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.

[Antoninus]

Brian's obviously read the playbook:

30. Discredit the American Founding Fathers. Present them as selfish aristocrats who had no concern for the "common man."

From Curent Communist Goals which was read into the Congressional record in 1964 by Florida Democrat A. S. Herlong, Jr.

[mewzilla]

Limbaugh now talking about this...

[TheForceOfOne]

Remember Jimmah Carter saying "The American Revolution Was Unnecessary"
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2004/10/20/124125.shtml

If it was left up to them, we wouldn't even be here.

[mark502inf]

I am sure back during the American Revolution that the Crown had but the greatest respect for the Revolutionaries in America and would never of thought them to be a threat to the Crown.

Sure, they thought of them as Revolutionaries or traitors liable to be imprisoned or hung if captured. However, context is everything. The crime of the Founding Fathers was revolt against the crown in the name of democracy & liberty, not invading some other country's embassy and holding its citizens hostage while supporting a revolt intended to establish a theocratic dictatorship. When the connection is tenuous while the differences are stark, the person positing the connection is either ignorant or deliberately trying to obfuscate.

[68skylark]

...the person positing the connection is either ignorant or deliberately trying to obfuscate.

Good comment -- I agree. And when the person making the comment is speaking to millions or people, as an authority figure who is supposed to know what he's talking about, it's disturbing.