My Dad will be buried in Arlington Cemetery on July 23 at 1 p.m. with military honors. He died a few months ago at the age of 89 after serving 33 years in the U.S. Navy and then 20 years as a high-school physics teacher. No celebrities will attend his funeral. It won't get a week’s worth of coverage on national television. I can't tell you how disgusted I was by the TV coverage of Tim Russert's death.

When the NBC Nightly News did their entire half-hour broadcast on his death, I was shocked at how out of proportion the coverage was to Russert’s place on the planet. He was not a world leader, he was not the head of a freedom movement, he was not raising money for disadvantaged children. He was the host of a not-prime time news show. By whose value system is his death more important than JFK and the pope? By NBC's apparently.

I kept hearing what a great father Russert was. My father only had eight kids and raised them on Navy pay, and all but one (me) graduated from college. Russert had one child, raised him on celebrity pay, took the boy to all the Super Bowl and World Series games and got the kid anything money could buy. I think we all know who was the better father.