Wednesday’s service for NBC newsman Tim Russert was the closest thing to a U.S. state funeral since Ronald Reagan and Gerald Ford died, said The Washington Post. Even the President went. A huge memorial followed. There were tribute ads in The New York Times from other networks. Public figures broke down on camera. It’s lasted a week now — a big jag for a rumpled guy who was never an anchor, just host of one of Sunday morning’s news shows, a program ghetto loved by journalists and news junkies. Insiders preening happily together. The rest of us watch to see how self-absorbed, pompous and superficial they can be. It gets the proper lack of respect from The Huffington Post‘s Jason Linkins, who dolefully live blogs it.

Tim Russert had a gotcha style based on confronting his guests with things they had said, but I don’t recall him ever challenging them on basic political issues or values. Back in 1995, he made a guest appearance as himself on an NBC cop show, Homicide, for which they wrote in a “cousin” of his named Lt. Russert — as if he needed some extra promo. So why the torrential reaction now, from all the superstars of the news media: anchors, columnists, top politicians? Here are some thoughts.

For those detached, elevated celebrities, he seemed to be a link to the real world, now lost so far below their aerie of vast wealth, limos, blow-dried haircuts. They all mentioned his closeness to his grotty home city, Buffalo, his beloved team, the Bills, his favourite beer. As if he got them in contact with that now inaccessible mundanity. He was rich too, and had a mansion in Nantucket, but he looked normal, with his paunch, bad clothes, bad hair. He was their substitute real person. No matter how much he spent on his hair, said NBC’s Brian Williams — a king of hair on air — it always went back. As if Tim was the king of ordinariness, plugging an ever-widening gap between the elites and the rest, along perhaps, with their cabdrivers, who the media biggies also tend to treat as voices of the masses. “He seemed to be one of us,” a construction worker told Tom Brokaw. Even in death, Tim Russert was Tom Brokaw’s route to talking to an average person.

Just so; he was their link to real journalism, which anchors and pundits don’t do. And neither did Tim. He began as a political flunky for elected officials, moved to TV management, then to hosting Meet the Press. No reporting, nowhere. But he looked like a news hound and acted as if that was his métier, like a fish in water. He could’ve played Hildy Johnson, ace reporter, in the 1928 play, The Front Page. Walter Matthau, who was Hildy in the movie, could’ve played Tim. Guys who stand in for real people, with real faces, even though they lead Olympian lives.

Possibly their link to genuine emotion too, which is rooted in normal life. The stars may feel they’ve lost touch with it during their heady ascents. It. We saw political “consultants” James Carville and Mary Matalin dissolve into tears on the set of Meet the Press. Tom Brokaw did, at the memorial. Like everything else, deep emotion, for these people, should be on display; but it can’t be easy finding an occasion for it, while presiding over The News.

There was nostalgia. Someone called Tim Russert “an Irish cop on a corner in a neighbourhood called America.” In the impending era of Obama, it sounded like a longing for an all-white America that never was. The U.S. of Going My Way, with Bing Crosby and Barry Fitzgerald as Irish priests. The latter could have played Tim too, and vice versa — before all the changes now being called for by blacks, Hispanics or this Obama guy, whatever he is.

With the nostalgia goes a sense of menace: from the Internet, and bloggers like Jason Linkins, who ridicule the media luminaries to bits. They may still have the perks, but they’ve lost forever the deference.

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Rick Salutin

Rick Salutin is a Canadian novelist, playwright and critic. He is a strong advocate of left wing causes and writes a regular column in the Toronto Star.