Life on the Frontier
18 June 2008 - 16 סיון 5768 by Huw
I begin to feel I’m the only person in the world (certainly in Buffalo) who had no idea there was a man named Tim Russert. Increasingly I sense this was a good thing.
To listen to the news or read the local paper, you’d think that a plague had swallowed everyone’s eldest child or something. The man’s passing threatens to be the October Storm of 2008 - the Horrid Thing that God Did to Buffalo™ about which natives will talk until non-natives can’t stand to hear about it any more.
Huw, you are not alone.
I had no idea who Russert was till I heard of his death. Somehow, I have passed 10 years as a writer on culture and politics without this knowledge. Chalk it up to the lack of a TV in the house, I guess.
Nevertheless, one of my editors was totally shocked when - after she told me of Tim’s death - I asked, “Who was he”?
Lee
Lack of TV… clearly!
I begin to see a balkanisation of media. The world of Geeky Blogging was, for a time, very small - still is, I’m sure. There was a time when Blogging was all the rage in CA - nearly passe already - and you couldn’t find someone in Des Moines or Macon who knew what it was, even. We thought we were so important when no one knew or name. But the pond was small - and there were some big fish there.
Now I think there is a line drawn between the different people - two ponds, separate but increasingly equal. Since Internet media is, at times, just as inane as old school TV, which pond houses the wiser fish?
While I find the concentration of the media on one of their own to be, mmm, disproportionate, I’m not sure it’s worse than the usual lack of proportion w.r.t. celebrities, small town human interest stories, etc.
I suppose one factor in everything is that Russert was only 58 and was “doing everything right”– exercising, trying to lose some weight, watching his cholesterol, etc.