MONTANA 005

Absolutely zilch of general interest had been occurring in my world, and while that might suggest unlimited opportunities for blogging, the reality is that without meaningful things on which to discourse, one is forced to invent cute and witty vignettes and thus become as 99% of all bloggers. I resist inflicting inanities on those so generous as to accept my ministrations. And yet I recently received several e-mails inquiring as to the next post. Flattery works.

Then Mother Nature, perhaps as a warm-up to the impending hurricane season, wreaked floods and assorted tornados on the Midwest, creating the possibility of disaster response activity. My bag is packed.

And then Tim Russert died.

I must say, within my lifetime potentates and presidents have passed with less fanfare. The 24/7 news cycle screeched to a halt as the journalistic world scrambled to honor a giant among them. While it’s clear that there was added emphasis in homage to one of their own, it is equally apparent that Russert achieved a balance rarely found in modern reportage. He was surely a Democrat leaning liberal – he worked for Senator Daniel Patrick Monaghan and Gov. Mario Cuomo before embracing journalism, but he had that rare and fading ability to be tough and fair, incisive without being derisive, penetrating but not pompous, forceful but never vicious.

Although it’s arguable that all earthly departures are “untimely,” his apparent good health, boyish appearance, and age (58), brought the life/death cycle into clear focus, if only fleetingly.

Of all the stories, vignettes, and recollections tossed about over the weekend after his death, perhaps the most illuminating was an interview with Tom Brokaw promoting his most recent book, Wisdom of our Fathers. He speaks of a childhood devoid of play dates, summer camp, automobiles as sweet-16 birthday presents, and all the privileges now felt essential to shower upon children to insure their normal progression and guaranteed acceptance by the Ivy League.

He speaks instead of being a garbage man (sanitation worker, if you will) through 4 years of college, a job his father, Big Russ held, and which Russert came to respect even as he attended (on scholarship) a Jesuit high school with the sons of doctors and lawyers. Instead of teachers who worked overtime building self esteem, he recalls the priest who slammed him into a wall after some indiscretion, and when he asked for mercy, the priest replied, “God grants mercy; I administer justice.”

His passing also focuses on longevity, and suggests that a short life well lived will trump aging in mediocrity every day of the week.

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My recurring theme of the age of incivility has led me, quite by accident, to The Second Civil War, by Ronald Brownstein, which summarizes in 484 small-print pages the contention in my last blog that we are in an age of hyper-nastiness in American politics.

It is a fascinating, if heavy read, with historical documentation castigating both right and left (surprising, for a Los Angeles Times columnist), interweaving the excesses of Tom DeLay and the Daily Kos, Rush Limbaugh and Al Franken. He finds ample blame in every camp, though I must confess that I am not yet at the 2000-2008 chapters, which I suspect will fairly smolder with indignation.

Brownstein was more fair than I, as I attributed the current state of decline primarily to the left, when blame can and should be spread across the political spectrum. But he reaches an unsettling conclusion, at least in my interpretation, suggesting (perhaps inadvertently) that while periods of civility – he chops 150 years into 4 discreet packages, 2 of comity and 2 of incivility -- appear to be eras of good feeling, they often ill-serve the populace, as opposing views simply accommodate each other in order to gain acceptance of their own.

I may have to read the book again (once I have gotten through it the first time), but I believe his bottom line is that during periods of mean-spirited, backbiting, scorched-earth, take no prisoners politics, voters are treated to much clearer choices, and able to avoid the droppings of vast herds of un-gored oxen, rumbling through a society where everyone gets their way and no clear ideological path is discernable. So much for my “kinder and gentler” pleas.

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Over time I have derived some satisfaction, even pleasure, exposing the fallacy of certain “news” items, the most recent being Ronald Reagan’s trashing of George W. Bush as a moron and worse, which made planetary rounds at the speed of light and certainly brought untold glee to legions of the left. It happens that this was one of a plethora of “urban legends” that sound plausible but in fact are totally false.

Well, I have apparently been “gotcha-ed” by my reprinted “metaphors” supposedly taken from “real high school essays.” While I found them far more humorous than the typical fare I get sent in bulk e-mails, their true value was that these were (supposedly) high school kids stretching the limits of prose.

They actually came from a Washington Post Style Invitational in 1997, and while “supposedly” from high school essays, were almost certainly the product of fertile adult minds. While researching the subject I did find that a number of “respected” academic websites (I thought they all were) had reprinted the list as genuine. And so, Dear Diary, my ultimate humiliation, that of being lumped in with (shudder) respected academics.

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I am occasionally asked about the pathology of fretting over the lack of disasters that might otherwise afford me work. My best response is that I doubt emergency room staff go about praying for carnage, yet without same they would be out of business. And so, while I do not burn incense imploring Mother Nature to elevate and extend her wrath, I stand ready to pick up various bent and broken pieces of our national fabric rent asunder by natural or man (and woman)-made disasters. The excesses of the mighty Mississippi may afford that opportunity. Film at eleven.