Posted on 02/06/2015 5:46:25 PM PST by Brad from Tennessee
Next to the Iranian nuclear program or Putin's neo-Soviet expansionism, the question of whether NBC News "managing editor" Brian Williams is a self-aggrandizing liar or a mentally ill fantasist is a relatively minor matter, notwithstanding that he is the very embodiment of the strange antiquated assumptions of network news - that because a chap looks like a 1950s department-store mannequin he's your go-to guy for economic analysis and foreign policy.
As to the subject at issue, my general view of "personal stories" (including my own) was summed up by Mel Brooks on stage a few decades back reminiscing about his life. After one especially uproarious anecdote, he said, "I swear every word is true. Well, no. The mildly funny stuff is true. The mezzo-mezzo stuff is mostly true. But the really funny stuff is entirely invented." That formula applies to the dramatic stuff, too. As you tell a story over the years, as Brian Williams did with his RPG-hit-chopper shtick, it gets too honed, too sharp.
Then too there is the phenomenon that creeps with age - when anecdotes you once told about other people mutate into anecdotes you tell about yourself. The first example of this I encountered, back when I was very young, was the great Royal Ballet choreographer Sir Frederick Ashton, who regaled me with a string of fascinating personal stories, all of which I discovered, upon returning home, had happened to Diaghilev or Massine or Ninette de Valois. . .
(Excerpt) Read more at steynonline.com ...
Who was the Welsh Tart?
Neither did Peter Jennings.
When, make that if Rush retires, I hope Stein gets behind the Golden EIB Microphone.
When some smartass Liberal Journalist asks Scott Walker if his not finishing College should disqualify him from being POTUS, he should say, why Brian Williams asked me the same thing right before the RPG hit our Helicopter in Iraq.
February sweeps are no big deal. May and November are the biggest one with November the biggest of all, where the annual rates are set.
Yes, it’s a ratings book period but one NBC can afford to take the hit on.
It’s not because he fabricated a story. This is NBC, after all. Remember the Zimmerman tape. It’s not because keeping him would mean they approve of what he did. They do.
It’s because Williams has accidentally shown the nation and the world the true face of the so-called “mainstream” media. He has shown that they really do operate on the principle Dan Rather enunciated to Bill O’Reilly on May 15, 2001: “I believe you can be an honest person and lie about any number of things.”
They cannot allow people to see their true face. So Williams will have to go before people figure out the con that the liberal media has been perpetrating for 60 years or more.
Williams hasn’t done anything that Dan Rather or Walter Cronkite or any of the others didn’t do. It’s just that he (and Rather) did it sloppily and got caught.
Mark Steyn ping.
Freepmail me, if you want on or off the Mark Steyn ping list.
Thanks for the ping Slings and Arrows.
Blessed are the Cheesemakers.
I agree but then they have to ease him out with some other plausible reason because they can’t have him leave for being a sloppy liar. That might be just as damning as keeping him. If they keep him they might assume cynically that the problem will blow over in time and given the attention span and forgiveness of the public of beloved celebrities they may be correct. The honchos probably have a number of options and are trying to figure out which is most palatable.
Thank you for the ping, JLS. :)
Another in the long tradition of reports BS. In the 60’s, I read stories about battles in RVN that were written from interviews done at the hotel bar in Saigon.
The warrior being interviewed was ready to tell tales as long as the report was buying, the more drinks, the better the tale.
Today, it seems the that they have just cut out the middle men... and the bar tab.
Which is what I susoext Chirs Kyke was doing re the stories he told about shooting the robbers and Katrina.
Which is what I susoext Chirs Kyke was doing re the stories he told about shooting the robbers and Katrina.
Steyn BTTT
He's neither deranged nor stupid. Williams is a rich, powerful member of the leftist media elite. He has told lies for decades about every subject you can imagine while gazing authoritatively into the camera. He must be completely astounded that something so trivial could threaten his position. See: Kerry, John, Cambodia, illegal secret incursion into.
Just fill in the name with any liberal and it'll be true: Hillary, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Susan Rice, Michelle Obama, Chuckie Schumer, Dick Gephardt, Fareed Zakaria, any of them.
Television is an entertainment medium and that includes the “news.” Broadcast journalism is mostly an oxymoron.
The difference is, Williams is a relatively harmless media flack who knocks off the nightly "news" for profit while the occupant in the White Hut can knock off millions of people and ruin the entire country in a hurry if he feels like it.
This entire charade is just another "Look! Squirrel!!" episode to distract us from what is really going on and what is really important.
Joseph Goebbels must be rolling over in his grave in envy.
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