To tell the God's honest truth, it's been hard coming up with posts this past week or so, ever since Hillary Clinton finally -- and we do mean FINALLY, as in, damn, it seemed it would never happen -- bowed out of the race.
I mean everybody suddenly turned all gushy toward her. Even the trench-coat guys in the vast right-wing conspiracy were praising her magnanimity, her graciousness and her elegance under fire.
Eugene Robinson of the Washington Post and MSNBC issued the highest praise ever bestowed on the oratory of a presidential candidate, when he called Clinton's I'm-outta-here speech a "crackerjack speech."
It was all, as you know, downhill from there.
The passion seemed gone. McCain has looked (and sounded) like an energizer bunny, saying nothing worth repeating or remembering. Obama the word wizzard has seemed to be picking up steam, but it's been like he's choo-chooing in a vacuum with something of the mystery very much missing.
This void caused by the departure of Hillary Clinton is serious, my friends (as McCain might say). Listen closely. It has this sucking sound that, for all we know, will claim victims, especially among journalists, in the coming days, if they are not careful.
Perhaps, perhaps, Tim Russert was feeling this emptiness as he descended over the past two weeks into a hellish sense that, likely, a very rough patch of boredom was lying in wait.
Truth be told, we noted over the past week that Tim looked spent and uncharacteristically hesitant as he engaged with others on MSNBC about the passion-filled run that was the contest between Clinton and Obama.
We await details on what Russert had been going through, medically and otherwise; but even I, who had nothing in common with Tim -- other than being a reporting hack and a product of the Jesuits -- can be allowed to make a connection between the end of the Hillary-run and his own cashing-in.
Surely, at the very least, there is some poetry in his passing from our Sunday tubes just as we were experiencing this wasteland of puzzled uncertainty handed up by Hillary's departure -- we mean "suspension."
Who knows? Maybe it's all just the fatigue of a battle bravely fought and won.
Comments