Episode Twenty-Four: "I Remember Tim Russert"

RHODA: Journalists like Tim Russert come around once every 400,000 years, like avatars.

MARY: Tim Russert burned down the sky, Rhoda.

RHODA: I remember January 22, 2006, when Tim Russert badgered Barack Obama about why Harry Belafonte said Homeland Security had become the new Gestapo.

MARY: I was sitting on the windowsill and I saw a squirrel in the bole of the Mayakovsky Tree.

RHODA: I remember February 26, 2008, when Tim Russert interrogated Obama and Hillary Clinton on what they thought of Louis Farrakhan, even though the two of them have no connection to Farrakhan. But he said it in a nice way, Mary.

MARY: I remember Tim Russert always did his homework and asked the tough questions.

RHODA: Tim Russert was an American character right from Mark Twain.

MARY: I remember October 31, 2004, days before the election, when Tim Russert asked, "Is it inconsistent for John Kerry to be criticizing the missing weapons of mass destruction when, if he had been president of the United States, Saddam may be in power with all those potential biological, chemical weapons or munitions, however you want to describe them?"

RHODA: I remember Tim Russert blew my mind, Mary -- because Iraq didn't have these weapons.

MARY: I remember crying myself to sleep on the tabletop hockey game under the bed.

RHODA: I still remember February 26, 2008, when Russert questioned Hillary Clinton's desire to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq. I remember when he said, "If this scenario plays out and Americans get out in total and Al-Qaeda resurges and Iraq goes to hell, do you hold the right, in your mind, as American president, to re-invade, to go back into Iraq and stabilize it?"

MARY: I remember Hillary Clinton saying, "You know, Tim, you ask a lot of hypotheticals."

RHODA: I remember Tim Russert jumping in and saying, "But this is reality." I remember thinking, Is he going to ask Clinton if she would force Congress to establish a caliphate based on Shari'a law if she became President. I mean, this is not hypothetical, Mary, it's reality.

MARY: I remember crying on a pile of sweaters in the back of the closet.

RHODA: Tim Russert always did his homework, Mary.

MARY: He was always prepared for his interviews. He would spend all week preparing for Meet the Press, reading everything.

RHODA: As if NBC paid him a salary to do his job.

MARY: I remember when the Vice-President of the War on Terror's press aide testified at the Scooter Libby trial that Meet the Press was the favored media outlet when White House war planners needed to "ge[t] their message out."

RHODA: I remember Tim Russert singing like a canary to the FBI about his contacts with Scooter Libby.

MARY: I remember Tim Rutten of the Los Angeles Times writing on June 14, 2008: "Like former New York Times reporter Judith Miller, Russert was one of the high-level Washington journalists who came out of the Libby trial looking worse than shabby."

RHODA: I remember how I cried seeing All the President's Men three times.