In Russert's Wake

Joe Klein remembers the drinking days; John Cole gets queasy at the network coverage; David Remnick on "gotcha at its highest form". Tom Shales:

He was by nature a fair-minded kind of a guy, and spite, bullying and nastiness were not in his playbook. They would have tainted the show -- worse, they would have spoiled his fun.

If that was unthinkable, so is the idea of this felicitous and edifying ritual suddenly and without warning coming to an end, of it being Sunday morning and time for "Meet the Press," but with Tim Russert absent. It's just not right that he is gone, just not right. It's an affront, an outrage, an act of cruelty -- and something that Russert never was: unfair.