Posted on 02/11/2015 7:14:19 AM PST by Kaslin
Brian Williams has ruled the roost at "NBC Nightly News" for more than 10 years. Right before he took over, he saw Dan Rather's career go up in flames at CBS over phony National Guard documents marshaled against President Bush.
The anchorman's career has imploded for another reason. He seemingly can't stop telling falsehoods about himself.
He was in Iraq reporting during the war and certainly had powerful copy, with visuals, to present -- but it wasn't enough. He had to embellish, from one audience to the next.
By the time he arrived at the Letterman show in 2013, it was mythology on steroids. His helicopter somehow managed to go further north than the northern-most coalition forces, thus placing him behind enemy lines. His craft took small arms fire. They were hit by an RPG. Their pilot was wounded behind the ear and subsequently was awarded a Purple Heart. They were forced to make a hard landing in the desert, where they sat out a two-day sandstorm.
It was "like 'Black Hawk Down' meets 'Saving Private Ryan,'" he declared on MSNBC in 2003.
The sandstorm was real. Everything else was fabricated.
As in Rather's demise, New Media thumped Old Media. Soldiers complaining on Facebook led to an article in Stars and Stripes newspaper, where those brave men who escorted Williams said all his stories were junk. It led bloggers on the Internet to do research any network could have undertaken, and NBC certainly should have conducted. Williams was forced to confront the firestorm and did so publicly on his newscast -- only to make matters worse. Among other things, in his apology he declared he'd "misremembered" events. (How Clintonian!) No, it wasn't his chopper that was hit, it was the one they were following.
How in the world does one "misremember" something like that? Truth is, he wasn't telling the truth again. Those who were with him have come forward with devastating information. He wasn't hit. The chopper in front of his wasn't hit.
Chris Simeone wrote a first-person account in The New York Post. That part about the wounded, decorated pilot? "I was the pilot in command of the aircraft carrying Brian Williams. I do not have a Purple Heart, and my ears are just fine."
Then Katrina.
In a recent interview, Williams claimed he worked through a bout with dysentery during Hurricane Katrina, and claimed he witnessed a dead body floating outside his Ritz-Carlton hotel room. Actually, he's told three different versions: There was a body floating; there was a dead body on a street corner; and someone told him he'd seen a body floating. He also claimed he'd seen armed gangs at his hotel.
On an NBC prime time special a year after Katrina in 2006, Williams treated New Orleans as the most dangerous town on Earth, complete with weird boasts like "I carried a case of Vienna sausage ... as collateral in case we had a smash-and-grab carjacking. I was going to offer it to someone in exchange for my life." Williams claimed he was so starving for food that "I remember seeing a box of Slim Jims and thinking, 'That's better than any restaurant meal right now. That's the greatest thing I've ever seen.'"
Bunk.
The section of the French Quarter from which Williams was reporting suffered minimal flooding, and in some parts, no flooding. There were no bodies floating. The city's former health director has declared that no one in the city was treated for dysentery, even a month after the flooding. (Besides, how does one "accidentally" drink flood waters, as he claims?) The manager of the Ritz-Carlton (where he stayed) actually won an award for keeping the place safe from roving gangs with a cadre of police.
Most damning of all: Williams wrote a daily blog on NBC.com during this time. Nowhere did he report floating bodies, dysentery or gangs.
Now it's Israel, with him telling tall tales of Hezbollah rockets coming within 1,500 feet of his helicopter (again) when it was actually six miles the day he reported the incident.
As these episodes keep tumbling out, it begins to sound like the Jon Lovitz character on "Saturday Night Live" who couldn't stop lying that he was married to Morgan Fairchild, saying "Yeah, that's the ticket."
The credibility of this man is shot -- and to whatever degree NBC News continues to use him, its credibility is shot as well.
6 months means it is pretty much over for Mr. Williams.
Ask yourself this....NBC has to find some four-star guy/gal to stand in for six months and hope they don’t lose an audience. Temp guy? No....they will go straight for Matt Lauer. If the guy delivers the same numbers...Williams might return in six months to find they don’t need him and he’s shifted into the Today Show for the remainder of his contract.
The six-month thing simply helps NBC move to a new position on the story.
I hope he stays and I hope people quit watching and his network continues it’s death spiral.
He’ll skate, and the liberal media will openly admire how cleverly he will be in skating.
Lying Williams will blame his “memory lapses” and story telling on alcohol and go into rehab. You watch.
And now we know what Brian Williams' life is worth. I propose that everyone send NBC a case of Vienna sausages to forward to Brian, as a form of severance payment.
Needs to be said. FR brought Rather down and it started with Buckhead.
To me, it was all over once Tom Brokow called for Brian Williams to quit. He will not skate and you can take this to the bank.
Williams won’t rip up his contact, and pretty sure there’s not a liar liar pants on fire clause. Maybe he’ll return to interview other liars like Hillary, Kerry, Sharpton, Bill, Barry, Dean... Hey, that’s like his bud squad right there...
FINALLY it appears that Brian Williams is HISTORY! The corrupt behavior of the NY based media makes incest look like a normal family activity! These network anchors are paid 7 figures to read teleprompters filled with news items pulled directly from the leftist New York Times while assuming appropriate facial expressions. And those in the so-called main stream media wonder why it is sinking into a well deserved grave!
Now it’s on to that clown show over at MSNBC!
Which raises the issue of NET NEUTRALITY.
If anyone is STILL not sure how to feel about the intentionally confusing 332 page FCC monstrosity called Net Neutrality, all you really need to know is that this is OBAMA’S effort to bring to heel the burgeoning internet alternative to Big Brother’s statist propaganda dispensing TELESCREEN. Go online and search Senators and Representatives who support or oppose net neutrality. In the support column you will find the usual leftist democrat suspects. There ya’ go!
Maybe he was just lying to his diary as Clinton's Treasury ghoul Joshua Steiner claimed to Congress in describing discussions with Robert Altman circa 1994/5.
If a person LIES about his/her most personal experiences, how difficult would it be to LIE about most anything?
NBC and the rest of the three-letters and dinosaur paper media can boohaha all they want about it but you can't spit polish a turd unless you're ready to get down there right with it and put some distasteful effort into it.
Agree, does anyone really think Williams will return to his anchor chair in 6 months? NOPE, evening news needs to protect their percieved “brand” of truthfullness and integrity (we know this becuase they deny their bias).
This is the cowardly liberal way to fire someone, no Black and White with liberalism, if there was they would have fired him on the spot.
Brian is just another Dem hack who will be replaced by another Dem hack.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MTaFJJgYftg
This embellishing of history is going to come back to bite the Hillary scampaign in 2016.
Can’t have one high standard for a newsreader and another lower one for the President of the United States.
“YA WONT HAVE BRIAN WILLIAMS TO KICK AROUND ANYMORE”
I expect an announcement in the next few days of a severance agreement between Williams and NBC. He has a high priced lawyer who will negotiate some kind of “mutual Agreement” between the parties which include an “undisclosed” monetary settlement and restrictions on future employment for an unspecified period of time. Is that ambiguous enough? Anybody want to bet against it?
They couldn’t really fire him because it would bring pressure for Hillary and John Hanoi Kerry to step down.
That holds true for the liar and thief in the White House too, right?
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