about Russert. I was shocked as anybody. I liked Russerts tv persona, I thought he was a good tv journalist, he got these people on the record, and was fair and even-handed--for what he did.

But they're hyperbolizing that he "held people to account", which is pure hogwash. They'd like to hold him up in the wake of McClellan's memoir as proof that the press didn't have a massive breakdown in the runup to Iraq, and aren't currently failing us in the presidential campaign and the exaggeration of the success of the surge and the threat of Iran. Kearns-Goodwin likened him to Edward R Murrow.

I don't want to be the guy to say this not 2 days after Russert, who was perhaps the most important tv journalist in washington, but this is really over-the-top and narcissistic on the part of these people. It's why we call them "talking heads". It's difficult to think of two better examples (Murrow and Russert) of how high the art of journalism can be, contrasted with how low it has sunk.