I was zipping around the Internet and bopping in and out of my e-mail when a Yahoo headline hit me in the face: “Tim Russert dies.”

I clicked on the news story and couldn’t believe it. I still don’t.

Russert’s passing at age 58 is a national catastrophe.

Look out politicians. Beware business folks.

In this GOTCHA! world, the goo-goos are gonna getcha.

Memories of Tim Russert
The last time I spent quality time with Russert was watching him on May 20, the night of the final major primaries in Kentucky and Oregon. He was pumped, bubbling with enthusiasm, his eyes shining. My God he loved politics! And how he loved his job(s)—moderator of “Meet the Press,” chief of the NBC News Washington Bureau and VP of NBC News.

Russert had two qualities unmatched in television journalism:

1. His incredible knowledge and foresight. Who can ever forget Election Day 2000, when he announced the three states that would determine the outcome. Whereupon he held up sign on which was scrawled:

FLORIDA!
FLORIDA!
FLORIDA!

2. He brilliantly articulated the political process. Tim Russert had no agenda and played no favorites. Process and results were everything. With all other newscasters and talking heads, you can smell their biases, prejudices and nastiness right through the TV screen.

Rival network CBS so revered Russert that it took out a full-page ad in The New York Times to mourn his passing. (See illustration below.)

The Bad Stuff Coming
Dirt—and Gotcha! tactics—are already beginning to fly thanks to the goo-goos, those “Good Government” reformers who first surfaced at the end of the 19th century. Today’s goo-goos spread outrageous stories to further their own agendas while hiding behind anonymous Web sites, network news and talk shows.

Who can forget Michelle Obama’s line, “And let me tell you something, for the first time in my adult life I am proud of my country”?

The goo-goos at CNN played this 24/7 as an endless loop. Tennessee Republican goo-goos jumped on it and made a four-minute anti-Obama video, playing Michelle Obama’s gaffe seven times interspersed with ordinary folks claiming pride of country. Fringe stuff? It drew 773,563 views—more than twice the typical cable talk show audience. See it for yourself.

GOTCHA! Michelle!

Whoops! Wait! On MSNBC’s “Verdict,” Dan Abrams broadcast several instances where John McCain said, “I didn’t really love America until I was deprived of her company.”

Abrams ran it again and again, and had a panel discuss it.

GOTCHA! John!”

A headline in The New York Times of last Saturday cried: “Bloomberg, in Florida, Blasts Rumor About Obama.” The rumor: a massive Internet whisper campaign that Obama is a Muslim. GOTCHA! Barack.

In that same edition of The Times there was another headline: “Ready to Attack Obama, if Some Money Arrives.” Michael Luo detailed the Web site, ExposeObama.com, which propagates the Obama-Muslim rumor. The perpetrator is Floyd Brown, 47, master political dirty trickster, whose Independent “Willie Horton” campaign virtually destroyed Michael Dukakis’s chances to beat George H.W. Bush for the presidency in 1988. Luo writes, “A Bible verse taped to a whiteboard in Floyd Brown’s office that he uses to track his efforts to attack Senator Barack Obama reads, ‘That is why for Christ’s sake I delight in weakness, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties.’”