At long last, someone is paying for the lies of the Iraq War:
In the midst of a career spent covering and consuming news, it has become painfully apparent to me that I am presently too much a part of the news, due to my actions.
As Managing Editor of NBC Nightly News, I have decided to take myself off of my daily broadcast for the next several days, and Lester Holt has kindly agreed to sit in for me to allow us to adequately deal with this issue. Upon my return, I will continue my career-long effort to be worthy of the trust of those who place their trust in us.
Somewhere, in an undisclosed location, Darth Cheney and his bionic dark heart paused from drinking the blood of virgins long enough to afford himself a laugh.
Pogonip
Spending more time with his family in 5…4…3…2…1…
How about a pupdate?
Trentrunner
Sorry, I don’t see the downside to this.
A major media “news” celebrity is caught lying/inflating in order to boost his military bona fides.
I hope he gets fired.
This will have a beneficial chilling effect on that kind of behavior from other news spokesmodels.
Message: Don’t fucking lie.
Why isn’t this obvious?
Bobby B.
Why doesn’t Chuck Todd jump into the volcano with him?
Hildebrand
Now, if we can only get every other talking head to throw themselves on the pyre who have dared to utter falsehoods.
Nonetheless, can we throw Brokaw under the bus just because it would feel so damn good?
Pogonip
Also expecting Villago Delenda Est in 5…4…3…2…1…
Is Brian Williams considered part of the Village?
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
I’ve never seen such a disgusting, and uncalled for smear of a public official as your “joke” about former Vice President Dick Cheney drinking the blood of virgins. It has long been known that Mr. Cheney drinks babies’ blood. I expect you will be taking yourself off the front page soon over this deplorable journalistic sin.
trollhattan
This is such an odd affair and I confess I don’t understand why anything more than “I have misremembered and misstated what happened, I apologize.” is required. “Rathergate” was another nothingburger and this doesn’t even reach that level.
Lee Rudolph
Do the specifications require that the babies not be virgins?
Because if they do…
Jim C
Lester Holt, eh? I guess Aaron Altman was busy.
trollhattan
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.):
Well, virgin babies to be sure.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Pogonip: Is Brian Williams considered part of the Village?
The “Managing Editor” of NBC news is practically the mayor, at least since Broder died.
Hildebrand
@trollhattan: Ah, but you see, the wingnutosphere believes Williams to be a ‘liberal’, thus he must self-immolate.
max
@Trentrunner: This will have a beneficial chilling effect on that kind of behavior from other news spokesmodels.
Yeah, now they’ll get on their knees and offer to suck brass hat cock before interviews.
max
[‘That’ll show them!’]
srv
Fubulist lives and dies by fable.
Wait until people remember Hillary wanting to enlist in the USMC.
SiubhanDuinne
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.):
Oh please. Those babies were virgins.
DUH.
jl
I have looked a couple of times, but I saw a tweet by the navigator of one of the helicopters who said Williams was confused or lying (who knows) but in the navigator’s opinion definitely pompously BSing, about being in the helicopter that was hit very soon after the incident. The navigator says he called Williams an idiot and set him very straight about what actually happened.
I think a lot rides for Williams on whether that navigator’s claim is true. The navigator also indicated that he very cordially dislikes Williams and holds him in complete contempt.
So… the bottom line is that I don’t think Williams is any better or worse than the other corporate media news actors pretending to be journalists. Except maybe for Blitzer and Pelley, since I am not sure they are smart enough to understand all this ‘reality’ stuff in the first place.
So, good luck to Williams personally, whatever happens, but no reason to hope this turns out one way or the other for him as a corporate news actor.
Edit: I agree with another commenter, when I heard Williams talking that he listened to Limbaugh daily to keep his finger on the pulse of the ‘real America’, even though I couldn’t see into the guy’s head and know exactly why he spouted such toxic nonsense, I immediately wrote him off as anyone worth listening too. A wide variety of assumptions about why he said that lead me to the identical conclusion.
Corner Stone
@Hildebrand:
But it doesn’t matter. He did his best to placate that section. And it would never have done him any good, but he was too fucking stupid to just get that basic fact.
Now the tiger has turned on him and is trying to eat him up.
If he somehow survives this non-thing, watch for him to be decidedly more right wing-ish in his hot takes.
SiubhanDuinne
@SiubhanDuinne:
Well, dammit. In after Lee Rudolph and trollhattan.
Every time I think I’m being exceptionally clever, it seems there are many people even cleverer (or at least fasterer).
BillinGlendaleCA
@jl: “Except maybe for Blitzer and Pelley” and anyone at Fox News.
FITFY
jl
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.):
People should stop insulting Cheney. He will drink the blood of any animal with a soul and brain equally. Some blood may give him more powers than others, however. But The Cheney can drink anything and live.
Well, maybe not too much coke and rum on a hunting trip, but that is not blood, so don’t count.
David Koch
This couldn’t happen to a nicer wingnut smear merchant.
Bill D.
@trollhattan: Facepalm. Everyone knows Cheney drinks the blood of unicorns, with all that implies.
jl
@jl: Point was, that I forgot to include. of me looking several times, is that I saw the tweet in a TPM post, which I cannot find now.
Cervantes
Network “news” anchor says ridiculous and nonsensical things — and for this you woke me?
Schlemazel
@Corner Stone:
He’ll turn up as a regular on Fox like Bernie Goldberg did as long as they can bleed some appearance of respectability out of him & he toes the line.
To paraphrase earlier comments: “I fought the eeeeeeevil LIBeral bosses at NBC” in 5 . . . 4 . . . 3 . . .
trollhattan
@Hildebrand:
Suspect that’s the extent of it. I can recall the wingnut grave dancing on Cronkite, the man who lost Vietnam.
danielx
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.):
Exactly. Moreover, the comment left out the critical detail that for Cheney’s consumption of babies’ blood to reach full effect, it must be quaffed from the skull of an Iraqi child, of which Cheney maintains a collection in a vault he stole from OVP. Of such details are journalistic reputations made or broken.
jl
@David Koch: Thanks for finding the quote of Williams touting his Rush cred. By now, for years, Rush has revealed what he his very clearly by word and deed, and no one in their right mind could think that Rush speaks for the real America. If Rush does speak for some group that feels it has been left in the wilderness,I believe that the majority of Americans would think that group to be dangerous and lunatic, and hope that they stay very very far away in the deep wilderness. So far deep in the wilderness, that said dangerous lunatics cannot harm hikers, campers and innocent wild animals. Maybe middle of active volcano crater type wilderness would do.
I haven’t heard Williams tout his Limbaugh cred for quite a while.
Williams is either a reactionary all-purpose bigot who successfully hid his true nature, or a grifting BSer who says whatever he thinks will increase his popularity. Or, of course, both.
Bex
Heard on CNN that MoDo says in her column tomorrow that NBC execs have been concerned about Williams’s “stories” for at least a year.
jl
@Schlemazel: Who knows, if Williams career at a ‘respectable’ network is toast, he may look back on this as a good thing. Williams can set himself free and really be himself! We will see.
Baud
Maybe Maddow can host the Nightly News…
A guy can dream.
danielx
@Trentrunner:
Because over the last three decades or so, Republicans of various stripes have lied their asses off about everything from foreign policy to tax cuts and in most cases it hasn’t hurt their careers a goddamn bit, even when they got caught. For that matter, various of the talking heads at Faux News utter untruths on a daily basis and I’ve not noticed that it did any damage to their careers either. Only MSM types have to fear getting caught in a total lie, since they’re more or less expected to tell the truth. At least by anyone who isn’t a complete wingnut.
Schlemazel
@jl:
I don’t think he has a ‘real self’, he is a bronzered spokesmodel and just as vapid and empty headed as those size 0 ones trying to peddle products in other venues. He was hoping to curry favor from the wingnuts & they would rather slit is throat than offer him protection from his own stupidity. These media assholes are always trying to play this game & it gets them nothing, how slow are they that then never learn from the failures of others? Kissing the wingnuts ass does not buy media any safety from wingnuts
Mandalay
@trollhattan:
Because he is the news anchor for the #1 news show. His credibility matters a hell of a lot, because if viewers don’t trust what he says then they will watch something else, and NBC’s ratings will suffer.
And that’s why NBC is doing an internal investigation on all of Williams’ past reporting; they can’t afford to back him, and then later find out that there are more reporting skeletons in his closet. Whether he lied, or misstated, or misrecalled is beside the point.
Pogonip
@Bill D.: Are the unicorns virgins?
Baud
All this talk of extra virgin baby unicorns is making me hungry.
sm*t cl*de
The truly offensive lie here was the reference to Cheney’s “bionic heart”, which completely elides his upgrade to a beating human replacement, torn from the chest of its previous owner with an obsidian knife on a black basalt altar.
David Koch
hhahahhahahahahhhahhahahahahahhahah
With “friends” like that, Williams didn’t need enemies.
Johnny Coelacanth
I thought he was being unfairly targeted, then I read those quotes and stopped caring. Thank you, David Koch.
Baud
@Johnny Coelacanth:
Words one does not often see on a liberal blog.
Pogonip
@Baud: You know it! Does Tamara have any good unicorn recipes?
On the subject of hunger, has anyone read Beat Overeating Now! by Scott Isaacs? Dr. Isaacs purports to explain the biological reasons for non-marijuana munches and related phenomena. I’m not too far into it yet. I am pretty sure we have readers here who know more about biology than I ( not difficult as for some reason lost in the mists of time, I never took the subject in school). So, biology mavens, if you’ve read Dr. Isaacs, what say you?
Mandalay
@Baud:
Or BJ.
Baud
@Mandalay:
True, you don’t see nearly enough BJ on liberal blogs either.
eemom
@Cervantes:
Srsly. They all look alike to me.
Shaun Appleby
This must be the circuses; I’m guessing the bread would be chewier.
Corner Stone
@Schlemazel:
Straight solid fucking this. Fuck B-Will. He went along for the ride and now he’s getting eaten up.
I saw gene108(?) lament this predicament in a previous thread. Like there was some sort of inoculation that could mitigate what is happening to BW right now. And we should somehow give a shit about his plight because if they get BW that means they could continue to get anyone.
Well no fucking shit. They are going to get BW and they are going to get the next one and the next one and etc.
I’m not crying any tears for BW in some abstruse perspective that it matters for anyone else in the MSM. They all already know the game.
Schlemazel
@David Koch:
With friends like that B-dub needs enemas!
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@David Koch: I wonder if that was Gore’s “How dare they…” speech. He had a beard!
BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: Cook them with extra virgin olive oil.
jl
@Corner Stone: Is there any evidence that Williams’ problems are the result of some wingnut teabagger effort to target himi?
Are all of the troops who made a stink teabaggers or in their pay? I thought it was just that Williams kept repeating a dodgy story, one that some of the troops claim they explained forcefully to him was dodgy just a few days after the incident happened.
So, seems like Williams, a supposed reporter who is paid to get things straight, brought this on himself, through lying, or impulse to BS, or sad and pathetic urge to glorify himself.
Edit: I think I saw a story where Rivera said to lay off poor Williams. Makes sense, since I think there are similarities. One difference is that Rivera operates in news media space that does not give a damn about this reality stuff.
JPL
@Baud: That would be great but I’m not sure she would enjoy just reading the news.
Corner Stone
@jl: No, you have to look at who is going after him.
It isn’t MMFA. It’s Bill’O and etc.
Who, exactly, do you think he is running from?
Schlemazel
@jl:
I do not think it is exclusive to the wingnuts, I have seen some on the left reveling in the schadenfreude but the wingnuts do seem to be leading the charge to see him unemployed.
As I said on the first thread JC had on the subject, stay or go I couldn’t give less of a shit if I ate 5 pounds of cheese. WIlliams is a giant zero in my world but I do love that his attempts to suck up to the wingnuts did not provide him any cover.
jl
@JPL: Well the paid corporate news actors do not just read the news either. That is a problem, if what they add to the reading is marketing or ideological BS.
Maybe we should do like the UK does and designate some of these news actors as news readers, so everyone can understand what all these talking heads are supposed to be doing while on air.
@Schlemazel: Your last bit is true. He is not part of the club, and can never be. He and other media self-marketers should understand that, but they don’t.
@Corner Stone: thanks. I have not followed who is most loudly going after Williams. I guess Bill O has not added enough crazy to his calls for Williams’ head to make the internet clips.
Baud
@JPL:
Probably not. But it would raise her profile and maybe influence what a lot of people see.
srv
@jl: IDK, if you look at a congressional map today, I think Rush is a lot closer to ‘real’ American voters than many of the people in this echo chamber.
Villago Delenda Est
@Bobby B.: I am not in favor of Chuckles the Toddler jumping into the volcano.
I want him to be pushed. With extreme prejudice.
Bill D.
@Pogonip: They didn’t say in the movie and I didn’t read the book, so dunno. My guess is that Voldemort just wasn’t that picky.
Pogonip
@Villago Delenda Est: That volcano sounds like a good place for a Balloon Juice meetup.
raven
Hmm, I thought he was Canadian and had a GED and neither of those things are true. Who am I thinking of?
Pogonip
@raven: Peter Jennings, perhaps?
Baud
@srv:
Well, if you add in the “voter” qualification, sure.
SiubhanDuinne
@raven:
Peter Jennings, I think.
(EDIT: Obligatory “Damn you, Pogonip!”)
jl
@srv: Do you really think so, after all the toxic garbage that RL has emitted, the boycotts and all the major advertisers he has lost, and his ratings falls? Sure, i have some teabagger relatives who still listen to the schmuck, but I don’t hear them loudly proclaiming what they heard Rush say anymore.
Some of my sane, though not liberal by any means, relatives have demanded a ‘no Rush within hearing distance’ rule.
raven
@Pogonip: Ah that’s it, thanks.
sharl
@JPL: Yep, “news reader” is what they are (and what big networks consider “news” is a separate though related and important topic). I read a thing John Cook wrote long before he was at Gawker, which made both your point and that made by Schlemazel:
The account about mixed-up telepromters that Cook relates in the early part of the ~1.5 pages of text in that 3pp pdf makes me wonder if the movie Anchorman was maybe actually a documentary.
Mandalay
@jl:
Given that Williams has admitted that his story was not accurate, and it has changed over time, and he has accepted responsibility, why does that even matter?
raven
Mandalay
@Schlemazel:
Apart from Rather and Rivera, who have also suffered similar fates, I don’t see anyone defending Williams.
Claiming “stolen valor” isn’t as bad as being found with a dead schoolboy in the trunk of your car, but it’s in the same ballpark.
Schlemazel
@Mandalay:
Depends on how you define “defend” certainly our very resonable blog host thought this nothing burger was a nothing burger & should be noted & moved on from. I can cite a few other lefty blogs with the same “meh” attitude about B-Dub. It is guys like BO’ that are screaming for a scalp.
jl
@Mandalay: It doesn’t IMHO. I was asking Corner Stone about whether there was some special teabagger effort to get Williams, like is he being swiftboated or not? I honestly did not know whether what CS said was true or not.
Hildebrand
@Corner Stone: Oh, he will survive – people believe he is handsome and his daughter is on Girls, so he hits the perfect sweet-spot for the beltway. And yes, he will come out soon for dropping some sweet, sweet nukes on Iran.
Corner Stone
@jl: Sorry, what am I supposed to be lying about now?
Mandalay
@raven:
Uh-oh. If there is no similar claim in his contemporaneous reporting then that’s another nail in his coffin:
I think he’s gone. Death by a thousand video clips.
Tone In DC
@Villago Delenda Est:
Only if Billo, Flushed Limburger, Laura Ingraham, Ross Douthat and most of the Kaplan Post editorial board precedes said Toddler.
raven
@Mandalay: I have more of an issue with “looking down the tube of an RPG. I don’t care what al the studies say about memory, you look down the barrel of something a bad guy is holding you don’t forget it.
raven
And visa versa!
Felixmoronia
@Villago Delenda Est:
Let’s have some fun with it and use one of smut’s trebuchets.
eta: if we miss the volcano opening we can try again.:-)
Mandalay
@raven:
Not just you – it looks like the media is all over that claim as well.
But his Katushya rocket story relates to a different time and place, and may help to show a pattern of inaccurate reporting (to put it politely). If they uncover problematic claims in third unrelated story then he has to be dead meat.
Just Some Fuckhead
If you love Brian Williams so much, why don’t you marry him?
dww44
@Baud: God, I hope not. She does not need to be turned into a news-reader. Bad for her, bad for us, and bad for the country.
Villago Delenda Est
@Tone In DC: I accept your preconditions, with great pleasure.
NCSteve
@Pogonip: The virgins are necessary to lure in the unicorns, whose blood is what keeps him in his cursed state of half-life. Having the virgin’s handy to feast upon after he’s done with the unicorn is just a bonus. Dessert, as it were.
betty ericson
Little late for this, but I just read this piece from Greg Mitchell…I think it may not be such a good idea to cut Brian Williams slack. There’s a bigger history here.
http://gregmitchellwriter.blogspot.com/2015/02/brian-williams-and-hogwash.html