The coverage — truly, the celebration — of Tim Russert’s life and legacy has been, surprisingly, very engaging. Sure, I got a bit tired of the non-stop eulogizing, but the affection and dignity with which everyone has remembered Russert feels like a oasis of humanity amidst the manufactured narratives that dominate TV news.

In particular, the bits of the memorial service I was able to see yesterday — especially Luke Russert’s rousing eulogy and Bruce Springsteen’s comments and performance of “Thunder Road” — were undeniably moving.

Having said all that, I can’t help but agree with Hal Boedeker’s scathing critique of the coverage — which he calls “one of the most embarrassing chapters in television journalism history” and “outright merchandising of his death for ratings.”

It really is a must-read in its entirety — but to give you a sense of it, here are excerpts from the first three of the six major “lessons” from the coverage that “should be taught in journalism schools”:

1. Don’t lose perspective. On Friday, “NBC Nightly News” devoted its entire half-hour to Russert. The network ignored all the other news in the world. I thought Brian Williams would say, “Tim would want us to move to the news of the day.” Williams never did. [...]

2. Journalists should remember it’s not about them. NBC has a bad habit of turning the news into a family album. The Russert coverage was the worst example yet. [...]

3. If you can’t hold it together, perhaps you shouldn’t go on the air. Chris Matthews actually seemed dazed on Wednesday’s “Hardball.”

And he offered this bizarre comment: “Do you think it’s an odd coincidence that ever since the bad news came Friday from the studio in Nebraska — we all heard about it in our own worlds — that nothing else seems to have happened. It just seems to have been a moment of — almost a moment of silence, politically for this to be marked, this tragedy.”

Actually, quite a lot has happened in that time: flooding in the Midwest, a deadly bombing in Baghdad, fighting in Afghanistan, the possibility of peace talks in the Mideast, talk of oil drilling off the U.S. coast. That last story could become the biggest this year in Florida.

All those stories have political repercussions. NBC, however, was too busy being self-referential and self-reverential.

Boedeker praises the memorial service itself as “wonderful” — and presumably, worthwhile television — but he’s convinced me of the real dangers and derilection in the the rest of NBC’s coverage.