NBC anchorman Brian Williams has taken more fire over his remarks about Iraq than he ever took over Iraq itself…
In the process, Williams has added a handy new locution to the lexicon of the disingenuous, the word “misremember.”
A more accurate phrase might be “making sh*t up.”
Williams apologized on air for misremembering how his helicopter had been hit over Iraq in the early days of the Iraq War. To understand how epic was his mischief, however, it is useful to check out Williams’ appearance on David Letterman two years ago.
The misremembering picks up at the 2:45 mark.
This is the same Brian Williams who said of citizen journalists like yours truly, “On the Internet, no one knows if you’ve been to Ramadi or you’ve just been to Brooklyn and have an opinion about Ramadi.”
No, Brian.
On the Internet if you say you have been to Ramadi, and you have not been, you can count on scores of vile comments in the comments section reminding you what a lying, worthless piece of dog poop you are.
Nor is this kind of hollow condescension limited to newsrooms in New York and Washington.
It’s just as bad at 18th and Grand as it at 30 Rock.
Love to hear some remembrances of your favorite mis-rememberances.
You’re misremembering yourself: George Bush “misremembered” long before anyone else ever thought to…
Clinton misremembered having sexual relations with that woman long before Bush.
Obama misremembered hearing any hate speech from the Rev Wright, among other things.
Dear Steveo:
Booooooring!
Nick, Bush didn’t “misremember,” if you recall, he was famous for being “misunderestimated.”
Oh, Bush was indeed infamous for any number of things, to include his many lies. However I distinctly recall him misremembering his arrest record when he ran against Gore, not to mention his record in Texas, as well as his National Guard exploits. Hell, the word fairly flew out of his mouth nearly every time he spoke to the press back then.
Bush’s blatant dishonesty was not remarked upon then because the media had already decided his character stood head and shoulders above Gore’s and anyone who persisted on the topic was deemed to be “picking” on the callow fellow.
Which is as instructive a lesson on the nature of mass media as you’re likely to find.
I’d go with Jerry Rivers. Lying and faking news video since he did the undercover story on the NY mental institution.
You probably know his as Geraldo Rivera.
Seems to have prospered and found an appropriate home at Fox News.
“In 2003, Rivera was traveling with the 101st Airborne Division of the U.S. Army in Iraq as a war correspondent for Fox News and ended up making a huge tactical error — he drew a map in the sand during a live broadcast pinpointing his exact location and revealing the time and details of an upcoming operation. Although it had been originally thought Rivera would be expelled from the country for giving away sensitive, classified information, a deal was ultimately reached allowing him to leave on his own.
That wasn’t the first time Rivera caused a commotion on the battlefield — in Afghanistan in 2001, he described on air an incident of friendly fire, claiming he had been on the scene. Rivera said he walked over “what I consider hallowed ground today” and had said the Lord’s Prayer on the land where three Americans soldiers had died the previous day. But the Baltimore Sun later reported that Rivera was actually 300 miles from the site he described. Rivera blamed his mistake on the “fog of war” and said he had confused the event near Kandahar with one where he actually was in Tora Bora — but the Tora Bora incident occurred three days after Rivera’s report.”
“In 1988, Rivera hosted the first of a series of prime-time special reports dealing with an alleged epidemic of Satanic ritual abuse. He stated: “Estimates are that there are over 1 million Satanists in this country…. ”
He stated: “Estimates are that there are over 1 million Satanists in this country…The majority of them are linked in a highly organized, very secretive network. From small towns to large cities, they have attracted police and FBI attention to their Satanic ritual child abuse, child pornography and grisly Satanic murders. The odds are that this is happening in your town.”
He also set up and staged shots for his reports which was heresy in prior to his arrival.
Americans seem to gravitate to the most outrageous liars.
http://www.religioustolerance.org/geraldo.htm
Oh, over the decades there have been numerous jackanapes of all political persuasions who have baldly lied about their supposed exploits; Bush was just the first – if I’m not misremembering – to have coll0quialized said behavior.
I think the discussion is limited to journalist or as I call them capped-teeth-and-hairdos providing our Infotainment.
Remember that politicians are not eligible for the Liars Hall of Fame as they are professionals.
Eligible, my ass; those assholes were long since enshrined.
Once I went into a Walgreens in Bagdad because I was having trouble cutting the tangles out of my wife’s dog, a Schnauzer/Poodle mix (it’s hair was quite matted). I took a jar of NAIR to the counter and the Sunni clerk said, “If you are going to use this on your armpits, don’t use a deodorant for a while.” I informed him it wasn’t for my armpits. Then he said, “If you are going to use it on your legs, don’t use any lotion for a few days.” I told him I intended to use it on my wife’s Schnoodle. He said, “You might tell her not to ride an exercise bike for a week or so.”
…maybe I misremembered that story
Ask the wife – sure she’ll clear it right up for you…
Williams will get a pass — the MSM no longer has morals. I doubt he will become another Dan Rather.
Once we were taken captive outside Falluja.
A hooded extremist forced everyone to the ground.
One of my fellow captives grabbed the hood and pulled it off, revealing the terrorist’s face.
The monster shot the captive without a moment’s hesitation.
He then looked around and noticed another captive looking straight at him.
He instantly shot him also.
We were all very scared and looked intently at the ground in silence.
The gunman yelled in a heavy accent, “Well, did anyone else see my face?”
There were a few moments of utter silence in which everyone was plainly afraid to speak.
Then I tentatively raised my hand and said,
“Brian Williams got a pretty good look at you.”
…but I might have misremembered that story
🙂
Williams should have had Milli Vanilli lip sync his apology.
NBC and Brian Williams want to be that medium, that message that furthers an agenda. So doctoring 911 calls and fabricating a war time fantasy for us chickens out in the hinterland is, as he (Williams) says on Letterman, Tuesday.
Every now and again, when we look up at our heroes, ensconced so nobly in their aeries, we get lying sh*t in our eyes for our trouble. Take the time to get that sh*t out of your eyes so you can see. Those aren’t eagles those are buzzards.
Apparently, Brian Williams was in New Orleans during Katrina and saw a body float by his hotel window.
It was Morgan Fairchild.
Mr. Williams has a belivability issue, something Comcast hopes will blow over with time. In fact, it won’t. Dan Rather was the first of the NBC nightmares, but he was obviously not the last. MSNBC recently found itself down to 550,000 viewers in one time period, something that Comcast is going to have to deal with. Whether it is having to pay DISH, or Time Warner to carry your signal or watching your advertising rates drop to zero, Comcast, sooner or later, will have to deal with it. The lack of profit for a large corporation is seldom tolerated, long term. It is only a question of time.
Dan Rather was on CBS.
What Brian Williams did was very wrong, but in human terms there is a reason for this behavior, which is quite widespread among the DC political class. The reason is that for some time now in our society the people who make the decisions to go to war and the people who go to war are two totally separate groups. The US Congress that authorized the invasion of Iraq in a vote in Sept. 2002 had 535 voting members–exactly one (1) of these members had a son or daughter in the military. Congress today has the lowest number of veterans since before World War II. The nation’s political class of journalists, politicians and political activists are well aware that they are not going to pay a price for all of the wars that they keep urging the US to get into–and this fact tugs at their conscience. So, we have the incidents like Mr. Williams claiming to have nearly been shot down in Iraq, and Hillary Clinton claiming to have landed at an airport in Bosnia under enemy fire–both totally bogus stories. What these politicos are trying to say, pathetically, is “We are not sending off young men and women to die in wars that we would never die in, we are out there running the risks too.” As I say, Mr. Williams really is to be pitied–like most of the press corps he was too afraid of being accused of lacking patriotism to ask any tough questions in the lead up to the Iraq War–and now that 4600 young men and women are dead from that war and the VA hospitals are crammed full of the wounded from that war he and the rest of the DC political class look terrible for what they did. So, they start inventing these stories of how “we on in danger too”!! Sincerely, Respectfully and In Christ, Ernest Evans
Earnie shoots, he scores!
What these politicos are trying to say, pathetically, is “We are not sending off young men and women to die in wars that we would never die in, we are out there running the risks too.”
Yes, but how do intelligent, professional, media men (or women) reach the conclusion that they can make such bogus claims? How does one of the most influential people at one of the largest news networks come to the conclusion that he can say these things in the first place? Not just with regards to “stolen valor” but generally playing fast and loose with facts. There is a systemic problem within our news media, from FoxNews to MSNBC, from ABC to CBS.
Philip Zimbardo, the architect of the Stanford Prison Study, authored a follow-up book entitled “The Lucifer Effect“. In the book, Zimbardo attempts to explain how an otherwise good, moral person can be influenced by institutional forces to commit acts, the same person would otherwise find unfathomable. The context of his book was based around the atrocities at Abu Ghraib. In fact, Zimbardo made a compelling defense of the soldiers at Abu Ghraib, and was called as an expert witness at their trial.
What Zimbardo found in both his Stanford Prison Study, and Abu Ghraib was that a cocktail of power, influence, and herd mentality leads to a corruption of whole institutions. In essence, as Zimbardo outlines in his Foreword, that its not a bad apple that spoils the barrel of apples, but that the barrel itself is spoiled, spoiling all the apples.
So we find ourselves with a corrupted news media. Not corrupted journalists in isolation, but a rotten barrel that rots most anyone it employs. This isn’t to say they are bad people. But how do we reach a point where its not some beat reporter, looking to climb the ranks by fudging a story, to a point where THE nightly news anchor, of one of the largest news organizations, who has reached the pinnacle of his career, who has reached the peak of his professional mountain, finds himself fudging a story? Afterall, Brian Williams has not “up”. There is no promotion at network news that rises above THE nightly news anchor. The fact we find ourselves asking these questions is evidence that the barrel has rotted.
Whoops this was a reply to Ernest Evans.
Who’s watching the Watchmen?
Dear ILove America: Very thoughtful and insightful set of comments!!! Actually, it reminded me of a lecture I give from time to time in my political science classes entitled: “Why Good, Decent People Do Terrible Things in the Right Circumstances.” The lecture brings in the Stanford Prison Experiment, the Milgram Experiment and the Blue Eyed/Brown Eyed Children Experiment: All three of these experiments show one most painful fact: All of us can act like Nazi SS Guards in the right circumstances. I tell the class that the world has been living a lie ever since the Holocaust: The lie has two parts: First, the failure of more people to oppose the Nazi holocaust is a shocking question that requires elaborate investigation. No, it is a very simple question that has an answer we would prefer not to accept: Most of the time, people do not risk their lives to protect people that they do not know, so it is no way, shape or form shocking that so few people actively opposed the Holocaust. Secondly, the horrible atrocities carried out in the camps must have required people to undergo elaborate brain-washing to get them to act so brutally. No, again the answer is a simple one we prefer not to accept: Human being all have a very strong predatory streak in them that can be brought into play if they are put in a position where there will be no consequences for them of torturing other people. This set of lies that the world has been living since the Holocaust has a pervasive impact on our culture in that whenever anyone does something bad we feel the need to look for complicated, elaborate explanations as to why they did this bad thing. We cannot “handle the truth”: Human being do bad things because we are all marked by what the Catholic Church calls Original Sin, ie, in the right circumstances even basically good people can do terrible, Satanically evil things.
So, let me again reiterate that I don’t think that Brian Williams is a particularly bad person. And, as the above comments of mine indicate, I don’t think that the bad things he did were part of being in a corrupt institution. All institutions are corrupt because they are made up of weak, fallible people. In the end, the great Protestant theological Reinhold Neibuhr was right when he said: “Man’s capacity for good makes democracy possible, man’s inclination towards evil makes democracy necessary.” Given the way that we humans are, all institutions should be as open and transparent as possible–openness and pluralism are not luxuries, they are necessities given the ugly realities of human nature.
Keep in mind that not too long ago, just the couple weeks as a matter of fact, his daughter, Allison Williams, filmed an analingus scene on her HBO show “Girls.”
If you don’t know what that is, Google it.
Something tells me Daddy Williams intentionally did to divert attention from his daughter’s porn scene.