Fulfilling your duties, where does that land you? Into jealousy, upsets, persecution. Is that the way to get on? Butter people up, good God, butter them up, watch the great, study their tastes, fall in with their whims, pander to their vices, approve of their injustices. That’s the secret.
—Denis Diderot,
Rameau’s Nephew

At 3:39 p.m. on Friday, June 13, Tom Brokaw interrupted NBC’s network programming with the late-breaking news that Tim Russert had died—of a heart attack earlier that afternoon while preparing his Sunday broadcast of Meet the Press—and by the top of the next hour…