What’s happening: Luke Russert, the 38-year-old nepo prodigy who quit his job at MSNBC in 2016 to travel the world on a “quest for enlightenment,” has apparently achieved said enlightenment and will return to the network as the cherubic face of corporate-sponsored events.
• Seven years after self-emancipating from the “shackles of D.C. society,” Russert will be back in chains soon enough. The left-wing network announced Tuesday that Russert will serve as host and creative director of “MSNBC Live,” a new event series launching next year featuring “high-profile interviews, expert forums and panels on a local and national scale.”
What they’re saying: “Traveling around [American flag emoji] on my book tour reminded me how much there is to learn from listening & engaging with folks in person,” Russert said. “It’s good to be home [peacock emoji].”
• Russert outlined his ambitions for the new project in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter. “At these events MSNBC regulars will be talking with some of America’s leading thinkers,” he said. “It is our hope we can advance important dialogue and reach a measure of understanding as well as remember what makes America great—its unity in diversity and commitment to democratic ideals.”
• “Congrats, Luke. We are lucky to have you doing this,” wrote Michael Beschloss, the official “presidential historian” for NBC News who is helping President Joe Biden save democracy in his spare time.
What’s next: Russert’s new venture will serve as a mechanism through which MSNBC can solicit corporate sponsorships and corporate sponsors can leverage media exposure for profit. It will also give irrelevant political failures such as Hillary Clinton a platform to complain or peddle reverse mortgages or whatever.
• Launching just in time for the 2024 election, MSNBC Live will inevitably feature numerous events modeled on the “Stop Trump Summit” hosted by the New Republic in October. In other words, tedious affairs marketed to extremely online liberals who still haven’t recovered from the mental breakdowns they suffered in November 2016.
Crucial context: Russert, the son of the late NBC legend Tim Russert, spent the better part of a decade galavanting around the world in search of his “purpose” only to realize that his true purpose was writing an unintentionally self-deprecating memoir about how to find your true purpose on a seemingly unlimited budget.
• “If the road calls, I answer,” Russert wrote in Look For Me There: Grieving My Father, Finding Myself. “It’s more than a lifestyle; it’s life.” At one point, the road called Russert to attend a Guns N’ Roses concert in New Zealand, where he got drunk on the beach, took a few “Instagram-perfect photos,” and began “at last to truly broach the inner reaches of my self.” He wondered if his grandfather, whose B-24 bomber was shot down during World War II, had worried about “dying without knowing his inner truth.”
• Russert experienced a moment of profound racial healing while visiting a former slave port in Senegal when a surfer flashed him “the shaka hand sign, the worldwide symbol of hanging loose,” and suddenly the “waters that yesterday represented so much evil today [began] to restore themselves into a more hopeful and progressive present, for a world where we not only atone for our sins but understand each other.” He flashed the shaka sign back, obviously.
Bottom line: Luke Russert went around the world only to realize he was home all along.
Go deeper: Eat, Pray, Drink, Lounge, Post, Publish: The Luke Russert Guide to Self-Discovery.
Of note: Earlier this year, Russert attended the Nantucket Film Festival and moderated an “insightful conversation” about buffaloes. He also met up with fellow MSNBC nepo babies Thomas Matthews, son of disgraced former host Chris Matthews, and Allison Williams, daughter of disgraced former host Brian Williams.
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