Et tu

Questions for Tim Russert

The Times: The portrayal of my interview with Deborah Solomon (May 14) was misleading, callous and hurtful. I spoke with Deborah Solomon for more than one hour for what she described as a Mother's Day feature. We spent much of that time talking about my mom. I told her how my mom insisted her four kids sit at the kitchen table doing our homework while she prepared supper. We couldn't trade our pencil for a fork until she had corrected our work. Her lessons of discipline, accountability and preparation were invaluable training for my job as a journalist. I told her of Mom's joy at hearing our parish priest say, "The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world" because it affirmed the reality in our family — that I was truly blessed to have a strong mother and strong father. I told her how my mom would wake me with a soft "Tim, Tim." To me this proved you could be heard without yelling, something I hope is reflected each Sunday on "Meet the Press."

I told Solomon the details of my mom's final hours last August when she died from cancer. All four children were at her bedside. I told Solomon that my mom was a beautiful person, inside and out.

Solomon chose to ignore all this, and instead the interview was selectively edited — an interview entitled "All About My Father," implying I chose to talk about my dad rather than my mom on Mother's Day. She also combined questions in her piece, suggesting I did not offer separate and distinct responses to each of her questions, which, of course, I did.

My mom was a central figure in my life. This was my first Mother's Day without her. Your writer's deliberate mischaracterization of our conversation and her feeble attempt at humor made it a particularly painful day.

Tim Russert
Washington

Right in time for Father's Day....

Probably one of the most blistering responses I've read in the Times' famously feisty book review letters section. And it's got that Russert tone... a certain how dare you, don't you realize I'm holy moral outrage.

I always read Solomon's section, even if sometimes I can't quite believe how tough she is on her subjects. But she's a good journalist--she gets to the core of people in a way that's increasingly rare in our spin-driven society.

When I read her interview with Tim, his voice came through exactly the way I've heard it before, the same way it comes out in this letter. What he said and didn't say squared with my impression of him, which is why I'm especially puzzled at the tone of his letter. This is the way you come across, Tim!

Here's the relevant part of the interview:

You've just gathered their letters into your new book, "Wisdom of Our Fathers." Now that you have heroized fathers, will you ever pen a book about your mother, "Big Betty and Me"?

Big Betty? Actually it was Little Betty.

Since you're fond of recalling the many virtues instilled in you by your father, a retired sanitation worker in Buffalo, can you tell us what your mother taught you?

In the "Big Russ" book, I talked about Father Donovan, our local pastor, who every Mother's Day would say, "The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world."

That's not a story about your mother. It's a story about Father Donovan.

It clearly made an impression on me, because it's something that my mom and I talked about all the time.

You still haven't answered the question of what your mom taught you. What do you do on "Meet the Press" if your guests fail to answer your questions?

It's so interesting. Do I sometimes feel internally like I should lean over and just shake this person and say, "Please answer the question"? Of course I do. But I do not want to make them the least bit sympathetic. For me to inject myself or become personal, I think would probably make the guest very sympathetic, and I don't want to do that.

When I first read it I thought the same thing I do now: There's an awful lot of dodging, a lot of incidental flim flam, a lot of rhetorical tricks.

It's great that Russert rehashes in his letter what he told Solomon about his mother over the rest of an hour-long conversation, and even adds new content. But he doesn't dispute that this is what he said in response to her specific questions.

Of course he said other things at other times--but on his show Tim doesn't quote entire speeches either, just the parts he finds telling. And nothing he says in his letter is at odds with the impression I got from Solomon's edited interview.

Russert's a rough guy--see how gleefully he ambushes guests on his morning show with writings and statements from the archives, he clearly relishes his tough guy image.

There's nothing wrong with that--everyone who comes on his show is a big boy/girl, they know how the game's played and they generally give back as good as they get. If they don't or can't, it can make you wonder about their fitness for their public post.

In this case, I wonder what kind of a journalist publicly rips another one in the fashion Tim goes after Solomon; it's a scorched earth approach that you rarely see outside the political shoutfests. Most journalists in Tim's shoes would've agreed with Deborah's right to disagree.

He had better be damn sure that Solomon, a well-respected veteran, took his words out of context. Just because you spend most of your interview talking about one thing doesn't mean your most telling comments are all buried in that mass.

Tim's a master of spin, as he has to be in order to combat it from his guests. That's what I see here... heck, his letter appears a month after the article, making it feel even more deliberate than anguished.

Photo of Russert by Mackenzie Stroh for the Times.