{"id":11558,"date":"2009-10-09T13:43:12","date_gmt":"2009-10-09T21:43:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=11558"},"modified":"2009-10-09T13:43:12","modified_gmt":"2009-10-09T21:43:12","slug":"luke-fords-grotto-kids-will-love-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=11558","title":{"rendered":"Luke Ford&#8217;s Grotto! Kids Will Love It!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A friend who&#8217;s converting to Judaism emails me: &quot;I was talking to my mom on the phone just now, trying to explain to her what a <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Sukkah\">sukkah<\/a> is. I told her it was like a hut, a temporary dwelling place, like what the Israelites lived in. Then she said, &quot;Oh, is that what Mr. Ford lives in? He lives in a sukkah?&quot; She&#8217;s been reading your blog, she said. I could&#8217;ve died. Mr. Ford lives in a sukkah year-round.&quot;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.slate.com\/blogs\/blogs\/kausfiles\/archive\/2009\/10\/08\/tim-russert-now-washington-s-creepiest-exhibit.aspx\">Mickey Kaus blogs<\/a>:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.sfgate.com\/cgi-bin\/article.cgi?f=\/n\/a\/2009\/10\/07\/national\/a093638D16.DTL&amp;type=politics\">Creepy on so many levels.<\/a> &#8230; <strong>1)<\/strong> He just died; <strong>2)<\/strong> He wasn&#8217;t <em>that<\/em> important. This isn&#8217;t Winston Churchill. (The vacuity of David Gregory just makes him seem like Winston Churchill); <strong>3)<\/strong> They&#8217;ve recreated the way his office looked <em>on the day he died.<\/em> Morbid!&nbsp;<strong>4)<\/strong> It&#8217;s like they&#8217;re trying to build some kind of cult of the personality, with the family willingly invading its own privacy to help out (&#8216;Look, there&#8217;s Luke&#8217;s childhood drawing&#8217;); <strong>5)<\/strong> Making a big deal of Russert&#8217;s&nbsp;I-love-the-Bills schtick assumes it&#8217;s shocking that a high-level Washington news guy would be an ordinary middle class American. Bureau chiefs, they&#8217;re just like us! <strong>6)<\/strong> Does the exhibit include an <strong>animatronic NBC butler<\/strong>?**<strong>&nbsp;7) <\/strong>Will it include Lloyd Grove&#8217;s famous, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.newser.com\/archive-arts-living-news\/1P2-1184699\/tim-russert-the-medium-is-the-mastery-nbcs-new-bureau-chief-spinning-out-his-future.html\">damning profile<\/a> of Russert-on-the-make?<strong> 8)<\/strong>&nbsp;Self-important, dying industry attempts to fetishize its prominent members before it is completely forgotten.<strong> 9)<\/strong> NBC News&nbsp;in particular seems to be&nbsp;living in the past. &#8230;<\/p>\n<p><em>Coming soon<\/em>: Luke Ford&#8217;s Grotto! <a href=\"http:\/\/www.jewishjournal.com\/thegodblog\/item\/is_luke_ford_good_for_the_jews\/\">Kids will love it<\/a>. &#8230;<\/p>\n<p><strong>P.S.:<\/strong> I&#8217;m sure <em>Gawker<\/em>&nbsp;goes to town on this, but I haven&#8217;t read <em>Gawker<\/em> yet. <strong>Update:<\/strong> They<a href=\"http:\/\/gawker.com\/5376587\/the-beatification-of-st-russert-of-buffalo\"> do<\/a>. Jack Shafer <a href=\"http:\/\/www.slate.com\/id\/2231910\/\">beat me to mockery too<\/a>. By hours.&nbsp;Lucky for me speed isn&#8217;t important in this business. [<em>The contrarian thing&nbsp;would be&nbsp;to <\/em>defend <em>the exhibit&#8211;ed<\/em> Defending Russert can&#8217;t be contrarian. That violates a law of physics.]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A friend who&#8217;s converting to Judaism emails me: &quot;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, &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=11558\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[160,21],"tags":[19321,2708,19322,10377,822,29883],"class_list":["post-11558","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mickey-kaus","category-personal","tag-bureau-chiefs","tag-converting-to-judaism","tag-industry-attempts","tag-jack-shafer","tag-luke-ford","tag-mickey-kaus"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11558","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11558"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11558\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11558"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11558"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11558"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}