Tim Russert 1950-2008

One of the strange truths of post-modern America is that people on television sometimes come to feel like part of your family. Even as technology isolates us into individual information cocoons, it brings us into daily contact with certain people, so much so that you can come to feel like you know them.

I never met Tim Russert, who died at 58 today after being stricken at NBC News studios in New York, but that didn't stop him from feeling like family. Insightful, tenacious, balanced, intellectually curious and blessed with a warm wit, he was one of those people I found myself more than once putting on the imaginary list of ten famous people I'd like to have over for dinner. In fact, my lists rarely filled all ten seats; most celebrities seem so insufferably full of themselves that I couldn't imagine their heads fitting in my door.

Russert, by contrast, always seemed so approachable, so human, so real. He was like the neighbor you'd strike up a conversation with in line at the hardware store, and keep it up all the way out into the parking lot because he just had so damn many interesting things to say, and said them with such a unique combination of conviction and affability.

Russert leaves behind a wife and son and a studio full of heartbroken colleagues who have been, somehow, broadcasting all day about the friend they lost quite literally from their midst. After my daughter came in to see if I'd heard the news, she talked about how he'd been NBC's chief political reporter for her entire life. She's thinking of majoring in political science. I like to think I had something to do with that, but Tim probably did, too. His enthusiasm for the political world was contagious. He could make it seem entertaining, yes, but mostly he made it seem like it mattered, like it was a subject worthy of every ounce of the enthusiasm and precision he poured into his work.

Condolences to his family and colleagues on this huge loss. And Godspeed, Tim.