Wonkette
A week and a half ago NBC newsman and Meet the Press moderator Tim Russert died, and the earth stopped in its orbit and let out a wild yawp of despair for the most wonderful person who ever lived. Speculation quickly ensued about who would replace Russert in a job that he alone among all living humans was uniquely suited to do: sit in a chair and ask politicians questions. And now we know who will host Meet the Press until the “election,” which will be called off at the last minute when we start bombing Iran. It’s Tom Brokaw!
Tom Brokaw comes from South Dakota and talks funny. He attained fame and created a virtual cottage industry as the cultural ambassador for World War II porn enthusiasts by fetishizing a generation of people unfortunate enough to be born before the creation of the XBox and the abolishment of the draft. This generation was superior to all generations before or after, with the exception of Tim Russert, who was better than all of them combined.
Brokaw to moderate ‘Meet the Press’ [MSNBC]
I hope that for all of Brokaw’s tenure, each edition of Meet The Press will begin with the first 45 minutes being a slideshow retrospective of Tim Russert, accompanied by interviews with everyone he ever worked with talking about how amazing was his contribution to their lives, nay, the world.
I know Opie and Anthony are horrible in every way, but I know one of them can do a great impression of Brokaw’s voice. Used to crack me up every time.
Awesome. Who’s more hard-headed and confrontational, who’s more fearless when facing the great and powerful, who’s deviated septum produces a more pleasing nasally obstructed twang than…Brokaw?
Presumably the strategy is to return to the days when the program actually involved showcasing various members of the press, in sober suits, with gravitas sloshing about in freaking buckets. Unfortunately, if I’m jonesing for early 60s authoritarianism, I’m more disposed to wait for the debut of the second season of Mad Men.
Brokaw is no spring chicken himself. If he croaks before the election, who will take over for him? By that point surely the job will be considered cursed, and all we’ll be able to get is Seth McFarlane doing MTP as Stewie Griffin.
Eh, he’ll do fine as a caretaker. They need to find somebody that can shoot down unsuspecting shlubs like Russert, that’s what made that show great.
This generation was superior to all generations before or after, with the exception of Tim Russert, who was better than all of them combined.
No, no, no. Brokaw wrote a book about how the WWII generation could totally beat up the boomers. But then Russert turned around a wrote a book about how his dad could totally beat up the WWII generation with one arm tied behind his back.
Brokaw’s wife is sick of his “puttering” around the house, all his trolling on the internet pretending to do research for his next book, and when he sits in front of the TV watching the news shows and louding commenting that he could have done better.
In the immortal words of Bender: “Awww, crap.” I thought the obsequious Captain Hairspray and his Patriot Porn were going to be mostly out of the picture since his faux-retirement. No such luck, obviously.
Godless Liberal *: And that would be a bad thing why?
I’m disappointed. Brokaw is about as tenacious as Barbara Walters. Why didn’t they just choose her? It would have been a lateral move since Brokaw and Walters are interchangeable except maybe for the hair and the vagina.
“Mr. Brokaw, I knew Tim Russert. Tim Russert was a friend of mine. Mr. Brokaw, you are no Tim Russert.”
I was hoping for David Gregory. Or Star Jones.
…I was really holding out for George Stephanopoulos and his relevant and inquisitive line of questioning!
I bet there are objects crashing into the wall in Tweety’s office today.
fuck, george carlin just died. now he knew politics…
Tom Brokaw is so dreamy…
As near as I can make out, almost every Boomer on the planet gave his/her parents a copy of The Greatest Generation. If Brokaw brings to his new job the same marketing genius he brought to his choice of book topics, he’ll do OK. The Oldsters who didn’t get the book from their kids, BTW, bought their own copy and cussed out the little ingrates.
Bah, talking heads. We should just photoshop Walter Cronkite (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Cronkite) and synth his voice reading a script. Now *that’s* change we can believe in. Or not disbelieve very much.
Wait. The Baby Boomers aren’t the Greatest Generation?
But they WERE THERE IN THE 60s!!!!!!!
Oriana Fallaci has been dead for two years and she’s faster on the uptake than Brokaw.
If I’m being serious for a moment, a return to gravitas would be nice. So who is there in the DeeCee press corps who has the gravitas, the deeply researched and profoundly meditated positions (Niebuhr, Yoga, Yoda, repeat) the job requires?
People, don’t all shout at once: ANA MARIE COX!!!
I mean seriously, have any of you actually turned on the tee vee on a sunday morning, like, ever? Would someone with the terminal gravitas of a Garry Wills (how about Garry Wills AND George Will? Then you’d all be able to tell them apart….or not) force you to at least Tivo the program? I actually think she’d boost LIVE local viewership, if that actually matters to anyone.
As a single backup possibility, Paul Reubens would be perfect for the job and… he can use the exposure. I am serious as a heart attack about this: he Would Be Perfect. AMC would be Better Than Perfect (sorta like media grade inflation).
Watched Tim. Liked Tim. Tim was taken too soon. Don’t wish to begrudge Tim his moment.
But never in my adult life have I witnessed so maudlin a group orgy of self-congratulation from other media toads, basking in the reflected glory of a guy who, witnessing this from above, was probably spewing chunks of Buffalo wings.
Carville and his bride both gushing tears made me hurl chunks of Buffalo wings, and I’ve been a vegetarian since the Reagan admin. Never seen either of them shed a single tear for the hundreds of thousands of lives wasted in Iraq. But Tim? Oh my God, pass the hankies.
This weekend, some talking head said Tim’s passage was just like the JFK assassination. Has it really come to this?
Canuckledragger: Speaking as a media person, I have to say that the media community mourns nothing more than one of its own, if only to have the chance to talk about ourselves and the impact of a death on ourselves.
denniskempton: Precisely.
This will totally change the show. I used to sleep right through Tim Russert with my hangover from Saturday, then watch clips later here on Wonkette or wherever.
Now I’ll sleep right through Tom Brokaw with my hangover from Saturday, then watch clips later here on Wonkette or wherever.
Oh, and when I die, I don’t want the retrospectives to be set to crappy-ass music that would work equally well for a golf broadcast. I want Pantera, or Lamb of God or something.
the greatest generation WAS great. but now they’re mostly dementia-adled drool-bots scooting around in their roustabouts. in other words, McCain voters.
Greatest Generation: FAIL.
Canuckledragger: The only bright side in the media coverage of Russert’s death is that I didn’t hear anyone say “It’s the end of an era.” Then again, I wasn’t seeking that quote out, but only quietly dreading its arrival.
Martha Rountree 1947 – 1953
Ned Brooks 1953 – 1965
Lawrence E. Spivak 1966 – 1975
Bill Monroe 1975 – 1984
Roger Mudd / Marvin Kalb
(co-moderators) 1984 – 1985
Marvin Kalb 1985 – 1987
Chris Wallace 1987 – 1988
Garrick Utley 1989 – 1991
Tim Russert 1991 – June 2008
Tom Brokaw June 2008 – November, 2008
___________ ?
December 2008 - ???
Just please don’t make it Tucker Carlson.
Canuckledragger: Never watched Tim. Never heard of him til he died. But he looked nice enough.
But now that I heard that his one show was on Sunday morning, then the folks watching him should have been in church, which they weren’t. Cuz they stayed home in their pajamas and were watching Tim trying to moderate the shouting ‘mericans and keep them from lunging at each other (that’s how those shows usually work, right?). And so, perhaps, maybe, all the unchannelled religious fervor and political indignation that these guilt-ridden church skippin politico-junkies were goin’ thru got all twisted up. So when Tim died, the time was juuuuust right for a lachrymose catharsis of tears and grief whose real meaning was, “I should have gotten my ass to church and prayed for the thousands who died in Iraq….”
Oh never mind. It started off as a weak theory about the sacred and profane and now I am giving up.
Star Jones. I’m telling you. She’s The One. You get Strong Black Woman and Strong Black Woman Lawyer. You get Diversity and Racial Transcendence. She won’t take any line of bullshit from Lindsey Graham with his gay name and racist accent.
Botswana Meat Commission FC: Correct on all counts. Opie and Anthony are horrible in every way. They also do a Tom Brokaw bit that is one of the funniest things I’ve ever heard on the radio.
Brokaw should bare his bicep during his first show, exposing his “Tim + Tom = BFF” tatt.
I don’t care what you all say. At least Brokaw still has a heart (that didn’t explode).
Now that Brokaw is the moderator, will MTP be filmed at a Hardee’s at 5am, all guests forced to wear mesh hats covered with over 100 pins?
Now if he only had a brain- or the courage thing…
Oh screw it, neither did Tim.
You know what’s wrong? It isn’t illiteracy, Iraq, or incompetence. It’s that so much is paid and so much spent on an average white guy who sits and reads from a teleprompter, like you train parrots to do, if not dull Texans.
Clovis: I am unfamiliar with the term “train parrot?”
Clovis: But every time I visit the US, check in the hotel room, turn on the tube, a bunch of politicians are fighting and yelling and they are all talking at once, and the moderator is trying to decide which ones to shut up, as if any of them is worth listening to anyway. Usually within 10 minutes I can find the Seinfeld reruns and switch channels.
shortsshortsshorts: Tickets Please! Tickets Please! Sqwaack! Ticktets Please! Please have your Tickets Ready! Sqwaack! Sqwaack!
Elitist Republican Tard: Keith Olbermann, even if he’s got to take a tire iron to some kneecaps.
I’ve never watched MTP myself, either. But now I’ll have to tie one on early Sundays if I want to understand a word Brokaw says.
MoodProcessor: Jesus, I was way off. My guess involved Larry Craig and an aviary.
artbot2000: No way could Ana get up before noon on Sunday. Even then she’d be sucking down bloody marys and aspirin until 2, flushing her eyes with Visine until 3, and trying to figure out whose boxer shorts she found on the bedroom floor until 6. So fergit it.
Meet the Press? What is this show and can I find it on Hulu?
Rev. Peter Lemonjello: I this respect, I’d expect the train to be full of turkeys. All that gobbling…
MoodProcessor: IN this respect…In….tard….
Gerald Ford has been eaten by wolves, and he’s gay.
If Brokaw had any balls in the first place, he’d still be a water boy.
And Williams, who’s probably never even had enough other balls to even touch his own balls, certainly speaks even less to NBC’s balls, who after the bloodless and shriveled sacs of Jack Welch sucked all the liquid within his zone of power left NBC with a bunch of -pussies -most of whom, like Ann Coulter or Contessa “I can’t spell specific” Brewer, none of us would ever think of fucking -normally.
I see Brokaw transforming Meet the Press into something more in keeping both with the name of the show and his imperial status. Guests will enter, be introduced to Mr. Brokaw, allowed to kiss his ring, then quietly escorted out the side door.
Unless of course the guest is a member of THE GREATEST GENERATION THAT EVER LIVED SINCE GOD MIXED DUST AND WATER AND GAVE IT MOUTH TO MOUTH, in which case Brokaw will fall out of his chair prostate on the ground and weep We’re Not Worthy…We’re Not Worthy.
populucious: if it works for the pope it should work for brokaw, right? i think we need to get tommy-boy a funny pope hat just to be sure though.
denniskempton: “Speaking as a media person, I have to say that the media community mourns nothing more than one of its own, if only to have the chance to talk about ourselves and the impact of a death on ourselves.”
Oh absolutely, one media death is a tragedy. (All respect to Russert, but it seems impossible to dredge up any ire among the media anymore. It’s been “Fair and Balanced” out of them.)
I guess I was the only one rooting for Howard Stern. I’d actually go back to watching MTP if there was a chance somebody was going to ask Dick Cheney, “So, do you think the president and Laura ever do anal?” Actually, I’d pay a three-figure sum just so see Tom Brokaw ask that very question.
Olberman’s new glasses make his hair look grayer, and still a huge D-bag!