BRIAN WILLIAMS SAID WHAT?

michellemalkin.com ^ | June 30, 2005 | Michelle Malkin

[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.

Captain's Quarters:

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."

In the Bullpen:

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.

[sauropod]

{{{Libertina}}} Where ya been?

[Bigg Red]

...You are like the Middle East version of Teddy Roosevelt."

)))

OMW! I never read that one before!

[Bigg Red]

...The Founders were not establishing a theocracy...

&&
No beheadings either.

[marty60]

Yep he did. I thought what a stupid idiot. He definitely needs a remedial course in the American Revolution.

[verity]

Williams has a post graduate degree in 'stupid.'

[Republican Red]

Michelle is on Laura Ingrahma now.

Laura streaming links
http://homepage.mac.com/dzinkin/happyfunworld/lauralinks.html

[BaBaStooey]

Durbin: Gitmo = Nazi Concentration Camp = Soviet Gulag

Williams: Founding Fathers = Iranian Terrorists

Seems pretty clear to me how Liberals think.

[Pete'sWife]

Ditto.

I cannot remember the last time I watched ABCCBSNBCCNN.

[jayef]

Not only is it a display of moral/cultural equivalency, such a statement displays as COMPLETE IGNORANCE of the story of our country's founding.

[mewzilla]

This guy's mug is on a sign welcoming people to the city of Elmira, NY.

Gee, wonder what the city fathers think of Williams' comment?

[mewzilla]

bttt

[1Old Pro]

I thought Williams might be different. He had be folled for a while but lately his liberal media stripes are coming thru.

[mewzilla]

Laura Ingraham talking about this now on her radio show.

[rwfromkansas]

Yikes...And I liked John Miller most of the time.

[eccentric]

The whole moral climate is getting confusing these days.

....and killing babies is a right, praying on a sidewalk is violent.

[mewzilla]

bttt

[mewzilla]

Limbaugh to discuss this shortly...

[Sprite518]

I do not even think Terrorist was a word back then. This is just sickening and highly insulting. And the MSM wonders why their numbers are tanking?

[OESY]

Brian Williams, MSNBC-NBC Anchor and former Carter administration intern


In May 2002, it was announced that Williams is to become the anchor of NBC Nightly News effective December 1, 2004, taking over for Tom Brokaw. It was the first such announced changed in the major network news anchors in over two decades. He was the NBC News Chief White House correspondent from 1994-1996, and was the anchor and managing editor of the Saturday edition of NBC Nightly News for six years. Williams is perhaps best known for his trademark ability to quickly and comprehensively pull together the elements of a breaking news story, combine it with historic context, and report it from either a world hot spot or while live on the air each evening.

In over 20 years of broadcasting, Williams has reported from 23 overseas nations on countless stories of national and international importance, including intensive live coverage of the September 11th attacks and their aftermath. After his election night coverage of the 2000 Presidential race, he was named Best Anchor by USA Today. In 1997, his continuous coverage of the death of Princess Diana was watched by countless millions worldwide on the networks of NBC. Millions also watched his many hours of live coverage following the crash of TWA Flight 800 and the death of John F. Kennedy, Jr. GQ magazine has called him “the most interesting man in television today,” and in 2001 he surpassed all others in broadcast news to be named GQ’s Man of the Year.

Among other overseas assignments, Williams covered the historic election of Nelson Mandela in South Africa, the Arafat-Rabin Mideast peace agreement from Jericho and Jerusalem, and the 50th anniversary of the D-Day invasion. Williams has anchored live newscasts from the Middle East, Russia and Europe on numerous occasions.

While serving as NBC News’ Chief White House correspondent, Williams circled the world several times, accompanying President Clinton aboard Air Force One and covering virtually every foreign and domestic trip by the President during his years covering Mr. Clinton. On perhaps one of the most historic trips of the Clinton Presidency, Williams was the only television news correspondent to accompany three U.S. presidents - Clinton, Bush, and Carter - to Yitzhak Rabin’s funeral in Israel.

Williams has been awarded three Emmys: for his 1987 coverage of the stock market crash, his 1993 coverage of the Iowa floods, and in 2001 for his live coverage of the crash of a Singapore Airlines 747 in Taiwan. The National Father’s Day Committee named him “Father of the Year” in 1996. He is known to late night audiences as a regular guest on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, Late Night with Conan O’Brien and The Late Show with David Letterman.

Prior to joining NBC News, Williams spent seven years at CBS’s owned-and-operated stations division as anchor and correspondent for WCBS-TV in New York, where he covered the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989. He began his service at CBS as a correspondent for the network-owned WCAU-TV in Philadelphia and was a correspondent at WTTG-TV in Washington, D.C. He started his broadcasting career “doing everything but operating the transmitter,” as he puts it, at KOAM-TV in Pittsburg, Kansas

Prior to his broadcasting career, Williams worked in the White House during the Carter administration, beginning as a White House intern. He later worked as Assistant Administrator of the Political Action Committee of the National Association of Broadcasters in Washington. A native of both Elmira, New York, and Middletown, New Jersey, Williams is very proud of his several years of service as a volunteer firefighter in New Jersey.

Williams attended George Washington University and the Catholic University of America, both in Washington, and is the recipient of honorary Doctorates from Elmira College and Providence College. He and his wife, Jane Stoddard Williams, have two children.

-- MSNBC

[mewzilla]

...A native of both Elmira, New York, ....

The city of Elmira actually has this guy's face, among others, on a billboard welcoming people to the city.

Gee, wonder what the city fathers think of Williams' remarks...?