A friend who’s converting to Judaism emails me: "I was talking to my mom on the phone just now, trying to explain to her what a sukkah is. I told her it was like a hut, a temporary dwelling place, like what the Israelites lived in. Then she said, "Oh, is that what Mr. Ford lives in? He lives in a sukkah?" She’s been reading your blog, she said. I could’ve died. Mr. Ford lives in a sukkah year-round."
Creepy on so many levels. … 1) He just died; 2) He wasn’t that important. This isn’t Winston Churchill. (The vacuity of David Gregory just makes him seem like Winston Churchill); 3) They’ve recreated the way his office looked on the day he died. Morbid! 4) It’s like they’re trying to build some kind of cult of the personality, with the family willingly invading its own privacy to help out (‘Look, there’s Luke’s childhood drawing’); 5) Making a big deal of Russert’s I-love-the-Bills schtick assumes it’s shocking that a high-level Washington news guy would be an ordinary middle class American. Bureau chiefs, they’re just like us! 6) Does the exhibit include an animatronic NBC butler?** 7) Will it include Lloyd Grove’s famous, damning profile of Russert-on-the-make? 8) Self-important, dying industry attempts to fetishize its prominent members before it is completely forgotten. 9) NBC News in particular seems to be living in the past. …
Coming soon: Luke Ford’s Grotto! Kids will love it. …
P.S.: I’m sure Gawker goes to town on this, but I haven’t read Gawker yet. Update: They do. Jack Shafer beat me to mockery too. By hours. Lucky for me speed isn’t important in this business. [The contrarian thing would be to defend the exhibit–ed Defending Russert can’t be contrarian. That violates a law of physics.]
