Lewis Lapham: Tim Russert was a Disgrace

Note: Lewis Lapham's brother, the late Anthony Lapham, was the CIA’s ranking lawyer in the 1970s, and a counsel to Goodwin Procter. Former CIA director George H.W. Bush hired Lapham from Washington, D.C.’s Shea & Gardner, subsequently taken over by Goodwin Procter. The NY Times notes that James Woolsey, President Bill Clinton’s CIA director - and President Bush’s current national security adviser, Stephen Hadley - both hailed from Shea & Gardner. - AC

" ... '1,000 people came to [Russert's] memorial service because essentially he was a shill for the government.' ... Russert was a 'pet canary.' ... "

By Ryan Tate
gawker.com
Aug 15 2008

Lewis Lapham's forthcoming Harper's column on Tim Russert is not entirely unexpected, given the cranky literary liberal's public pronouncements on the late host of Meet The Press. But Lapham, sometimes slammed as insufferable bore, has spun a compelling essay out of his rough initial pronouncement that "1,000 people came to [Russert's] memorial service because essentially he was a shill for the government." Maybe Lapham's thorough disassembling is so tasty this time around because the reverence for Russert (not to mention his son Luke) was so completely over the top: two days and three nights of televised memorial, or some 96 hours of airtime, by Lapham's count. ...

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