What an interesting difference

I'm thinking about the difference in how people have reacted to the deaths of Tim Russert and George Carlin.  One guy it was all about his career and it's impact on the culture, and with the other guy his career was part of it but it was really all about the kind of person he was.

I never had an opinion on Tim Russert while he was alive.  But I do now.

You never know how you're going to be remembered. 

For what it's worth, Peggy Noonan wrote the best thing I saw on Tim Russert and being remembered:

When somebody dies, we tell his story and try to define and isolate what was special about it—what it was he brought to the party, how he enhanced life by showing up. In this way we educate ourselves about what really matters. Or, often, re-educate ourselves, for "man needs more to be reminded than instructed."

After Tim's death, the entire television media for four days told you the keys to a life well lived, the things you actually need to live life well, and without which it won't be good. Among them: taking care of those you love and letting them know they're loved, which involves self-sacrifice; holding firm to God, to your religious faith, no matter how high you rise or low you fall. This involves guts, and self-discipline, and active attention to developing and refining a conscience to whose promptings you can respond. Honoring your calling or profession by trying to do within it honorable work, which takes hard effort, and a willingness to master the ethics of your field. And enjoying life. This can be hard in America, where sometimes people are rather grim in their determination to get and to have...

And Dan Phillips wrote best on George Carlin:

Here you see a man who is confronted with the disaster which autonomy has brought on our race. Carlin sees some of the bitter fruits of man's rebellion against God. He longs for redemption. He sees that it will not arise from within us. Yet, like the classic definition of insanity, he has no prescription but more of the same...

What a way to be remembered: Carlin made many clever, wry, gentler observations; but it was a juvenile, potty-mouthed rant that ends up as his epitaph...Which got me to thinking a bit of how any of us will be remembered when we pass away...