From Willamette Week Online:
Rock ’N’ Roll Savior
Remembering Christian music’s unlikely forefather.
BY AMY MCCULLOUGH

Christian rock is probably the furthest thing from most kids’ minds when considering ways to rebel. But Greg Glover—host of KRNK’s Sunday night program, the Bottom Forty, and founder of local label Arena Rock Recording Company—was originally attracted to an album by “the father of Christian rock” with parental defiance in mind. “It was around 1980 in Dallas, Texas,” recalls Glover. “I used to spend my summers visiting my father, who’d remarried a woman [who] didn’t allow ‘secular’ music in the house—which was odd considering my mom had already taken me to see both Kiss and Alice Cooper by the time I’d reached my 10th birthday. Larry Norman just…looked like he had a clue, whereas most other Christian artists looked like preachers or your third-grade teacher. Larry was radical and I thought it would piss off my stepmom, so I bought it.”

Fast-forward about 28 years, and Glover had not only become friends with Norman, but was set to release a 20-track career-spanning collection of Norman’s work on Arena Rock. That compilation, Rebel Poet, Jukebox Balladeer: The Anthology, begins with a Zombies cover (Norman’s Bay Area psych group People! broke out with a mellowed, Billboard Top 20-placing version of “I Love You”), touches upon six of the singer’s 60 or so albums and includes lyrics and liner notes for every song. Musically, it ranges from jangle-folk rave-ups recalling Van Morrison (“Peacepollutionrevolution”) and Dylan-esque stream-of-consciousness storytelling (“Nightmare #71”) to tender, psych-tinged ballads examining love and personal identity (“I’ve Got to Learn to Live Without You”). But Norman’s bread and butter—despite the “father of Christian rock” tag—was more morality and social commentary that straightforward religiosity.

“His songs weren’t just about ‘praising the Lord’ or ‘heaven,’” Glover explains. “They were social snapshots from a moral point of view. He didn’t beat you over the head with his beliefs, nor did he sound dated like all the other music in that genre.” But it was Norman’s ability to incorporate those beliefs into a rock ’n’ roll sound and image—he was a huge Elvis fan—that both earned him a fervent (if small) following and cast him as an outsider. Just as the Pixies’ Frank Black—who names Norman as his “rock ’n’ roll hero” and recalls dressing in head-to-toe black “just like Larry”—was fascinated with Norman’s persona, Christian music fans didn’t know what to do with him. “The lines weren’t as blurred 30 years ago as they are now,” says Glover. “Christian music back then was Jimmy Swaggart. It certainly wasn’t this long-haired, freaky-lookin’ guy who sang about Vietnam, Jesus and venereal disease. Larry was the ultimate paradox....”

And, much like Dylan or Van Morrison—who were Norman’s contemporaries rather than his inspirations (both have cited Norman as an influence)—Norman’s music still, perhaps unfortunately, rings true today. Glover, who describes Norman as “a control freak in a good way,” agrees: “Take ‘I Am the Six O’Clock News,’ for example. It was written over 35 years ago, yet applies to what is going on in the world in 2008.” Which is why Glover, 38, couldn’t help but approach Norman when he learned the songwriter was living in Salem. “I can’t tell you how nervous I was when I drove down for our initial meeting,” says Glover. Eventually, though, the two were close enough that Norman would call Glover to “make sure I had somewhere to spend Christmas or Thanksgiving, or to invite me to the movies or tell me to listen to the remastered edition of The Joshua Tree.” Which makes it all the more tragic that Norman passed away at the age of 60, due to heart failure, on Feb. 24, 2008—two months before the release of Rebel Poet.

Glover, who says the album’s release was pushed back a few times due to its extensive packaging, is understandably torn up: “I’m completely devastated that I can’t walk into a store with him and point to The Anthology on the shelves. He’d have smiled that big, goofy and kind smile of his and probably wanted to change the album cover just to drive me nuts!” Even so, when Norman’s voice asks in the song of same name, “Why should the devil have all the good music?” Glover—and anyone who’s spent time with Norman’s music—has an answer: He doesn’t.

From SFGate.com:
Winslow's surfer story unfolds at breakneck speed
BY BRUCE DeSILVA, Associated Press Writer

Friday, May 30, 2008

(05-30) 14:28 PDT , (AP) --

"Dawn Patrol" (Knopf, 307 pages, $23.95), by Don Winslow: Growing up is hard. It's easier to hang out at the beach and surf.

The friends always gather at dawn to ride the waves near San Diego's Crystal Pier: Boon Daniels, Hang Twelve, Dave the Love God, High Tide, Johnny Banzai and Sunny Day.

Work? That's something you have to do to make a few bucks for grub and board wax. So Dave's a lifeguard, Sunny's a waitress, Johnny's a cop, and Boone does a little private investigating.

But they don't take their jobs as seriously as, say, their daily debate over The List of Things That Are Good.

"I propose moving fish tacos over all-female outrigger canoe teams," Boone says one morning, precipitating a vigorous debate.

So Boone is only mildly interested when Petra Hall, a lawyer for a fire insurance company, shows up seeking his help.

It seems that Dan Silver, the owner of a strip club called Silver Dan's, has torched one of his buildings and is trying to collect on the policy. A stripper named Tammy Roddick witnessed the arson, which would make this a slam dunk case except for one thing. Nobody's been able to find her since someone hired to keep her from testifying threw her best friend off a balcony in a case of mistaken identity.

Reluctantly, Boone agrees to take the case as long as it doesn't interfere with priority 1: surfing the once-in-a-lifetime tidal surge that is expected to hit the coast in a couple of days.

These are good times for Winslow, a New York-born, Rhode Island-raised, California transplant who has written 10 previous crime novels including the excellent "California Fire and Life." Laurence Fishburne starred in a 2007 movie based on one of them, "The Death and Life of Bobby Z." And now, Michael Mann is directing and Robert De Niro is starring in an adaptation of Winslow's "The Winter of Frankie Machine," which is scheduled for release next year.

In "Dawn Patrol," Winslow keeps the mood light at first. The interplay between the quirky surfer buddies is laugh-out-loud funny. The bad guys seem buffoonish. And the relaxed pace allows plenty of time for quirky digressions about surfing culture and the history of the Southern California coast.

But gradually, the pace quickens, the stakes grow higher, and the bad guys reveal themselves as truly evil. Boone and his surfer buddies have to grow up in a hurry as the last third of this well-crafted book unfolds at breakneck speed.

Rick Loomis / Los Angeles Times

From the Los Angeles Times:
BOOKS
A surfer shamus in Don Winslow's 'Dawn Patrol'
The novelist's new work hugs the Southern California coast
but embraces a wider world.
By Scott Timberg

June 9, 2008

Waves breaking just a few feet away, the detective novelist Don Winslow was sitting on the patio of a Laguna Beach cafe with a view of the ocean below, looking like a private eye trying to avoid detection. A compact, wiry man whose intense green eyes flashed under a baseball cap, Winslow, 54, was talking about the strip of the coast that runs from San Diego through southern Orange County.

"What I think is emerging is a different kind of society," said Winslow, "based on the amazing ethnic variety. San Diego County no longer has any ethnic majority. Look around you," he said, pointing across the diners, most of them digging into fish tacos, who included a mix of Asian, Pacific Islander, Latino and Caucasian.

"It's also developing its own language, with little bits of Hawaiian and Filipino and Spanish, especially when you mix the language of surf culture, which has always been fun to me," he continued. "I wanted to write in that new language, about that new scene."

Winslow's new novel, "The Dawn Patrol," is set in that milieu, with a Japanese cop nicknamed Johnny Banzai, a Hawaiian drug mogul named Red Eddie, a collection of migrant workers from Mexico and a cast of Anglos that includes the macho strip-club owner Dan Silver and the uptight lawyer Petra Hall. Although the story never gets more than a few miles from the ocean, it spans a wide world, indeed.

The book's core is a collection of five friends who, despite working jobs that sometimes bring them into conflict with each other, meet at sunrise each morning to take the early waves as the Dawn Patrol. Among them is Boone Daniels, an ex-cop with a beat-up van who runs a private-investigation office above a surf shop.

Echoes of McGee

Besides the setting, the book has little in common with the often brooding "surf-noir" novels of Kem Nunn. A cult figure for years, Nunn became nationally known after his novel "John From Cincinnati" was turned into a (short-lived) HBO series, directed by David Milch. Daniels is more a West Coast equivalent of John D. MacDonald's Travis McGee, the beach-bum P.I. who lived on a Fort Lauderdale houseboat.

"The Dawn Patrol" -- which could be a breakthrough for Winslow, who has garnered praise from James Ellroy and Ian Rankin without becoming well known -- seems an inevitable step for the journeyman writer who's about a decade into a career setting noir novels in Southern California. And though he's lived for the last few years in the ranch country an hour inland from San Diego, the book was a way for this swamp Yankee to get back to his love of surfing and the sea.

With its short chapters, comic characters, hairpin plot turns and snappy dialogue, the novel can feel at times lighter than air. But it includes a considerable amount of violence, a heartbreaking subplot and its share of sleazy characters.

"One reason I find SoCal so interesting is that there's so much beauty -- and that's real," Winslow said. "But there's another layer underneath it that's not so pretty. One thing I wanted to do was run those two tracks simultaneously -- without backing off of either."

Making of a storyteller

Winslow's hometown, next to the Rhode Island fishing village of Matunuck, was the kind of place where poverty was close -- if you don't study hard, parents used to tell their kids, you'll be sweeping fish guts off the plant floor.

But he retains an affection for those years as well: Winslow calls a "khaki-collar" upbringing -- he's the son of a Navy noncom father who was "a great raconteur" and a librarian mother who encouraged him to read widely -- the best possible preparation to become a writer.

His parents would rent a lakeside cottage for a month each summer, inviting his dad's Navy friends to come visit as long as they would toss aside any privilege of rank.

"You'd wake up and there would be five sailors on the floor, and there were scuba divers and Marines and Navy nurses. So you had these storytellers around you. I learned very early that if I was quiet and kind of hid, they'd pretend not to know I was there. So I had these stories from around the world -- and I always thought it would be the best thing in the world to be, if I could, to be a storyteller. But it was a bit of a long and winding road to get there."

Winslow moved to New York in the late '70s to help a friend manage a series of movie theaters as a way to finance his literary ambitions.

When the theater job fell through, he turned to something that offered, at least, a steady paycheck. He became a private investigator, working in the back alleys off Times Square -- "you'd think you were walking on seashells, but they were crack vials" -- and busting pickpockets in movie theaters. That, he said, was fun, but it didn't seem to be leading anywhere.

That was followed by a master's degree in military history, itinerant years leading safaris in Kenya and hiking trips in China's Sichuan province and, eventually, gigs as a consultant and investigator who made frequent trips to the West Coast. He was writing novels, starting with "A Cool Breeze on the Underground" in 1991, set amid London's punk scene and written in tents and buses all over the world, but wasn't making much money.

"I started to come out here because of arson," Winslow recalled. "This was in the '90s and everything that people had bought on margin, when things were fat and happy, they were burning down."

Working as an investigator meant picking up some technical knowledge -- an accidental fire has one point of origin, but a building burned to the ground will have several -- as well as a lot of paperwork and fact checking.

"The really fun stuff was finding ways to explain the science to a jury in a way they could understand. That's really what they wanted me for -- as much as a storyteller as an investigator."

That narrative became important, since the visual evidence of an arson case was usually a black, ashy photograph. "It's hard to photograph a burned structure. If you're trained to look at it, you can see a certain burn pattern that tells you one thing but not another. But how do you communicate it?"

By the mid-'90s, fascinated and inspired by views of the Pacific, he moved out here with his wife, Jean, and infant son. "We lived in hotels and residence inns, in Orange County and San Diego, for close to three years, and it was great." He wrote and surfed -- not well -- at beaches like San Onofre and Laguna.

Along the way, he kept writing until, in 1997, his novel "The Death and Life of Bobby Z" -- a thriller written on the Metrolink train between San Juan Capistrano and downtown L.A. -- took off. Warner Bros. bought the rights to it one day, and Knopf a few days later. "And my life changed, literally, overnight."

Finally, after six books, he could quit his day job.

Film in the works

He has also spent some time writing screenplays, and his 2006 novel, "The Winter of Frankie Machine," is currently in pre-production, with Michael Mann directing and Robert De Niro in the lead.

"I like his brevity, I like the way he can cover a lot of time in a few pages," said Southland novelist T. Jefferson Parker, a friend and admirer. "He's so light and so nimble with the storytelling. He gets this high-velocity storytelling going, seemingly effortless, though I know there's a lot of effort involved in writing that perfectly. He knows what to leave out and when to get offstage."

So far, it's been a fruitful season for surf books.

Spring has seen David Rensin's "All for a Few Perfect Waves," about surfer Miki Dora; Bob Greene's "When We Get to Surf City"; and "Breath," a coming-of-age novel by Tim Winton, one of Australia's most decorated novelists.

As he drove and walked past some of SoCal's legendary surf spots -- Salt Creek, Dana Point Harbor, once home to the fearsome "Killer Dana" wave that crashed into a wall of rocks and took surfers with it -- Winslow talked about surf lore, about how shape is often more important than a wave's size, about how angry he gets to see construction and development at his old favorite spots. He was so into this history that he offered a "stop me when you've had enough" before one of his miniature lessons.

But it's clear that Winslow is more interested in the characters and their argot than the technical or even physical side of surfing. His larger-than-life characters are among his novel's pleasures.

Winslow's P.I., Daniels, seems like the kind of laid-back dude whose most deeply held principle is that everything tastes better on a tortilla. Over the course of the book, he shows himself to be tormented, heroic and complicated.

"I wanted a lead character who embodied the ocean," Winslow said. "So in the sense that if you look out there at it now, it looks very placid, but that can change in a heartbeat. There's something going on underneath."

FOR THE RECORD:
Surf writer: An article in the Monday Calendar section about detective novelist Don Winslow said that another writer who works in the same surfing milieu, Kem Nunn, became nationally known after his novel "John From Cincinnati" was turned into an HBO series. While Nunn was a co-creator, co-executive producer and a writer on the television series "John From Cincinnati," none of his novels has that title or was adapted for the series. —

scott.timberg@latimes.com

McCain Scores With Offshore Drilling Proposal
By Dick Morris and Eileen McGann

John McCain has drawn first blood in the political debate following Barack Obama's victory in the primaries. His call yesterday for offshore oil drilling - and Bush's decision to press the issue in Congress - puts the Democrats in the position of advocating the wear-your-sweater policies that made Jimmy Carter unpopular.

With gas prices nearing $5, all of the previous shibboleths need to be discarded. Where once voters in swing states like Florida opposed offshore drilling, the high gas prices are prompting them to reconsider. McCain's argument that even hurricane Katrina did not cause any oil spills from the offshore rigs in the Gulf of Mexico certainly will go far to allay the fears of the average voter.

For decades, Americans have dragged their feet when it comes to switching their cars, leaving their SUVs at home, and backing alternative energy development and new oil drilling. But the recent shock of a massive surge in oil and gasoline prices has awakened the nation from its complaisance. The soaring prices are the equivalent of Pearl Harbor in jolting us out of our trance when it comes to energy.

Suddenly, everything is on the table. Offshore drilling, Alaska drilling, nuclear power, wind, solar, flex-fuel cars, plug-in cars are all increasingly attractive options and John McCain seems alive to the need to go there while Obama is strangely passive. During the Democratic primary, he opposed a gas tax holiday and continues to be against offshore and Alaska drilling and squishy on nuclear power. That leaves turning down your thermostat and walking to work as the Democratic policies.

McCain has also been ratcheting up his attacks on oil speculators. With the total value of trades in oil futures soaring from $13 billion in 2003 to $260 billion today, it is increasingly clear that it is not the supply and demand for oil which is, alone, driving up the price, but it is the supply and demand for oil futures which is stoking the upward movement.

The Saudis have made a fatal mistake in not forcing down the price of oil. We could have gone for decades as their hostage, letting their control over our oil supplies choke us while enriching them. But they got greedy and let the price skyrocket. The sudden shock which has sent America reeling is just the stimulus we need for a massive movement away from imported oil and toward new types of cars.

The political will for major change in our energy policy is now here and those, like Obama, who don't get it need to rethink their positions. To quote FDR, “this great nation calls for action and action now” on the energy issue. What has been a back-burner problem now has moved onto center stage and McCain has put himself in the forefront.

The Democratic ambivalence stems from liberal concerns about climate change. The Party basically doesn't believe in carbon based energy and, therefore, opposes oil exploration. That's why Obama pushes the windfall profits tax on oil companies - a step that tells them “you drill, you find oil, and we'll take away your profits.” But Americans have their priorities in order: more oil, more drilling AND alternative energy sources, flex-fuel cars, plug in vehicles and nuclear power.

With his willingness to respond to the gas price crisis with bold measures, McCain shows himself to be a pragmatist while Obama comes off as an ideologue to puts climate change ahead of making it possible for the average American to get to work.

Of course, the high price of gas makes it inevitable that the US will lead the world in fighting climate change. With $5 gas, Americans will switch en masse to cars that burn less gasoline. Already we have cut our oil consumption by 500,000 barrels a day in the past year (about a 3% cut). The move away from oil will be exponential from here on out, dooming radical Islam and reversing climate change at the same time. But while we are getting new cars, we need more oil and McCain has flanked Obama on this issue. Big time.

My Friend and My Source
By Robert Novak

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- A 26-year-old political operative from Buffalo on Daniel Patrick Moynihan's staff in 1977 was overshadowed by the all-star cast accompanying the newly elected senator to Washington. Not for the last time, Timothy J. Russert surpassed famous contemporaries. His first noteworthy feat was saving Moynihan from sure defeat for re-election, enabling an illustrious 24-year Senate career.

Moynihan was in the Senate on a fluke, because multiple competitors divided New York's prevailing liberal vote in the 1976 Democratic primary. His Senate staff was dominated by glittering neo-conservatives, but young Russert deftly convinced Moynihan he must move left to survive. The neocons all departed Moynihan and the Democratic Party, but Russert stayed and became his principal adviser.

Russert from the start also was an extraordinary source for me. The careful preparation that became his journalistic trademark was obvious in our conversations, when he always had something for my column -- most of it about Moynihan's adversaries. He was superb in "oppo" -- research about the opposition. That skill propelled him to the top of television interviewers.

Early in 1982, over drinks in a Manhattan restaurant, Tim pulled from his briefcase accurate derogatory information about Republican Rep. Bruce Caputo, who was planning to run against Moynihan. That finished Caputo.

Russert left Moynihan for Gov. Mario Cuomo in hopes of making him president, a goal much clearer to him than it was to the governor. The peculiar pro-Cuomo slant of this column could be attributed to Russert. He arranged a secret dinner at an obscure waterfront steakhouse for me with Andrew Cuomo, now attorney general of New York, but then his father's reclusive, enormously influential young adviser.

Russert went to NBC as a New York-based executive, but soon got back to Washington as the network's bureau chief. He was concerned, he told me, by the decline of "Meet the Press" under distinguished TV journalists following Lawrence Spivak's retirement as moderator in 1975, and requested my ideas in writing. Whittaker Chambers in 1952 said the program was "fun for the boys but death for the frogs," and I wrote Russert saying that softer questioning had become too much fun for the frogs. He agreed.

When he first took a seat on the "Meet the Press" panel with no on-camera experience, Russert asked me whether there was anything improper about that. There wasn't. He became moderator and gradually eliminated the questioning panel. It was a master stroke, soon copied by the other Sunday interview shows.

Russert sought advice from "Meet the Press" founder Spivak, who had been responsible for the program's previous pre-eminence. Spivak told him to question all guests as his adversaries, no matter what their political and ideological orientation. Russert could not abandon his liberal Democratic mindset 41 years in the making, but he could -- and did -- keep it hidden on Sunday mornings.

Because of Russert's preparation, appearing on "Meet the Press" was like a visit to the dentist. Prominent politicians, such as John Edwards and Hillary Clinton, thought they could avoid this ordeal. But none did. I know this because I talked with Russert on the telephone two or three times a month.

Tim and I disagreed on tax policy and other issues, but we never debated over the phone. Instead, we exchanged political information, and I usually was the recipient. He supplied for use in my column news tidbits he could not use. During my half century of journalism, he was the only colleague who was a source.

Russert and I were both uncomfortable about being witnesses, for different reasons, in the Valerie Plame CIA leak case, but we never discussed it. He always supported me, despite demands that he throw me overboard. When my memoir was published last year, Russert was generous in granting me abundant time on "Meet the Press" and his own MSNBC program.

So, I lost a friend. But in Illinois last weekend to attend a banquet of the American College of Surgeons in Chicago and my 60th high school reunion in Joliet, I was moved by grief of people who had never met Tim Russert but felt a personal sense of loss. That made him unique among journalists and indeed today's Washington personages.

Copyright 2008, Creators Syndicate Inc.

The casket for Tim Russert, host of NBC's 'Meet the Press',
is carried into Holy Trinity Church in the Georgetown neighborhood
of Washington, 18 Jun 2008
From The New York Times:
Russert’s Son Sounds a Theme of Unity at Funeral
By JACQUES STEINBERG

WASHINGTON — In death, Tim Russert did on Wednesday what no living journalist has yet to accomplish this campaign season: he got Barack Obama and John McCain to sit together and talk, quietly.

Specifically, it was Mr. Russert’s son, Luke, 22, who got the presumptive Democratic and Republican nominees together. He requested that they sit next to each other at his father’s funeral at Holy Trinity Church in Georgetown. Then, in remarks from the pulpit, he exhorted them and other politicians to “engage in spirited debate but disavow the low tactics that distract Americans from the most important issues facing our country.” At the end of the service, the two candidates embraced.

“Five months from now,” Luke Russert said a few hours later, “I wanted them to remember that this occasion brought them together.”

While that moment occurred at a private gathering, Tim Russert, who died suddenly of a heart attack on Friday, was honored later at a memorial service at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Acts that felt like an enormously special edition of the program he moderated, “Meet the Press.”

Televised live on MSNBC beginning at 4 p.m., the 90-minute memorial featured a collection of politicians, journalists and news executives who could not otherwise be found under the same roof. Former President Bill Clinton sat between his wife, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, and Condoleezza Rice, the secretary of state serving in his successor’s administration. Nearby were Madeleine K. Albright, a secretary of state in the Clinton administration, and former Senator Bob Dole, Mr. Clinton’s Republican rival in the 1996 presidential race.

Afterward, David Axelrod, Mr. Obama’s chief campaign strategist, huddled in the lobby of the Kennedy Center with Terry McAuliffe, the chairman of Mrs. Clinton’s recently concluded race for the Democratic nomination.

Tom Brokaw, the former anchor of “NBC Nightly News,” spoke at the memorial service, as Dan Rather, his former rival from CBS, looked on from the audience. Brian Williams, Mr. Brokaw’s successor, spoke as well, with Charles Gibson of “World News” on ABC and Katie Couric of the “CBS Evening News” also in attendance. They were joined by Barbara Walters, Diane Sawyer and Bob Woodruff of ABC; Chris Wallace of Fox News; and many colleagues of Mr. Russert’s at NBC, including Chris Matthews, David Gregory, Andrea Mitchell, Lester Holt, Joe Scarborough and Ann Curry. (Ms. Curry and her “Today” co-hosts, Matt Lauer and Meredith Vieira, also attended the morning funeral; they had broadcast their program from Washington, instead of New York, so they would be on time.)

Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, who helped bring down President Richard M. Nixon with their coverage of the Watergate break-in in The Washington Post, were there, too, as was their editor, Benjamin C. Bradlee.

Those who spoke at the afternoon service — including Mario M. Cuomo, the former governor of New York who once employed Mr. Russert as his counselor, and the historian Doris Kearns Goodwin — labored at times to tell stories that they and others had not shared previously in the endless loop of cable coverage that followed Mr. Russert’s death at 58.

But the final appearance was one that was unbilled in the program and known, in advance, to only a few: a special acoustic performance by Bruce Springsteen, a hero to Mr. Russert and a friend as well. He was shown via satellite from Cologne, Germany, where he is on tour, on a large screen that suddenly descended from between the center’s shimmering chandeliers.

The song he played was “Thunder Road.” It elicited some sobs in the darkened theater, including for the lines, “Climb in back, heaven’s waiting on down the tracks.”

From The Wall Street Journal:
Russert Took Media Bias Seriously
By BERNARD GOLDBERG

June 18, 2008

There have been millions of words written and spoken in the past few days about Tim Russert -- words about how Tim knew his beat better than almost anyone in Washington, about how hard work was in his blue-collar DNA, and about what a decent guy he was. All true.

But days later another reality has finally sunk in: that while his colleagues loved and admired Tim, I'm not at all sure they really understood him, not the part that made him so important in American journalism, anyway.

Knowing politics as well as he did was part of it, for sure. But a lot of people in Washington know politics. Asking probing questions was part of it, too. But again, Tim didn't have a patent on tough questions. And it wasn't just that (unlike too many others) he was fair to both sides. No, what made Tim Russert different, and better, I think was his willingness to listen to -- and take seriously -- criticism about his own profession. He was willing, for example, to keep an open mind about a hot-button issue like media bias -- an issue that so many of his colleagues dismiss as the delusions of right-wing media haters. (Trust me on this one, I worked at CBS News for 28 years and know Dan Rather personally.)

In 2001, my first book, "Bias," came out. It was an insider's look at bias in the media. Not one network news correspondent would have anything to do with me. I couldn't get on any of their morning news shows to talk about the book (which was a national best seller), or their evening shows or their weekend shows or even their middle-of-the-night news shows. No one in network television wanted to discuss the issue, no matter how many Middle Americans thought it was important.

Russert was the lone exception.

He had me on his CNBC interview show, and we talked about bias for a full hour. He had me on his show two other times. About five years ago, we turned the tables and I interviewed him for a book I was writing on the arrogance that I believe pervades too much of American journalism.

Tim was a big proponent of diversity, but he wanted to go further than the usual stuff. "I am for having women in the newsroom and minorities in the newsroom -- I'm all for it. It opens up our eyes and gives us different perspectives. But just as well, let's have people with military experience; let's have people from all walks of life, people from the top-echelon schools but also people from junior colleges and the so-called middling schools -- that's the pageantry of America . . . You need cultural diversity, you need ideological diversity. You need it."

Tim understood that without that kind of diversity, journalism would be in trouble. He knew it wasn't good for journalism or America if almost all the people reporting the news lived and worked in the same bubble.

"There's a potential cultural bias. And I think it's very real and very important to recognize and to deal with," he told me. "Because of backgrounds and training you come to issues with a preconceived notion or a preordained view on subjects like abortion, gun control, campaign finance. I think many journalists growing up in the '60s and the '70s have to be very careful about attitudes toward government, attitudes toward the military, attitudes toward authority. It doesn't mean there's a rightness or a wrongness. It means you have to constantly check yourself."

"Why the closed-mindedness when the subject comes around to media bias?" I asked him.

"That, to me, is totally contrary to who we're supposed to be as journalists. . . . If someone suggested there was an anti-black bias, an anti-gay bias, an anti-American bias, we'd sit up and say, 'Let's talk about this, let's tackle it.' Well, if there's a liberal bias or a cultural bias we have to sit up and tackle it and discuss it. We have got to be open to these things."

His many friends in journalism -- the ones who spend their lives inside that comfortable, elitist bubble -- would do well to take those words to heart. Facing up to their biases and making a conscious effort to get rid of what Tim called "preferred positions" on important social issues (for abortion and against guns, for example) would be a lasting tribute to Tim.

We ended our conversation that day with an exchange about the criticism he took from some on the political left for wearing a red, white and blue ribbon on his lapel when he interviewed Vice President Dick Cheney on Sept. 16, 2001. He told me a good friend of his died at the World Trade Center on 9/11, and that the friend's family had asked if he would wear the ribbon, "and I never thought for a second about it."

"I want a debate about national security and who defines national security," he said. "I understand all that. But in the end, you have to make judgments, and on that day I made a judgment that five days after the most horrific event of my lifetime and of my journalistic career, that for me to say to the country I too am part of this, I too have experienced this gut-wrenching pain and agony, and I too have enormous remorse and sympathy, with not only the people who died in the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and in the field in Pennsylvania, but all of us -- we're in this together. This isn't covering Democrats and Republicans or the Bills versus the Redskins; this is us. The Taliban doesn't believe in the First Amendment."

"But what about those who say journalists shouldn't wear red, white and blue ribbons, that by doing that somehow you're taking the government's side in some debate or another," I asked him.

"It is imperative," he told me, "that we never suggest that there's a moral equivalency between the United States of America and the terrorists. Period. I'll believe that until the day I die."

Which was way too soon.

Mr. Goldberg, a correspondent at CBS News from 1972 to 2000, is the author of "Bias: A CBS Insider Exposes How the Media Distort the News" (Regnery, 2001) and, most recently, "Crazies to the Left of Me, Wimps to the Right" (HarperCollins, 2007).

Maureen Orth, widow of Tim Russert, center, and their son, Luke Russert,
watch as the casket is carried from Holy Trinity Church in Washington. (AP)

Russert Is Remembered at Memorial Service
By William Branigin and Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, June 18, 2008

Tim Russert, the renowned television journalist who died suddenly Friday, was remembered today as a larger-than-life figure who wielded enormous influence on the U.S. political scene while earning the admiration of ordinary Americans across the country.

In a memorial service at the Kennedy Center in Washington, the long-time host of NBC's Sunday morning interview program, "Meet the Press," was eulogized by speakers who included former NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw, former New York governor Mario Cuomo, a Roman Catholic nun who taught him in seventh grade and his 22-year-old son, Luke Russert.

The service concluded with a surprise big-screen appearance by rock star Bruce Springsteen, who performed his song, "Thunder Road," by video hookup from Europe, where he is on tour. For Russert, Brokaw said, Springsteen was "one guest he was never able to persuade to appear on 'Meet the Press.'"

Russert died of a heart attack Friday at age 58 while working at his Washington office in preparation for the next edition of "Meet the Press," which he had hosted since 1991. He gained national renown for his tough interviews with powerful politicians of all stripes, for his acumen and passion for politics, his prodigious preparation and for a down-to-earth manner that reflected his upbringing in a blue-collar, Irish Catholic family in Buffalo, N.Y.

"This is a celebration, and we're gonna do it Irish style," Brokaw announced at the start of the first eulogy. The tributes, he said, would include "some tears, some laughs, and the occasional truth."

He told the star-studded gathering of prominent politicians, television journalists and other dignitaries, "Our friend, Timothy J. Russert, was a man who awoke every morning as if he had just won the lottery the day before." And he was "determined to share his good fortune," Brokaw said.

In the outpouring of emotion that followed his death last week, expressions of love and loss came from people of all walks of life, he said. "They felt our loss because they saw Tim as their beefy Irish cop on a corner in a neighborhood called America," Brokaw said.

At one point, Brokaw hoisted a bottle of Rolling Rock beer, Russert's favorite, that he said he had "pilfered from Tim's cooler in Washington." He said he was saving it for Election Day in November, when he would pay tribute to his late colleague by pouring it into a mug given to him by Russert's father.

Brian Williams, Brokaw's successor as NBC Nightly News anchor, said Russert had "the original sunny disposition." His last words, Williams said, were an upbeat greeting to the editing supervisor at NBC's Washington bureau: "What's happening?"

Williams joked that in Russert's "only attempt at vanity," he spent a fortune on his hair at a fashionable Georgetown salon. "On the day he got it done, he looked outstanding for 60 to 90 minutes afterwards," Williams said. Then he "just went back to being Tim."

In the NBC News division, it "feels like we've lost our soul, our moral compass, our glue," said Betsy Fisher, executive producer of "Meet the Press."

Maria Shriver, a former NBC reporter and now first lady of California, said Russert was like a brother to her.

Al Hunt, executive Washington editor for Bloomberg News and a longtime friend of Russert's, called him "the preeminent political journalist in America", a man who was "tough but civil" to his show's guests while showing "enormous respect for his viewers and the noble calling of politics."

Cuomo, for whom Russert worked as a counselor before joining NBC, said his success as a journalist did not explain the "the tremendous outburst of deep sadness" that his death evoked in ordinary Americans.

"We have lost the benefit of Tim's political wisdom at a time when we need it most," Cuomo said. "It will be difficult if not impossible to replace that wisdom, but the inspiration he provided as an example of the life well-led will be with us all until memory fails."

Luke Russert, the final eulogist, spoke of his father's compassion and innate good cheer.

"I never met anyone filled with so much optimism," he said. "My dad was a force of nature, and now his own cycle in nature is complete, but his spirit lives on," the 22-year-old recent graduate of Boston College said. "I love you, Dad, and in his words, let us all go get 'em."

The memorial service followed a private funeral service at Holy Trinity Catholic Church in Georgetown that was attended by members of Washington's elite. Among those present were Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), the presidential candidates of their respective parties in the November elections.

Obama and McCain sat next to each other, honoring a request by the Russert family, the Associated Press reported.

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg also attended, as did Senate Majority leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.), House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and a number of lawmakers from both parties. The honorary pallbearers included Williams, "Today" show host Matt Lauer and sports commentator Bryant Gumbel, a former "Today" show host.

As Russert's widow, writer Maureen Orth, looked on, Luke Russert said in a eulogy at the funeral service that it was impossible to explain his bond with his father, whom he called "my best friend." Giving what he described as his father's last speech, the recent graduate of Boston College urged parents to hug their children, politicians to avoid "low tactics" and journalists to practice integrity and honesty, AP reported.

In a homily, Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, the archbishop emeritus of Washington, called Russert "truly one of the great communicators in American society."

An hour before the memorial service began at the Kennedy Center, NBC chief executive Jeff Zucker, anchor Ann Curry, MSNBC hosts Chris Matthews and Joe Scarborough, CBS's Katie Couric and ABC's Barbara Walters and Diane Sawyer made their way past a phalanx of cameras along the red-carpeted, flag-bedecked Grand Foyer. Outside, NBC's Andrea Mitchell and her husband, former Fed chairman Alan Greenspan, comforted Russert's widow.

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) and former president Bill Clinton joined the host of dignitaries at the invitation-only service in the Kennedy Center's Concert Hall.

From proteinwisdom.com:
Barack Obama: The Undistinguished Gentleman
[Karl]

A commenter with a fondness for science-fiction writes:

why does it drive u into a frenzy that ppl believe in O and admire him?

The short answer is that it doesn’t, though it strikes me as somewhat irrational and disproportionate to his supposed public accomplishments.

From June 1985 to May 1988, Obama was a community organizer with the Developing Communities Project in Chicago, working primarily to organize a housing project called Altgeld Gardens. According to the Boston Globe:

For all its impact on Obama, Altgeld Gardens today seems far from the kind of success story politicians like to tout.

Dozens of buildings are boarded up, with fences surrounding much of the property. The roads are a potholed mess. Blinking lights illuminate a series of towers where police have mounted cameras.

That’s change you can believe in. Moreover, Hazel Johnson, who has lived at Altgeld Gardens since 1962 – and was an organizer long before Obama appeared on the scene – claims Obama has exaggerated his role in getting asbestos removed from the projects. Otherwise, Obama did not get much done — and even had difficulty explaining what a “community organizer” did.

He then departed for Harvard Law School, where he was elected the first black president of the Harvard Law Review. The title gained him notoriety, as reported by the New York Times:

He was approached by an agent, Jane Dystel, who got him a contract for a book. Obama missed his deadline, and Dystel promptly got him another contract and a $40,000 advance for the same book.

Obama finished the book while living in Bali.

Obama returned to Chicago, where he directed Illinois Project Vote! from April-October 1992. This was a project for ACORN — an ostensibly non-partisan (but actually partisan) voter registration group often charged with voter registration fraud. Nor was his involvement altruistic; the group would later provide the shock troops for his political campaigns.

In his first race for the state Senate in 1996, Obama employed Chicago rules to invalidate the voting petition signatures of three of his challengers, thus running unopposed on the Democratic ticket in a heavily Democrat district:

“That was Chicago politics,” said John Kass, a veteran Chicago Tribune columnist. “Knock out your opposition, challenge their petitions, destroy your enemy, right? It is how Barack Obama destroyed his enemies back in 1996 that conflicts with his message today. He may have gotten his start registering thousands of voters. But in that first race, he made sure voters had just one choice.”

Nothing illegal about it, but nothing particularly inspiring about it, either.

Though Obama served in the Illinois Senate for seven years, he built his entire legislative record in Illinois in a single year, when Illinois Senate Majority Leader Emil Jones appointed Obama sponsor of virtually every high-profile piece of legislation, angering many rank-and-file state legislators who had more seniority than Obama and had spent years championing the bills. During this period, he lost the 2000 Democratic primary run for the US House of Representatives to incumbent Bobby Rush by a margin of two to one.

Obama then ran for an open US Senate seat in 2004, winning after Democrat Blair Hull and Republican Jack Ryan turned out to have scandal lurking in newly-unsealed divorce records.

In the Senate, Obama points mostly to his role in the 2007 overhaul of Congressional lobbying and ethics rules — a role he has repeatedly overstated. Indeed, Obama was called out publicly by his colleagues for trying to take undeserved credit on the recent immigration reform and housing bills.

Obama also points to the Lugar-Obama nuclear non-proliferation bill — a bill so non-controversial that it was passed into law by unanimous consent. Indeed, when not trying to take credit for the work of others, Obama’s Senate record is almost entirely minor legislation, usually passed by unanimous consent or voice vote.

Obama’s presidential campaign, recognizing how threadbare his record really is, and how utterly conventional his paltform is within left-leaning politics, insists that what matters is judgment, especially with regard to invading Iraq. Jonah Goldberg recently summed up the issue of Obama’s judgment:

The problem is that it doesn’t reflect reality. Obama, who was a junior Illinois state senator from a very liberal district in Chicago and a star parishioner of the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr.’s Trinity United Church of Christ when the country was debating invading Iraq, would have voters believe that he carefully weighed the pros and cons and concluded it would be a bad idea.

***

But, even if you want to give Obama the benefit of the doubt, it’s hard to give him the benefit of the facts.

As a candidate for the U.S. Senate in 2004, Obama said he would “unequivocally” oppose President Bush on the war. But once in office, he voted for every war-funding bill — until he decided to run for president.

After the invasion, Obama did not favor an immediate pullout from Iraq. On July 27, 2004, the day after he delivered his brilliant keynote address to the Democratic National Convention, he told the Chicago Tribune that when it came to the war, “there’s not much of a difference between my position and George Bush’s position at this stage.” In other words, while he opposed the war, he was now committed to seeing it through. That was hardly the position of Moveon.org and other progressive outfits at the time.

During the long battle for the Democratic nomination, however, Obama’s position evolved (or devolved) into a consistent call for withdrawal in order to differentiate himself from Hillary Rodham Clinton.

I would add that his position in 2004 just coincidentally dovetailed with support for the Kerry-Edwards ticket; both had voted to authorize the invasion. But when it came time to run for higher office, he constantly attacked Hillary Clinton for having made the same votes as Kerry and Edwards. That is very conventional politics, not “change we can believe in.” His flexibility here says as much about his judgment as his 20-year membership at what he knew was a radical church from the outset.

This leaves Obama’s organizational skill, which I have praised before — though not without noting that his campaign was seeded with venture capital from George Soros and the usual Wall Street wheelers and dealers. He was able to defeat Hillary Clinton — another candidate with much more name recognition than record — by putting together a coalition of Hart and Jackson voters against the remainders of a Mondale coalition, with a strategy lifted from the 1972 McGovern campaign. It was no small feat, though the incompetence of the Clinton campaign was also a factor here.

Finally, there is his oratorical skill. Much of Obama’s lofty message of unity and hope really came from campaign consultant David Axelrod, who “long ago hatched the idea that Democrats’ campaigns should revolve more around personality than policy.” Indeed, much of the rhetoric was already test-driven in 2006 by one of Axelrod’s other clients, Gov. Deval Patrick of Massachusetts. Not that such themes are in any way unique to American presidential politics, as demonstrated by Bill “The Man from Hope” Clinton and George W. “Uniter, not a Divider” Bush.

As I have repeatedly noted here at pw, the candidacies of Obama and John McCain are driven by voters pursuing a mirage of changeyness where bipartisanship reigns and the “moneyed special interests” vanish. And we should Hope that it is a mirage:

The appeal is vague precisely because it is illusory… The Framers of the US Constitution recognized – as James Madison explained in Federalist No. 10 – that factions are one of the costs of liberty. There is nothing high-minded about selling the notion that faction can be magically eliminated — a notion that is equal parts snake oil and tyranny.

Again, there is not much to admire in either snake oil, tyranny or flowery speeches trying to sell either. Moreover, remove Obama from a TelePrompTer and he is every bit the gaffer as any other average politician, though few have had the audacity to base their foreign policy on a debate gaffe.

In sum, Barack Obama’s record, judgment and message are at best entirely undistinguished in the field of presidential politics. At worst, we have Axelrod’s campaign of personality attracting a cult of followers so creepy that even many Obama backers are put off by it, to a man who admits he is a “blank screen,” with a message that is either illusory or tyrannical. It is in those people that I find little to admire.

Update: HotAir-lanche!

Update x2: Tom Maguire fills in Obama’s similarly undistinguished record in reforming Chicago’s public schools in the 1980s and 1990s.

Update x3: Insta-lanche!

Update x4: Corner-lanche!

From National Review Online:
The Russert Difference
Meet honesty in the press.
By Thomas Sowell

Only with Tim Russert’s sudden death at the age of 58 has his true stature as a landmark journalist become as widely recognized as it has long deserved to be.

To ask who will replace him as host of Meet the Press is to confront the reality that there is no one comparable on the horizon. Those of us who have followed Meet the Press since the long ago days of Lawrence Spivak know that Russert was the best of some very good hosts.

What made Tim Russert special was not some trademark catchword or contrived persona. What you saw was what you got — a down-to-earth guy who came on the air having thoroughly researched the subject and having a keen insight into politics and politicians.

He didn’t flaunt his knowledge. He was one of the few very smart people who seemed to feel no need to impress others that he was smart. But, if you knew the subject that he was talking about, you realized that he had really done his homework.

There was something else that set Tim Russert apart from many other journalists, whether print journalists or broadcast journalists: His agenda was bringing out the facts.

He didn’t let the politicians he interviewed get away with slippery statements and inconsistent positions. But it was not “gotcha” journalism. It was not trying to filter or slant information to promote some political or ideological agenda.

No doubt Tim Russert had his own opinions. He had, after all, been on the staff of the late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan and on the staff of former New York governor Mario Cuomo.

But, whatever Tim Russert’s political opinions were then or later, that was not what his program was about. He was there to serve the audience by bringing out the facts about the political world, a world where spin is the usually name of the game.

Often critics who complain about media bias argue as if what is needed is to be “fair” to “both sides.” But what is far more important is to be honest with the audience — who are seeking information and understanding about the real world, not about the ideology or the agenda of the journalist.

This is not to denigrate opinion journalists, who have a valuable role to play, just as reporters like Tim Russert do. But, with both opinion journalists and reporters, the question is whether you play it straight with the audience, instead of filtering out inconvenient facts in order to manipulate the audience in favor of some agenda.

In short, the issue is honesty rather than “fairness.” The question is whether journalists put their cards on the table. Russert put his cards on the table — and they were high cards.

A small personal note: A few months ago, an old friend said that he would like to get a videotape of my interview on Meet the Press back in 1981. I dug up an old videotape in my garage but, after several summers in a hot garage, it was not in very good shape.

As a long shot, I decided to write to Meet the Press, to see if they would sell me another copy of the interview, if it was still available.

This interview took place back in the days when Bill Monroe was the program’s moderator. But, since the only name I knew of at Meet the Press was Tim Russert, I addressed a note to him, figuring that one of his secretaries might get back to me with the information.

Instead, I received a DVD of that interview and a brief, handwritten note from Tim Russert, with a transcript of the interview thrown in.

How people treat those who cannot do them any good or any harm reveals a lot about their character. For me, Tim Russert scored high in that department as well.

— Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution.

From ESPN.com:
Woods set to have season-ending knee surgery

Tiger Woods walked tenderly out of Torrey Pines with a U.S. Open trophy he was destined to win on a left leg worse than anyone imagined. A group of children called out to him and Woods looked over and waved.

It turned out to be a most symbolic gesture.

So long, Tiger.

See you next year.

Woods revealed Wednesday he has been playing for at least 10 months with a torn ligament in his left knee, and that he suffered a double stress fracture in his left leg two weeks before the U.S. Open. He said he will have season-ending surgery, knocking him out of the final two majors and the Ryder Cup.

"I know much was made of my knee throughout the last week, and it was important to me that I disclose my condition publicly at an appropriate time. I wanted to be very respectful of the USGA and their incredibly hard work, and make sure the focus was on the U.S. Open," Woods said on his Web site. "Now, it is clear that the right thing to do is to listen to my doctors, follow through with this surgery, and focus my attention on rehabilitating my knee."

He sure wasn't listening to doctors by playing the U.S. Open, a victory that now looks even more impressive.

Out of competition for two months because of April 15 surgery to clean out cartilage in his left knee, he suffered a double stress fracture in his left tibia two weeks before the U.S. Open.

Hank Haney, his swing coach, was with him in Florida when doctors told Woods the preferred treatment was three weeks on crutches, followed by three weeks of rest.

According to Haney, Woods looked at the doctor and said: "I'm playing the U.S. Open, and I'm going to win."

"And then he started putting on his shoes," Haney recalled. "He looked at me and said, 'Come on, Hank. We'll just putt today.' Every night, I kept thinking there was no chance he's going to play. He had to stop in his tracks for 30 seconds walking from the dining room table to the refrigerator.

"He was not going to miss the U.S. Open at Torrey Pines. There just wasn't any discussion."

And it was a U.S. Open that will be talked about for years.

Despite a torn anterior cruciate ligament and the double stress fracture, Woods managed to win a major that required five days of flinching, grimacing and a long list of spectacular shots that have defined his career.

He went 91 holes on a leg that got worse each day, finally defeating Rocco Mediate on the 19th hole of a playoff.

"When I talk about golf, he doesn't count," Mediate said Monday after the playoff. "He's not normal."

Woods, 32, did not say when he would have surgery, but he canceled a clinic that was scheduled for Tuesday at Comerica Park in Detroit. Haney said the typical recovery is six to eight months. This will be Woods' third surgery in five years on his left knee.

"There will be debate whether he rushed back for the U.S. Open," said Mark Steinberg, his agent at IMG. "But I don't think there will be any debate that he rushes back from his next surgery. He won't need to. Augusta is in April. And if things go according to plan, he'll be able to play an event or two or three."

Woods first went to Haney toward the end of 2002 to overhaul a violent swing that was putting enormous pressure on his left knee. Haney suspects the pain has been increasing, and Woods stopped hitting balls after his rounds at last year's British Open.

"He's been playing way less than 100 percent for a long, long, time," Haney said. "It has limited him a lot in practice. He's going to come back better than he's ever been."

Woods was already plenty good, with 65 victories that rank third all time on the PGA Tour, and 14 professional majors that are second only to the record 18 won by Jack Nicklaus. This is the 500th week Woods has been ranked No. 1 in the world.

Even in his abbreviated 2008 season, he won five of seven tournaments worldwide. Dating to the discovery of the torn ACL, Woods won nine of 12 tournaments, including two majors, and never finished lower than fifth.

"While I am obviously disappointed to have to miss the remainder of the season, I have to do the right thing for my long-term health and look forward to returning to competitive golf when my doctors agree that my knee is sufficiently healthy," Woods said. "My doctors assure me with the proper rehabilitation and training, the knee will be strong and there will be no long-term effects."

Woods will miss a major for the first time in his career -- the British Open next month at Royal Birkdale and the PGA Championship, where Woods is the two-time defending champion, in August at Oakland Hills in Michigan.

"Tiger is an enormous attraction, there's no denying that," Royal & Ancient chief executive Peter Dawson said. "But the Open Championship has had many exciting finishes which Tiger has not been part of, and I'm sure there will be more. It's very sad. We're very sorry that he's succumbed to the injury and he won't be competing in the Open.

"We hope he has the speediest recovery."

Woods also will miss the Ryder Cup in September, meaning the ninth player in the U.S. standings will qualify for the team. Coincidentally, Woods had mathematically clinched a spot on the team by winning the U.S. Open.

"We sent him flowers for winning the U.S. Open. Now I wish I had put in a note of condolences," U.S. captain Paul Azinger quipped. "But this is not about Tiger and the Ryder Cup. It's about Tiger getting better and his march to history."

The majors won't miss Woods nearly as much as the PGA Tour -- and the networks that televise it -- especially in the second year of the FedEx Cup, which Woods won in a landslide last year.

He still might be on top of the points race in August leading to the playoffs. Even with Woods no longer playing the rest of the year, he will keep his spot in the playoff events for which he is eligible.

"Tiger is our tour," Kenny Perry said from the Travelers Championship, which starts Thursday at TPC River Highlands in Connecticut. "When you lose your star player, it definitely hurts."

Woods had committed to playing in next week's Buick Invitational. He hosts the AT&T National the week after that, at Congressional Country Club in Washington, D.C.

"I'm sorry about Tiger having to miss the rest of the year due to more knee surgery," Phil Mickelson said in a statement. "I know how frustrating it was to lose most of last summer to my wrist injury but I expect him to be back as strong as ever and look forward to competing with him as soon as possible."

PGA Tour commissioner Tim Finchem said his concern was for Woods' health and well-being.

"For an athlete as talented and competitive as Tiger Woods, taking the rest of the season off must have been an incredibly difficult, yet necessary decision, one that we understand and support completely," Finchem said in a statement. "The fact that he needs additional surgery only makes his performance and victory at last week's U.S. Open all the more impressive. First and foremost, our concern -- as it would be for any of our players facing surgery or illness -- is for Tiger's health and overall well-being, both on and off the golf course. We wish him the best toward a speedy recovery."

Woods is private about his health and personal life, never more so than at the just-completed U.S. Open. He didn't say anything about the torn ACL or the stress fractures, and wouldn't say how he was treating the knee, only that it was more sore as the week went on.

Perhaps the biggest surprise was when the injury first happened.

Woods said he tore the ACL while jogging at home after the British Open last July. He played on, going on a streak that included seven consecutive victories, including the Dubai Desert Classic in Europe and his Target World Challenge, an unofficial event.

He did not play overseas late last year for the first time since 2003, hopeful that rest could allow him to play more this year. But the pain intensified through the Masters, where he finished second, and Woods said the cartilage damage developed from the ACL injury.

He bypassed surgery on the torn ligament April 15, hopeful that by cleaning out the cartilage he could make it through the year. What he didn't anticipate were the stress fractures as he tried to get ready for the Memorial.

"The stress fractures that were discovered just prior to the tournament unfortunately prevented me from participating and had a huge impact on the timing for my return," Woods said. "I was determined, though, to do everything and anything in my power to play in the U.S. Open at Torrey Pines, which is a course that is close to where I grew up and holds many special memories for me."

Woods has won eight times at the public golf course in San Diego -- a U.S. Open, a record six times at the Buick Invitational and a Junior World Championship as a teenager.

He called his U.S. Open victory "probably the best ever."

On Wednesday, he explained why.

Information from The Associated Press is included in this report.

From The Washington Post:
Ingraham Speaks Up About Her Radio Silencing
By Howard Kurtz

Tuesday, June 17, 2008

Laura Ingraham, the most popular woman on political talk radio, has been off the air for two weeks, and not by choice.

Ingraham's syndicator, Talk Radio Network, barred her from her Washington studio after talks about a new contract hit a snag, and some of her fans are mounting a campaign to get her back.

"The fact is, they took her off the air," says Eric Bernthal, her lawyer. "There's no doubt in my mind they did it as a tactic in contract negotiations."

Ingraham said on her Web site: "Rest assured, this absence is not of my choosing, nor is it health or family related. I am ready, willing and eager to continue the conversation we started seven years ago about politics and the culture. (Heck, if cancer couldn't keep me off the airwaves for long, nothing will.) . . . I would never voluntarily abandon you during such a critical time for our country." She declined a request for comment because of a confidentiality clause in her contract.

Neither Mark Masters, chief executive of Talk Radio Network, nor a lawyer for the company responded to requests for comment. Ingraham's five-year contract -- she previously worked for another radio company -- expires in September, and she is contractually barred from negotiating with other syndicators until later this summer.

"The Laura Ingraham Show" is carried by 340 stations, including Washington's WTNT-AM. Since June 2, her voice has been heard only on taped promos and commercials. One week into the lockout, the industry magazine Talkers gave her its "Woman of the Year" award, with Masters standing nearby as she delivered her remarks at a New York party.

Ingraham's allies grew concerned that fans may conclude she suffered a recurrence of breast cancer -- she had surgery in 2005 -- after one of the substitute hosts in her three-hour morning slot, Monica Crowley, told listeners that Ingraham was "doing fine." One popular radio blog suggested that Ingraham "may have at least temporarily stepped away from her program."

The conservative commentator is also a Fox News contributor and began hosting a 5 p.m. show there yesterday on a temporary basis, but friends say that is not related to her disappearance from radio. Nor, they say, is her absence related to her decision to become a single mother last month by adopting a 3-year-old girl from Guatemala. Ingraham took only two days off during that time.

"She's in perfect health and is in no way distracted by family matters," says David Frum, the conservative author and a friend for more than 20 years. "The rumors and suggestions being put out to the contrary are just absurd to anyone familiar with the situation. . . . She's adamant that she wants to continue her radio career."

Ingraham's absence is "a big hole in our lineup," says Dan Patrick, owner of Houston's KSEV-AM and a Republican state senator who is friendly with Ingraham. "Talk radio is built around the relationship between the audience and the host, and it's a very personal relationship. I can't think of any situation where a host has disappeared with such little information."

Michael Gaynor, a New York lawyer, said in an online column: "Let Talk Radio Network's Mark Masters himself know that we Laura fans consider keeping Laura off the air is utterly ridiculous and unfair."

Talk Radio Network is owned by Roy Masters -- a British-born author and commentator who also created the Foundation for Human Understanding, a Christian organization -- and his two sons, including Mark, the company's CEO. Roy Masters moved the foundation from Los Angeles to Grants Pass, Ore., in 1983, sparking fears by some residents that the town would become the site of a religious cult.

In a 1992 open letter, Roy Masters said he was a former Jew who founded a ministry that some unfairly viewed as New Age because of "often mean-spirited media coverage." Masters is the author of such books as "How Your Mind Can Keep You Well," which promotes "a very special form of meditation -- a rediscovery of an ancient science that provides the answer to the serious problems of our time."

The foundation once published New Dimensions magazine, which described homosexuality as an "illness" caused by "trauma-induced conditioning," published photos of aborted fetuses and accused the media of engaging in "hysteria control" by "selectively editing and diluting certain terrifying information" about AIDS.

Masters also hosts the radio program "Advice Line." His 15-year-old company syndicates such personalities as Michael Savage, Tammy Bruce, Erich "Mancow" Muller and Jackie Mason, as well as Ingraham, who has an estimated 5 million listeners. That makes her No. 5 among talk radio hosts, behind Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Savage and Laura Schlessinger.

"She has always appreciated what Mark Masters and Talk Radio Network did for her early in her radio career," Bernthal said. "They bet on her five years ago and invested in her and backed her."

But, he said, "it's disappointing where we are. We've been correcting falsehoods. It's pretty important to have her fans, listeners, advertisers and affiliates all know that she wouldn't walk off the job."

Tim Russert at Bruce Springsteen's Today Show performance in 2007

From Backstreets.com:
A "TRANSFORMATIVE JOURNALIST"
-- AND BRUCE FAN -- PASSES ON

June 14, 2008

I'm still shocked by the news of Tim Russert's death yesterday; as a Sunday morning is about to dawn without the esteemed Meet the Press moderator there to be part of the day, I feel like a word here is in order. Well known to be a huge Springsteen fan (along with his NBC compatriot Brian Williams), Russert told Jon Friedman in a 2007 interview that his "dream 'get'" for an interview was none other than Bruce:

"I'm very intrigued by him," Russert said. "He has a real understanding of the political dialogue, of faith and life in urban America."

Russert already has a connection to "the Boss." "I booked concerts for John Carroll [University] in Cleveland," Russert recalled. "We paid $2,500 to book him on a Tuesday night in February 1974."

Aside from the indelible mental snapshot of seeing a brilliant performer 18 months before he made it big, Russert cherishes the memory for a more practical reason: "I made enough money to pay for my second year of law school."

He said he told Springsteen the story once when he ran into him at a New York City restaurant. Springsteen laughed and said, "That sounds like one of my songs."...

I asked Russert if he had reached out to Springsteen to request an interview. He shook his head, as if he was unworthy of the meeting. It was reassuring to see that even Tim "No Surrender" Russert, the scourge of Washington, could act a little overwhelmed by someone.

Also check out this New York Times blog entry about Bruce's September 2007 Today show performance, when Russert remarked, "I'm just an opening act for the Boss today," and Bruce gave a shout-out to the newsman's haircut.

Russert was married to Maureen Orth, author of the famous 1975 Newsweek cover story on Springsteen, "Making of a Rock Star." Our sympathies are with her and their familiy.

Yesterday, Tom Brokaw called Russert "one of the premiere political analyists and journalists of his time." Walter Cronkite wrote: "a giant in our field -- a standard-bearer of journalistic integrity and ethics." Carl Bernstein: "Tim Russert was a transformative journalist." And yet -- maybe just from knowing how "Born to Run" got his heart pumping, too -- he also felt like one of us. Tim, you'll be missed.

From Newsweek.com:
God, Politics and the Making of a Joyful Warrior
The forces that shaped Tim Russert's life and career.
By Jon Meacham

"Hello, brother," the baritone rumbled on the other end of the phone. "I've got a great deal for you." It was Tim Russert, and there was a twinkle in his tone—the kind of twinkle that suggested what was in the offing was anything but a good deal. "Have you read Hitch yet?" My stomach tightened: Christopher Hitchens, the terrific provocateur, had just published a sulfurous attack on religious faith, and I feared what was coming. "You gotta come down and defend the faith, Brother," Russert said. Hitchens was slated to come on Russert's weekend cable show, and Russert wanted a countervailing voice on the program. A devout Catholic, Russert knew I was an Episcopalian, but I had an old rule that I would never debate Hitchens about anything—he is one of the great intellects and wits of the age—since there was no chance I would ever win. I tried to demur, but Russert closed in as though he were cornering a politician on a Sunday morning. "It's the faith, Brother," he said. "I can't do it—I'm the moderator. But it'll be great."

It ' s the faith, Brother: there, in a phrase from the early summer of 2006, was, in a way, the essence of Timothy John Russert Jr., who died of a heart attack last Friday afternoon. In that brief chat the many sides of Russert were on display: he was cajoling and charming, playing it straight, pushing others to be braver and bolder, all in the service of creating an interesting conversation about the things that matter most. I said yes, of course, because if you are in my line of work you always said yes to Russert. (For the record, it was not great, at least for me. Hitchens was kind, but, as I expected, he had the better of the conversation. Russert grinned through the whole damn thing.)

In a capital that can seem soulless and even godless, Russert was a man of faith, cheerfully professing the civic virtues of post-World War II America. He loved his neighbor, honored his parents and cherished his country. The son of working-class south Buffalo, N.Y., Russert moved among popes and presidents with an easy grace, and he was sweetly grateful for, and a little amazed at, his success. He was devoted to his wife, the writer Maureen Orth, and to his son, Luke, who just graduated from Boston College.

It is not sentimental to say that Russert's rise and reign can be best understood in the context of his religion, for his religion was not just a part of his life but his whole life, and his story is a common one for ethnic Roman Catholics of his generation.

To be a certain kind of Catholic in America in the years between, say, the death of Franklin Roosevelt and the election of Richard Nixon (to date it in a way Russert would have liked) was to be immersed not only in a faith but in a consuming culture. Protestants talked about "going to church." Catholics spoke of "the Church." Life revolved around sacraments and the schools, priests and nuns. One Christmas season I asked Russert how much of his childhood had resembled the movie "Going My Way." "Just about all of it," he replied.

Growing up on Kirkwood Drive in Buffalo, "Timmy" Russert attended mass at St. Bonaventure's, where he also went to school. "In the altar-boy world, he was the No. 1 server," recalled Patrick J. Griffin, a neighbor. "They always gave Timmy the prime mass. He got the 10 o'clock mass on a Sunday; we got the 6 o'clock mass on a Sunday. He was a cute little fellow, blond hair and blue eyes, and everybody liked him."

There were crosses above the Russert kids' beds, a portrait of Jesus and his Sacred Heart on the wall and a statue of the Blessed Virgin in the backyard; in May, the month of Mary, the family lit a candle every day. There was no meat on Fridays, and if someone lost something, Mrs. Russert prayed to St. Anthony of Padua, the patron of lost things. On Good Friday they re-enacted the Stations of the Cross. ("I remember, in seventh grade, kneeling in church from noon to three as a form of sacrifice," Russert recalled in his memoir, "Big Russ & Me." "It wasn't easy.") In second grade came first communion and the perils of the confessional. The priest's face was hidden by a screen, and Russert did his homework even then. "We always prepared for confession by thinking of various sins we might have committed," he recalled, "such as being mean to your sister or the always available wildcard sin of 'impure thoughts'." The rhythms and rituals of the church—communion, confession, absolution, catechism—were not exotic to Russert; they were givens, part of the air he breathed.

A nun introduced him to journalism. At St. Bonaventure, he had been a class cutup—boisterous would be the kind description—until one day Sister Mary Lucille, a Sister of Mercy, crooked her finger at him and summoned him to the front of the classroom. "We have to channel that energy, Timothy," she said, and soon she appointed him editor of the school newspaper. At the time there was no school newspaper, so it would take all the more energy to start one up, which he did. (He would still manage to spend a lot of time in detention, which the Catholics called "the jug," from the Latin for "yoke.")

For him, faith and journalism and politics were bound up with one another. Russert's first experience of foreign policy came at the end of Sunday masses during the cold war, when the priest would raise his arms before the congregation and say, "Savior of the world—" to the response from all: "Save Russia." In south Buffalo in 1960, Russert used a paper route to campaign for John F. Kennedy. "I remember him putting Kennedy leaflets in the paper as he delivered them," his older sister Betty said. Part of JFK's appeal was tribal: Russert idolized him, Betty recalled, because "he was young and full of energy and … Catholic." In October 1962, when Kennedy traveled to Buffalo for Pulaski Day, Russert's dad took his son to a strategic spot along the motorcade route and—Russert remembered the time, 3:05 p.m.—Tim, then 12, brushed the president's hand. "I touched him! I touched him!" Russert cried with joy.

The making of the Tim Russert we knew from television began in a brutal ending: Dallas, 1963. When the news came, Russert remembered, the press referred to it as an assassination. In the world he inhabited, they used a different term: martyrdom. The school newspaper produced a special edition and sent copies to President Johnson, Mrs. Kennedy and Robert Kennedy. "Some months later we received personal responses from all of them, which changed our lives," he recalled. The thrill of recognition was transformative. On the paper, he had learned "how to report, how to communicate, how to write; and then, on top of all that, people we watched on television, people who were so far removed from our ordinary lives, suddenly acknowledged not only our existence, but our work. From that day forward I was determined that I would have a career in journalism/public service." There, in a distant autumn of tragedy, was everything that would dominate Russert's life: the church, great events, storytelling, a love of life in the arena.

Sister Lucille helped him go to the more competitive Canisius High School, where he worked afternoons manning the St. Michael's rectory switchboard. He answered the phone, emptied the poor box, greeted visitors. In class he learned two things: how to argue and how to be tough. The Jesuits, said Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, the former archbishop of Washington, "do their best to teach their students to think on their feet and defend the truth." A Jesuit ethos was perfect, too, for a Catholic who was to live and try to thrive in a secular world. "Every Catholic order has its own spirit, and the Jesuits have long been known for a restlessness of mind that tends to make them less dogmatic than other groups," Russert wrote.

There was an element of steeliness, too, in the Jesuit world. Father John Sturm, who held the title of prefect of discipline at Canisius, once told him: "Russert, mercy is for God. I deliver justice." He also encountered another perennial element of life for an Irish Catholic of his generation at Canisius: class anxiety. The son of a garbageman who fought in World War II and worked two jobs to provide for his family, Russert was nervous about going to the high school, which he described as "a fancy-pants boys' school on the other side of town." But he won his way in. Early on, he wore clip-on ties to fulfill the dress code, only to be humiliated by a history teacher who ripped the tie from his collar and "held it at arm's length like a dead skunk." Clip-ons, Russert learned in that horrible, sinking moment—a moment he could vividly recall four decades later—did not cut it. He slunk home, and Big Russ taught him how to tie a real Windsor knot, which he used for the rest of his life.

Many people in Washington and New York spend a lot of time, and even more psychic effort, trying to escape their origins, firmly closing the door on where they came from. (A bishop I knew used to say that such insecurity was horribly debilitating, and had a simple commandment for survival: "Remember who you are." When I told Russert that story once, he pumped his fist and shouted, "Amen!") Rather than try to reinvent himself as he grew up and went from worldly triumph to worldly triumph, Russert never lost his sense of place, or his love of tribe.

At John Carroll University in Cleveland, Russert "stayed with the faith, and the rest of us kind of drifted away," said Patrick Griffin. "Even in college he still went to church—and the rest of us were still sleeping." He moved on to work for two of the great Catholic American politicians of the age: New York Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan and New York Gov. Mario Cuomo, before going to NBC News in 1984. His first big get: John Paul II said a private mass that NBC filmed for Holy Week.

He did quiet charity work at St. Ann's home for orphans in Washington, among other causes. "He was a great reporter," said McCarrick, "but he never stopped being a great human being." (It is true that the two can be mutually exclusive.) "As cardinal, I was always having to ask favors of him—could we use his name for this charity, or would he be willing to attend this affair or that affair—and he always tried to be as helpful as he could be."

In a way, Russert was the secular pastor of a circle of Catholic politicians and journalists in the capital. When the priest-sexual-abuse scandal broke a few years ago, McCarrick convened a private meeting of Catholic opinion makers. "It was Russert, James Carville, Cokie Roberts, the late Mary McGrory, Bob Novak, Kate O'Beirne and me," recalled the political commentator Mark Shields. "What a group." But it was Russert's group, and he loved it, and everyone in it. To get a sense of that world, imagine if Allen Drury had written "The Last Hurrah."

Russert was one of the least self-important important people in the capital. Susan Gibbs, the director of communications for the archdiocese of Washington, remembers introducing him to a nun at a Catholic event. The nun had never heard of him, but was intrigued that he worked in television. "You have video cameras?" the nun asked Russert. Yes, he said, he did. "I might need to use them sometime," she said. "How do I reach you if I want to borrow them?" "Call Susan," Russert replied. "She'll know how to reach me."

Because he had to work on Sundays, he liked to go to what he jokingly called the brief "drive-by mass" at Georgetown University Medical Center on Saturday afternoons. On Sunday mornings, there were often visiting priests and nuns watching the broadcast in the studio at NBC News in Washington, and, his work done for the morning, Russert would cheerily pose for photographs and swap stories. (He never quite got over the fact that meatless Fridays had turned out to be a human, not a divine, invention.)

He prepared for broadcasts the way he had prepared for mass back in his altar-boy days. "Part of your responsibility was to be punctual," he wrote. Sometimes he had to go wake the assistant pastor, who liked his sleep; if Russert did not do what he was supposed to do, the service would not happen. "It all seemed so natural then, but when I look back on it, I'm struck by how much responsibility we had," he wrote. "We weren't even in high school yet, but age-old traditions with great meaning depended on our showing up on time and doing the job exactly right."

His imagination was never far from those days, or from the martyred president. Years after he left Buffalo, Russert lunched with Sister Lucille and Dave Powers, JFK's longtime friend and aide. Later, Powers sent Russert a quotation that Kennedy had had inscribed on a silver mug for Powers's birthday: "There are three things which are real: God, Human Folly, and Laughter. The first two are beyond our comprehension, so we must do what we can with the third." Russert loved it.

Just before he collapsed in the NBC News bureau in northwest Washington—he was taken to the hospital by his longtime executive producer, Betsy Fischer—he had sent Sen. Edward Kennedy, who is recuperating from surgery for brain cancer, a set of rosary beads blessed by Benedict XVI. The Hail Mary Russert recited so often ends this way: "Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now, and at the hour of our death."