Big PC...my dad...lemme talk about him for 28 hours with ya... (REPOST from 2008)

(In light of Baby Russert's assertion the other day, and the impending Father's Day holiday, I was thinking about this post I made years ago about Russert the Elder's unending pronouncements about his father and the eclipsing of the real news of the day: catastrophic flooding in the Midwest.)

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Ya know...I'm all for adulation of the older generation - they accomplished a tremendous amount and survived hardships which most of us cannot imagine.

No buts. They did. That being said, I want to refresh some with a movie plot and ask; does this sound familiar?

In "Peggy Sue Got Married", Kathleen Turner passes out and travels back in time to her youth at which time and place she reconnects with all of her friends and family. during the early part of the movie she talks seemingly incessantly about going to see her grandfather...the fount of all wisdom. When she finally does see him and asks what he would do differently in life, he remarks to her that "...he would probably take better care of my teeth."

I relate this NOT because I am a dentist, but because our remembrances of our parents, family, and friends are thru rose-colored glasses and it's very nice for us to have these memories which help us and shape us...but are they different from anyone else's memories in terms of profundity, in terms of insight, or in terms of emotionality?

During the past couple of days, we have been treated to a real retrospective of Tim Russert's life with his Dad...I haven't heard word one about his mother, but there may well be a reason or reasons for that. Last night, MSNBC replayed an interview with Tim, I feel I can call him Tim because he's like a 'friend' to me, ( :sarcasm: ) and in that interview he said, more or less, that when his father called a politician a 'phony', then Tim knew that that guy or gal was finished in terms of his or her quest for election.

Now I don't know about you, but I was not exactly overwhelmed by the originality of the statement nor of the underwhelming profundity thereof, but in fact I believe that tim's dad said the same thing that most dads say when they don't like a politician and feel that he or she is being disingenuous. I mean to say: this utterance was not exactly Churchillian, nor quite frankly, would I expect it to be. but Tim's relating of this presupposes that his father was special that his father had profoundly important feelings and opinions. And he did have those things: For Tim. And Tim's family. And I understand that completely and am duly impressed.

But I feel that I have been subjected to the second Coming of George Bernard Shaw or Ward Cleaver or someone else in the past few days. I had a Dad too: he was brilliant, lacked some social graces, but was a pragmatic soul who understood human behavior on the individual level as well as the societal, who understood religion, politics, and history like few I have ever met, and he was a Postal Worker. He was a Postal worker because when he came back from four years in the Philippines and the Pacific he was a shell of a man and he needed to reintroduce himself back into society slowly since he survived a terrible ordeal. He took a government job and never left it...earned 7 Masters Degrees and was also, believe it or not, employed at a second full-time job DURING THE DAY. The Post Office was for nights...remarkable man.

His insights were remarkable and he was helpful to many with whom he worked and studied and was highly regarded as an eccentrically bright guy...and he died essentially broke and alone in a hospital. I was the only one who came to see him and it was very very sad. It still is.

See, we all had fathers, we just didn't have a platform upon which to write a best-selling book about his sayings and his vagaries. I resented the implication, not stated directly, that Big Russ was supposed to be special for me as well...he's not. he's the Dad of Tim, he's now suffered the greatest tragedy any parent can possibly suffer, and I grieve for him as an individual. I also grieve for all those who have died and been injured in this horrible, unnecessary war, and there are no 30 hours of MSNBC, NBC, CNN, CBS,ABC,or FOX specials to delineate all the tragedies which this ill-conceived war has spawned. we are beset with flooding and there is no sign of any administration Official rushing to the aid of these people because there are no more elections which involve this Administration. There are hundreds of thousands of people, all of whom have or had Dads who spent Father's Day seeing their lives destroyed by flood waters. It is a tragedy beyond the comprehension of most if not all of us and here we sit, talking about one man whose passing was a surprise to us. What of the surprise of those who saw their houses floating down the newly-created rivers in the Midwest? It eclipses the '"Big Story" of the weekend in extremis.

I like your writings.......

:hi: