Glenn Beck: Remembering Russert
June 16, 2008 - 13:05 ET
GLENN: Tim Russert was one of a kind and I know you have heard from everybody and his brother in the last few days about Tim Russert and I'm not going to go on and on about him. I didn't know the man. I knew him like you did. I knew him as a viewer. That's it. Didn't know him as a viewer, you know, in the last eight years because I started going to church eight years ago and missed him. I will tell you that every time I saw this guy on television, I liked him. I know that he was a liberal, but I could never really tell where his policies were. I could never tell if he was -- he never had an agenda. He was one of a kind or the last of a dying breed or a dead breed of those journalists that were fair. He pissed me off so badly every time he would have my guy on. He would ask these questions and he would keep going and going and going and going, and your head would explode. And you'd be like, you've got to be kidding me. And then they would go to a commercial break and they would have the other side on, and I would cheer because he kept going and going and going and going. And it was like the third time that I ever saw Tim Russert that I thought, holy cow, I cheer as much as I jeer with him. He really asked the tough questions on both sides. That doesn't happen anymore. That's the way journalists are supposed to be, but I don't think they are. That's the way.
I mean, look at the difference between the way the media is treating Barack Obama and the way Tim Russert treats everybody. MSNBC is in full-fledged love affair with Barack Obama, where you hear the reporters say chills went down their legs. That made a chill go up my spine when I heard that. Right across the street is the GE building, 30 Rock, NBC, they have moved MSNBC into the same building with NBC. Tim Russert was one of the guys who was fighting that. Tim Russert said, I've worked too long in my career to have you pair me with Keith Olbermann; that's not journalism, that's not fair and balanced. He was one of a dying breed. I have no idea who they would possibly replace that guy with.
You know, we all work in jobs that, it will go on. You know, I die tomorrow and it will go on. Somebody will replace me. But I have to tell you I honestly don't know who you would replace Tim Russert with. I haven't heard a soul that could fill his shoes. I don't think I've ever seen anyone in journalism that I feel the way I do about Tim Russert. Hopefully NBC gets it. Hopefully some of Tim Russert's relative dying words about, what are you doing over at NBC will be heeded now. The reports that I have read about what Tim Russert said about the move to the radical left of NBC. And look, you want to do that but just make sure that it's known as commentary. Journalists like that just don't exist. Tim Russert, you made a difference.
And you know what? I heard a lot of people who say, I never watched it because I was in church and now that I've seen all the things, I feel like I've missed something. You did. We all did. And we'll really know what we had now that he's gone.
Print
Email
