Posted on 06/30/2005 9:32:25 PM PDT by 68skylark
Durbinization alert:
Tons of readers are e-mailing me about NBC News anchor Brian Williams' comments tonight in which he apparently compared the Founding Fathers to modern-day terrorists. The remarks seem to pooh-pooh the story about Iranian president-elect Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's alleged involvement in the 1979 hostage crisis at the U.S. embassy in Tehran.
Williams previewed his argument on his MSNBC blog:
Many Americans woke up to a curious story this morning: several of the former Iran Hostages have decided there is a strong resemblance between Iran's new president and one of their captors more than 25 years ago. The White House and most official branches of government are ducking any substantive comment on this story, and photo analysis is going on at this and other news organizations. It is a story that will be at or near the top of our broadcast and certainly made for a robust debate in our afternoon editorial meeting, when several of us raised the point (I'll leave it to others to decide germaneness) that several U.S. presidents were at minimum revolutionaries, and probably were considered terrorists of their time by the Crown in England.
According to news watchers, Williams repeated the argument in his broadcast banter tonight with NBC correspondent Andrea Mitchell. Since I haven't watched an NBC Nightly News broadcast in, oh, five years, I'm hoping someone grabbed video of it.
According to this report, Williams told Mitchell:
"What would it all matter if proven true? Someone brought up today the first several U.S. presidents were certainly revolutionaries and might have been called 'terrorists' by the British crown, after all."
In his blog post, it was "several of us" who came up with the morally equivalent notion. According to the above transcription, the "several" was reduced to a lone "someone" by air time. Who brought it up, Brian? Who? Do tell. Is it your own fabulously ill-informed thought? Or can you blame one or two or several low-level staffers?
Bloggers are already on the case, natch...
The Dread Pundit Bluto comments:
If anyone needed another example of the insanity of the liberal doctrine of moral and cultural equivalence, which came into fashion during the Cold War, this is it. It's actually less offensive for Williams to imply that our Founding Fathers were terrorists than it is for him to put them on a par with the bloodthirs[t]y, unevolved barbarians who took over Iran in 1979.
Williams owes this country a sincere and abject apology.
Williams indulges in the same, tired moral equivalency that led Michael Moore to declare Zarqawi as the Iraqi version of the Minutemen from our war of independence. This minimizes the cruelty and inhumanity of the enemies of freedom that use civilians as their targets while trying to impose tyrannies far worse than anything George III could ever have dreamed in his most feverish illusions.
Media Lies: "That's it. I'm done with NBC."
I am quite the history buff and I have yet to see any type of mention where this happened or anything even remotely close. During the Revolutionary War, the British burned homes of settlers, executed traitors and ransacked the nation. We gave the British soldiers quarter for the most part and eventually shipped a large number of Red Coats back to England . . . alive. Never did American soldiers storm into buildings and take everyone inside hostage. Never!
I have a feeling Mr. Williams will be feeling a lot of heat in the next 24 hours. He's already sparking some major pre-Fourth of July fireworks. For once, I'll be interested in what he has to say. Stay tuned to his blog.
Nah, by the time talk radio and the new media are done with him, HE will be looking at such an action as a potential solution to his headaches, then again, there's always... um.... Scientology.
Careful, Xenu'll getcha.
I'm a little rusty on my American history BUT if I do believe 'total war' is a recent phenomena isn't it? The FFs weren't insurgents. They were revolutionaries opposing an oppressive government (Great Britain) and addressed their concerns to them. This comparison is very shaky and has very little basis in facts when you think it through. Later years during the Civil War and afterwards, maybe we saw some actions of individual soldiers against the innocents of the opposition (women and children) but nothing done as policy. Brian Williams is a horse's ass imho.
FYI ping...
NBC = Nothing Butt Crap
"Just Like the Holocaust Without Any Jews or Killing", written last year, says it all.
Be patient. We'll get the bottom of this when we invade Iran.
Moral relativism and a history re-write all-in-one.
IMHO,Brian Williams is about as significant as George Stephonopolis (?). Williams too could be deleted and it would not effect their news broadcast.
'NUFF SAID!
Well, I guess that makes Brian Williams the latter day equivalent of Leni Riefenstahl.
And he probably wears a dress too, we just haven't heard about that yet.
Typical ignorant talking head. I miss the Huntley-Brinkley Report.
I would NOT say, however, that "total war" is a new concept. Alexander utterly destroyed cities that opposed him, as did the Mongols.
I wonder if our Founding Fathers were involved in carriage bombing a barracks full of British Marines???
Here goes the right wing media trying to force a news man to take accountability for his words. Nazis!
Why is this news? Michael Moore did the same thing in April a year ago (commenting on the Fallujah insurgents).
My response: there is no comparison unless you can find a historical record that the Minutemen mutilated 4 redcoat bodies and hung them off the Concord Bridge. 'Pod.
Who is Brian Williams and what is NBC news? Are they some of the junk that got thrown into the bin of irrelevance?
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