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Home » So, what’s up with Brian Williams?

So, what’s up with Brian Williams?

The New Neo Posted on by

capitano

First, a disclaimer: I don’t know what caused Brian Williams to lie about his helicopter experience in Iraq, and I don’t know what caused him to continue the lie. The lie was egregious, repeated, and seemingly reckless.

Seemingly reckless, because why would he think he could get away with it? There were witnesses there who could correct the record. And yet he must not have been so very reckless after all, because after all it took twelve years for the people who knew the truth to finally have had enough of his braggadocio and to expose him.

So one thing that probably was going on with Williams was a sense of entitlement and impunity. Who would dare correct him, and would they be believed?

Williams’ lie is no ordinary one. But it is of a surprisingly common type, and it even has a name: il Capitano, or the braggart soldier, one of the stock figures in commedia dell’arte, as Roger Simon referenced years ago in connection with John Kerry. There seems to be a longstanding compulsion on the part of some people to either embellish or make up from the whole cloth events of military derring-do in their lives that actually never happened. Williams most definitely appears to have succumbed to that temptation:

Il Capitano often talks at length about made up conquests of both the militaristic and carnal nature in attempts to impress others, but often only ends up impressing himself. He gets easily carried away in his tales and doesn’t realise when those around him don’t buy his act.

Well, I guess it doesn’t fit too well, because those around Williams—which includes the viewing public—bought his act. Apparently it was very convincing (disclaimer: I don’t watch network news, so I never saw it and until yesterday I can’t say I paid much attention to who Williams was), because it seems to have been widely accepted as the truth until now.

So my guess is that Williams’ motivation to lie was the same as that of anyone who chooses to go the route of il Capitano: stolen valor, stolen glory. It ought to have been enough for him that he went to Iraq in the midst of a war, but I guess it wasn’t.

I’m not at all sure of what I’m about to say, but I think it at least possible that at some point Williams may have come to believe his lie. I don’t know at what point that happened (if in fact it did happen), but repetition of a story can sometimes do that with people whose attachment to the truth is tenuous at best. By the time his story was exposed as a lie, Williams may have been genuinely shocked that it wasn’t true. At any rate, he certainly must have been shocked that the truth was revealed after all these years of getting away with the lie.

But not shocked enough to actually level with us; even in his apology he is lying. The guy appears to be a pathological and compulsive liar.

The question now is: what next? NBC should fire him, of course, and issue a public apology. Many people have predicted that’s what will happen, and I don’t see much defense of him so far in the press or in comments around the blogosphere. But so far (unless I’m missing something), NBC has been mum. I wouldn’t be surprised if Williams kept his job, although I certainly wouldn’t be surprised if he got the boot, and rather soon.

Comments

So, what’s up with Brian Williams? — 45 Comments

  1. I seem to recall a story, later shown to be false, about Hillary Clinton flying into an airport under fire.

  2. What’s next for Williams? Well, he can lie and he’s telegenic, so he could run for President.

  3. Although it should not blow over, it will.
    The MSM will circle the wagons and protect their own.
    Who knows, perhaps Brian will claim to have PTSD.

    PTSD Symptoms, Signs, Causes, DSM Criteria Checklist
    Class 1 symptoms: the sufferer re-experiences the traumatic incident ex. nightmares, flashbacks.

    MSM journalistic correction: (imagined flashbacks)

    See it isn’t Brian’s fault/sarc/

  5. Not a good week for Lyin Williams. First, he brags how proud he is of his daughter after she simulates getting her anus licked by her weak boyfriend in that other false rape accuser’s (Lena Dunham) show, “Girls”. And now, the arse licker for Obama is caught faking valor and saying “…..My bad”. If he had any decency he’d truly bow, and bow out.”

  7. Here’s the all time winner when it comes to Brian, Hillary, and John Forbes Kerry:

    “I think it’s maybe high time to establish some kind of official AWARDS for these prevaricating leftists – there could be a whole series of them: like a “Distinguished Lying Cross” for NOT getting shot down in a helicopter; the “Purple Babushka” for grandmotherly courage under imaginary sniper fire; the “Christmas in Cambodia Service Medal”; the “Meritorious Imagination Award”; an “Obama Campaign Medal, with Hershey Bar Device” (aka the ‘Candy Crawley’) … there’s just no end to the possibilities.

    (Note: all subsequent awards of the same decoration to be denoted by a “Bogus Apology Cluster”.)
    Posted by ELRADO here:
    http://pjmedia.com/instapundit/201924/#respond

    Cannot top that. Will not try.

  8. I’ve never understood the fake warrior stuff. It’s so easy to spot the fakers. In this case, there had to be dozens of people who knew he was lying.

    In a better age, he would have been left alone with a bottle of whiskey and a revolver. But, doing the honorable thing is not done anymore.

  9. He’ll only lose his job if his ratings crater. I can’t boycott him because I never watch him anyway.

  11. Instapundit has a screenshot of a Brian Williams’s tweet stating:

    “The horrific gang rape I experienced at the hands of a college fraternity may have contributed to my hazy memories from the war.”

    I can’t decide if this is an early April Fools Day joke or not.

  12. Eric Wemple at the Washington Post asks a good question:

    A production crew accompanied Williams on the helicopter outing. The Erik Wemple Blog has asked NBC News who and how many people were on that crew. But where have they been as Williams has gone about misremembering the episode in media appearances in recent years?

    NBC News hasn’t gotten back to him yet; surpise. Let’s hope Wemple keeps pushing for an answer.

  13. at some point Williams may have come to believe his lie.

    I’ve seen that happen, even with stories that are on their face improbable. I was standing with an acquaintance of mine by the mail boxes at the college post office, and he said wouldn’t it be neat if he was holding a martini glass and a hand reached out of one of the boxes and dropped an olive in it. A few years later, and he was telling the story as if it actually happened. I think the same thing happened with Hilary and her landing under fire, and with Kerry and Christmas in Cambodia. So I don’t think believing such false stories is uncommon, but it does make me wary of the people who do so. Their psychology is twisting their perception of events to a degree that makes them unsuited to jobs that require a clear sense of reality.

  14. Let me see: NBC doctored Geoge Zimmerman’s 911 call to make him sound like a racist; NBC employs the Reverend Sharpton; NBC once doctored a truck to make it explode during one of the periodic hysteria about safety; NBC is the mothership of MSNBC. Meh, so what’s the big deal about a bit of fantasy on the part of Brian Williams?

  15. When someone can state nearly anything, without fear of correction, what is the upside to truth telling and/or the downside to lying? To a Democrat Politician, this would be a resume enhancement.

  17. I think he was covering the war with Oceania, wasn’t he? Oh wait…we’ve never been at war with Oceania.

  18. Lying is stock and trade for the Left
    They see how far it s gotten Obama & think why not me too
    Reinforced by Grubers onbservation of the stupid
    American public they feel entited to flights of fancy.
    Recall with a chuckle silly al gore campaigning with a story of a 7th gr student HE actually saw or spoke to who had to
    Stand all day in school because the district cold not afford
    Everyone a desk. When pressed Gore could not identify
    Where or who this Iindividual was.

  19. El Rushbo, who of course had a great deal to say about this, pointed out that there was an entire NBC crew there embedded with Williams (as well as our servicemen), . . .

    but my point is (and one of Rush’s points as well), . . .

    that entire NBC crew had to be in on the lie / coverup / fairy tale / whatever you want to call it. It was the servicemen who’d finally seen and heard enough and blew the whistle. But any of the mainstreamers, all of whom were in the news — the allegedly truth-telling — business, might at any time have corrected the record.

    But they didn’t. They circled the wagons and protected their own. And probably much more importantly, they protected The Agenda, the sanctity of how what *they* tell us is to be dutifully ingested, and not anything from El Rushbo or FoxNews or any of those yucky Tea Partiers.

    Yet another illustration of what we’re all up against. Nothing new, of course, but the occasional illustration (teachable moment?) doesn’t hurt.

  20. M J R:

    Actually, I’m not as hard on the staff as you are. They could have corrected it, but that would have taken some courage (to challenge the big guy) and a lot of motivation. I found it much more interesting that the people on the downed helicopter, the military who knew Williams was lying and had no reason to protect him, kept quiet all that time.

    My sense is that people don’t want to go out on a limb for what they see initially as a petty lie. The military guys only finally came forward because they were tired of Williams saying it over and over and over.

  21. People clearly guilty of ‘stolen valor’ should be stripped of their citizenship, automatically declared to be persona non grata and permanently expelled from the country. Taring and feathering them, optional.

    Of course, at least half of Congress are guilty of similarly serious offenses and at least, 25% of Americans are disloyal as well. The rot is widespread and deep.

  23. The man has long left a cloying taste in my chops. But, hey N-Neo, the stand-up Dan Rather has stood up for dear Brian’s honor.

    ‘Nuff said?

    Ohhhhhhhhhh, yeah, BayBeeeeeeeee..!!!

  26. Powerlineblog brought me to neo.

    For those you that don’t read Powerline check out John Hinderaker’s excellent analysis on this pathetic affair.

    My comments are buried with 150 plus others, so I repeat it here. Williams needs to issue a real apology and reading Hinderaker’s entire post would be a good start.

    After he confesses to his sins, he needs to send a full six months in Iraq as penance.

    Confession and penance.

  28. I don’t believe he will be fired, or that he’ll do the noble thing and step down. His colleagues in the MSM will avert their eyes for awhile and hope it blows over.

    I only hope they spare us those commercials that show Williams toiling away in shadow as the excessively solemn voiceover proclaims: Brian Williams. “He’s been there. He’ll be there.”

  29. neo-neocon, 3:38 pm — “Actually, I’m not as hard on the staff as you are. They could have corrected it, but that would have taken some courage (to challenge the big guy) and a lot of motivation.”

    Oh, I’m on board. I’d hate to be in that position. The point (and Rush’s point) was not so much to indict the little guys accompanying the big guy, but to underscore the wagon-circling in the interest of supporting The Agenda.

    Looking back at my post, I can see how it came off the way it did — and how I suppose a little of my self-righteousness managed to peek through. Carry on . . .

  30. Lying is the stock in trade of the Left and they get away with it all the time…MSM anyone? But reading this post reminded me of one of my favorite lines in Seinfeld. Jerry goes to George for advice on lying and while George says it’s a gift he eventually offers, “Jerry, just remember, it’s not a lie, if you believe it.”

  31. “I only hope they spare us those commercials that show Williams toiling away in shadow as the excessively solemn voiceover proclaims: Brian Williams. “He’s been there. He’ll be there.””

    I know I’ve said this on other blogs in the past few days (and maybe even here) but one of the most cringe-inducing things I’ve seen on TV in a long time is a little segment on Comcast On-Demand featuring Brian Williams talking about NBC News (and, by extension, himself). It’s breathtakingly pretentious and patronizing. And self-glorifying. So I’m not surprised. I don’t think he’s gotten the memo that this internet thingy has revolutionized the delivery of news and that the era of the noble and omniscient news anchor (who alone decides what we should know) is long past.

  32. Brian Williams blatantly forwards a LIE for 13 years.
    Dan Rather blatantly forwarded a LIE about G.W. Bush’s Texas Air National Guard service. His motivation was born out of malice towards the Bush’s.
    Dan Rather, in 1988, purported to interview Vietnam veterans about atrocities they had committed. The entire program was a LIE.
    CNN systematically LIED, covering for Saddam Hussein, for 10 years to maintain its bureau office in Baghdad.
    Peter Arnett (CNN) LIED in reporting that the U.S. military had used Sarin gas on its own soldiers during the Vietnam War.
    Ted Turner also spread LIES about the U.S. military using Sarin gas during the Vietnam War.
    So many examples of journalists in the mainstream media LYING—-its no wonder Americans have lost faith in this institution. And it has been largely Liberals like Walter Cronkite who’ve fostered this environment.

  33. He may get fired yet.

    Tom Brokaw, Williams’s predecessor as NBC anchorman, is said to be livid about this, and is on the warpath at NBC to have the guy canned. And he swings a Pretty Big Wheel (as they say on the tugboats) in the news biz:

    “NBC’s most revered journalist is furious that Brian Williams is still in the anchor chair after he sheepishly admitted he hadn’t traveled on a helicopter hit by enemy fire.

    “Brokaw wants Williams’ head on a platter,” an NBC source said. “He is making a lot of noise at NBC that a lesser journalist or producer would have been immediately fired or suspended for a false report.”

    Another whopper has surfaced: Williams claimed (2006) he saw a dead body floating by him in his hotel in the French Quarter in Hurricane Katrina — even though the French Quarter was NOT flooded at the time:

    “When you look out of your hotel room window in the French Quarter and watch a man float by face down, when you see bodies that you last saw in Banda Aceh, Indonesia and swore to yourself that you would never see in your country…I beat that storm. I was there before it arrived. I rode it out with people who later died in the Superdome,” he said.

    And last year, in an interview with Tom Brokaw, the man he replaced in the anchor chair at NBC, Williams said:

    “My week, two weeks there was not helped by the fact that I accidentally ingested some of the floodwater. I became very sick with dysentery, our hotel was overrun with gangs, I was rescued in the stairwell of a five-star hotel in New Orleans by a young police officer. We are friends to this day. And uh, it just was uh, I look back at total agony.”

    –No bodies floated through the Quarter.
    –No one was reported to have had dysentery, either.
    –His five-star hotel overrun with gangs? Doubtful! especially since NBC refuses to identify which hotel he stayed in.
    –Young police officer who allegedly rescued him? probably as real as Harvey the Rabbit.

    More: “We had to have men with guns behind me one night because I was the only source of light downtown, was the lights that were illuminating the broadcast,” Williams said. “We were told not to drink our bottled water in front of people because we could get killed for it.”

    http://www.theneworleansadvocate.com/news/11526453-148/nbc-news-anchor-brian-williams

    Remember, Brian Williams is the guy who bowed — bowed — to Obama.

  34. Seems to be a pattern here, non?

    This may actually kick off a parlor game of “Spot the Lie” in Williams’s various vainglorious accounts of derring-do.

  35. More on Brokaw and the rest of the NBC brass hats, what they knew and when:

    Brokaw, 74, was still the “Nightly News” anchor when Williams came back from his Iraq expedition — and an insider said he knew the story Williams later spouted was bunk.

    “Tom Brokaw and [former NBC News President] Steve Capus knew this was a false story for a long time and have been extremely uncomfortable with it,” the source said.

    NBC News execs had counseled him to stop telling the tale.

    http://pagesix.com/2015/02/05/tom-brokaw-wants-brian-williams-fired/

    These anchorpersons, or “blow-dried attack dogs,” as someone memorably called them, are valuable “brands” for the news corporations. Katie Couric, e.g., is an absolute termagant on the job, but thrives nevertheless, because she can bring in the eyeballs. Same with this Williams fool.

    /sigh

  36. More from Page Six (NY Post):

    NBC brass hasn’t been talking to lower-level employees about the situation, leaving people in a panic, the insider said.

    “NBC bosses don’t understand how serious this is. Nobody in a leadership position is talking to the troops. Nobody has addressed it,” the source said.

    One longtime NBC employee who has worked with Williams on several occasions had a few dirty words to describe the celebrated anchor, calling him a “real pompous piece of s—-t.”

    “He’s an a-—hole,” he fumed. “He’s not a journalist. He’s a reader.

    “Oh, the fireworks that are going off inside,” he said. “It’s embarrassing. He’s the face on NBC. He’s a liar.

    “Everyone knew it.”

  37. Seemingly reckless, because why would he think he could get away with it?

    Hollywood directors get away with rape. Democrats in California get away with selling guns overseas via smuggling. ATF forces Americans to sell to cartels on pain of ATF raids and shut downs.

    Why wouldn’t he think that he could get away with a minor deception that harms no one except America’s defenders?

  38. After all, Will over there helped build the propaganda wall that makes All the Above possible and feasible.

  39. Sounds like a false memory, which at his age is going to get more and more common. I say let him continue and watch him slowly decline into complete absurdity. There are good reasons for this approach: 1) for once we know what we are getting is almost certainty rubbish, 2) it should be amusing when he finally boasts of leading troops into combat while being wounded in both legs, 3) when we see research showing that Fox viewers are dumper than MSM viewers we will no longer feel obligated to cry ourselves to sleep because of it.

  41. Neo, Michelle Malkin uncovered this gem about Brian Williams, bragging about his BS meter.

    Yep.

    After years of experience in the news business, Williams said he has developed his own “strong BS meter” – he can watch the local news in any city in this country and tell you which anchors went out to dinner that night instead of staying and writing between the 6 o’clock and 11 o’clock news. Williams also said he can tell which anchors write their own copy and who’s just reading whatever pops up on the teleprompter. On The Nightly News, Williams reviews every word of the copy before it goes on the teleprompter. “Any time I’ve kicked a word, it’s because I’ve never seen it before,” Williams said.

    The Nightly News attracts between 10 and 11 million viewers each night. But the playing field for prime-time nightly news is in constant motion, with NBC, CBS, and ABC jockeying for the top slot in the ratings game. The tremendous growth of online media – especially blogs – in recent years has altered the face of journalism.

    “You’re going to be up against people who have an opinion, a modem, and a bathrobe,” said Williams. “All of my life, developing credentials to cover my field of work, and now I’m up against a guy named Vinny in an efficiency apartment in the Bronx who hasn’t left the efficiency apartment in two years.”

    He added that it’s often difficult to judge the credibility of a blogger. “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,” said Williams.

  43. ..but…But…BUT…Haven’t y’all heard?? Brian baby looked outta his Ritz Hotel Suite in the French Quarter post-Katrina and saw them American bodies floating by…and..And..AND… That’s when he began lambasting that Evil Jorge Boooosh….!!!!!

    Dear Pinocchio Williams: 1-800-Bite-Me (*Sent on behalf of George W. Bush*)

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