Hitchens says some things that need to be said about the media coverage of Russert's death. It seems that the media has been taking every good deed, coincidence and random occurence surrounding Russert's life and death and making them out to show something impropably "special" about him. I, along with Hitchens, can agree that Russert was a pretty solid journalist and that no right minded person is happy to see a father of a young man die, but to canonize the man and overzealously mysticize the death ceremony is to dive headlong into the strong superstitions that still bind too much of humanity to this day.

In John Updike's brilliant novel In the Beauty of the Lilies,* the son of a Presbyterian minister who lost the faith is listening to those who eulogize his departed father and suddenly realizes how the myths about Jesus got started in the first place. Surveying my e-mail traffic this week, I could see another such bubble of legend begin to swell. And I remain unshakably certain on two points. The first is that no benign deity plucks television news-show hosts from their desks in the prime of life and then hastily compensates their friends and family by displays of irradiated droplets in the sky. (I bet you now that it won't happen for Brokaw or Williams or Olbermann, even if they all convert to Catholicism, and you know I am right.) My second bet is that Tim Russert, a man of firm but modest faith, would reject this foolish superstition and the silly cult of celebrity. This latter cult belongs to the material world, which in the absence of a supernatural one is the only world we have.

The first of these two points could hardly be more indicative of the mired logic of the overly religious set, that proclaim that "god took him for a reason." My guess is that if god is real, and follows the tenets laid out by the Christian right, he would have no place or need for a Russert - who despite his personal beliefs - seemed to mostly welcome dissent and dialogue. He would have called on Hannity.

*If you are unfamiliar with this work, you really must read it. Updike is brilliant, and this work may compete for tops on his list of work.