Fatherhood: Teachable Moments and Uncomfortable Truths, Part III—Letting Go

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We began this week's conversation on Fatherhood with Tiger Woods' example of role-modeling by his own actions the best of what a child can emulate and strive for...in the crucible of championship golf, a phenomenal victory despite injury and pain, and, in the media, the picture of a father's loving embrace of his little girl.

But Fatherhood isn't just about being a figurehead, as Barack Obama reminded us in his Sunday speech, calling on absent fathers to be present and responsible in their children's lives. A poignant reminder that he knows whereof he speaks...growing up without the presence of his father in his life, his own bond with his daughters is obviously loving and grounded in appreciation for his responsibility as well as joy of being a father.

The hardest part of the fatherhood bond comes with the time for letting go. And this week, we have been witness to that in myriad ways, large and small, as the two families of Tim Russert, the uberfather, had to do that in the full glare of the media.

His son, Luke, spoke repeatedly about his father in teevee appearance after teevee appearance. He did it with grace and far more patience than the hyperbolic media deserved. Small wonder that his dad preferred to spent time tailgating in Boston with his son than mixing with the movers'n'shakers of the Village's Very Important People.

But let's not kid anyone, Russert was, himself, one of the VIPs. And there are hints of the uberfather, the helicopter parent, in his relationship with his colleagues in the media that extended beyond NBC/MSNBC. The ebullient man, the larger-than-life superstar was the funnel through which all conventional wisdom in Washington must flow. What Ben Bradlee was in the days of Watergate, Russert and Meet the Press had become.

The time will come when that authoritarian power will be analyzed as history rather than hagiography. And how wisely or well that power was wielded or directed. Because just as there were two families mourning a deep loss this week, there were two venues of fatherhood, the family patriarch in charge.

We live in a world of father figures, patriarchies, "Our Father"s, dictatorships, Deciderer's—"Daddy knows best." But the real challenge of Fatherhood—the imprecation we are reminded of in "raise up a child in the way he should go and he will not depart from it..."—has an irreplaceable codicil. Prepare the child to carry on as an adult without the crutch of your presence. To stand on his own two feet.

Having seen clips of Luke Russert's grace immersed in his obvious grief, we have no doubt that his father's daily reminder "you are loved...you are loved, but not entitled..." will sustain him through some tough times ahead.

For Tim Russert's coterie at the Washington Bureau of Meet the Press and in the larger Village where he reigned, I hope for different sustaining words.

We do not know the whys or wherefores yet that informed and conformed Russert's philosophy as bureau chief of the news division of a humonguous global corporation. [Who would really argue that Russert was no less than the bureau chief of the whole place, not just Washington.] Perhaps Maureen Orth, a noted journalist at Vanity Fair, when the time is right for her, will tell us with the same unvarnished candor she brings to her other writings. My Tim is a book I would read.

But in the meantime, there are those sustaining words. Words that only speculation now judges whether Russert himself lived up to, in the crucible and coziness that is the nation's capital. Words that his colleagues now must carry on as they move forward. Words that are both tribute and sorrow.

Words that stand, for the soldiers who come home under cover of darkness, in flag-draped boxes. Or struggle to put back together a life while grievously maimed or mentally scarred, perhaps beyond repair.

Words that stand, for the families who are losing their homes, their jobs, their resources...to disaster, to corruption, to incompetence, to a government philosophy that does not work.

Words that stand, for the families who are bankrupted by medical costs, denied treatments, or without hope because the science was stymied these long years.

For the media "children" as well as the son of the father, this has been a week of memorialization, now slipping into memory. A time of reflection and letting go.

The time for all of us—but especially the media who are charged with the First responsibility to be a free press, watchdogging our liberty, not just parroting the words of the patriarchies like dutiful children—to put away childish things.

The time is coming for all of us when we must show the responsibilities of adults, not children or reactive adolescents. For each of us, to be not just a "go-to" guy, but an examiner, a thinker and a questioner. For history will come soon enough, the future is tomorrow's problem.

In the meantime, Today, "Go get 'em, guys."


The Internet is chock-full of remembrances and memorializing and pontificating about Tim Russert. This is one commentary that caught my eye: Eugene Robinson on Russert
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