He's NBC's "youth correspondent", and will be co-hosting New Year's Eve from Times Square!

Luke is the son of the late Tim Russert and Vanity Fair's Maureen Orth.

Luke graduated from the tony, elite St. Albans School in Washington, D.C. in 2004.  While still in college, and totally on his own merits, and without the help of any family or friends, Luke co-hosted a sports talk program on XM radio with James Carville, and snagged a job with ESPN's Pardon the Interruption.  Obviously, Luke was the most gifted college journalist of his generation.  Otherwise, he never would have nabbed those jobs!

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I don't have a lot of time at the moment, but I thought that this article was remarkable as much for where it comes from as for what it says.

The Politico is a right-leaning website.  How right?  I couldn't really tell you (it's not as right as most of the people who fill its comment sections, seemingly), but Bush did an interview for them earlier this year, and Bush barely acknowledges the existance of the internet.  More significantly, though, they're pretty good journalists and I often go there when the sweet, cloying liberal bias of places like this blog or the Huffington Post threaten to override my sense that we need to keep working hard to ensure victory and, perhaps, landslide, for Obama.

That said, when Jonathan Martin on GOP starts to look like Ben Smith on Dems with good news for Obama and bad news for McCain, there's something going on.

Let's have a look at their explanation.

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As garnerered from the New York Times article, It is Mr. Brokaw we have to thank for the sacking of Keith Olberman and Chris Matthews from the anchor desk at MSNBC.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/30/arts/t elevision/30brok.html?_r=2&hp=&p agewanted=print&oref=slogin

     "In an interview here after Sunday's broadcast, Mr. Brokaw said that over the summer he had "advocated" within the executive suite of NBC News to modify the anchor duties of the MSNBC hosts Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews on election night and on nights when there were presidential debates. Their expressions of strong political opinions from the MSNBC anchor desk has run counter to the more traditional role Mr. Brokaw played on "NBC Nightly News" for more than two decades. NBC said earlier this month that the two hosts would mostly relinquish their anchor duties to Mr. Gregory, while being present as analysts."

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cross-posted at Bleeding Heartland

NBC announced today that Tom Brokaw will host the Sunday morning show "Meet the Press" at least through the November election. That was a very shrewd decision.

A former longtime evening news anchor, Brokaw has more than enough stature for the job.

Equally important, Brokaw can help the network repair some of the damage that was done by MSNBC commentators who were biased against Hillary Clinton during the primaries.

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As the Daily Howler wrote on Friday, it was a week for peering inside the dead souls of the U.S. media elite. And the most revealing two paragraphs came from the corporate media's least self-aware disinfotainer, Chris Matthews. Jealousy probably underlay the MSNBC Hardballer stating, immediately after hearing of boss Tim Russert's death, that Russert was the targeted dupe for the 'scary nukes' issue that Bush/Cheney used to get us into Iraq. Here's Matthews on Thursday, June 13 (emphasis added):

One other thing, and may be tricky to say this and I'll say it. When we went to war with Iraq, he and I had a little discussion about that and this is where he is every man. This is where Tim is Mr. or Miss America or Mrs. America. He is us as a country. I said, why--how can you believe this war is justified?  And he said, "The nuclear thing. If they have a bomb that they can use, we've got to deal with. We can't walk away from that."

And that to me was the essence of what was wrong with the whole case of the war. They knew the argument that would sell with Mr. America, with the regular guy, with the true American patriot. They used the argument that would sell, that would get us into that war. Tim was right on the nail. He was us, the American people. And that to me is something that has been coming in my head the last couple of hours when Tim and I had that conversation, that that was the thing that sold America. And the guys who wanted the war used that one thing that would sell the patriot in Tim Russert.

In sum, Cheney felt that Russert was the key guy he had to dupe, and it couldn't have been easier: 'TRUST ME TIM, SADDAM'S GOT NUKES!' That's all: no push back, no inquiry, End of F-cking Story. The Howler quotes Matthews and adds (emphasis by fairleft):

Matthews, of course, is describing a private discussion. There's no proof that this discussion occurred . . . But did Russert really get played, as embellishments led us to war in Iraq? You don't have to rely on Matthews. Who can forget the embarrassing exchange Russert had with Bill Moyers, just last year? Had Russert been duped by the war machine? Fairly plainly, Moyers was asking--and as he answered, Russert made one of the most embarrassing statements a big journalist ever has made:

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