See? People can get in trouble for lying about Iraq.
Daily Kos has a petition for Jon to replace Williams at NBC.
The problem with this claim is: sometimes the smartest guy in the room can be legitimately confused. Why should he be immune to confusion?
Er, because he purports to be the smartest guy in the room? Confusion and smart do not sit together well.
At first blush, I agree that the two seem incompatible.
But they are not. As an analogy, I can tell you each and every #1 song, in order, from June 1955 to February 1982, but I still sometimes forget my umbrella in a restaurant and have to buy a new one.
It’s possible to be smart in many ways, and yet make this kind of error, because making it does not engage the kind of “smart,” that we’re talking about when we say, “Smartest guy in the room.” People with the best of intentions and perfectly solid cognition skills can still confabulate memories, especially with events that happened long ago.
I don’t necessarily disagree with NBC’s decision – Williams hurt their brand name. But that doesn’t make him deliberately dishonest, and I don’t believe he was.
Out of curiosity, does his Katrina reporting change your mind on this? I know for me, it’s very difficult for me to read the stories about how his Katrina reporting differed from reality and come to any conclusion other than that he lied.
I was going to disagree with you, but upon re-reading the above I think you are correct.
That is, I personally don’t trust NBC any less - I trust them the same as I did, which means “conditionally and based on verification, and when it comes to politics or race not at all”.
And I am not even sure there are many morons who believe them less now that Williams has flushed his chances of a best-selling memoir down the crapper. The kind of people who don’t think anything is real unless it is on TV aren’t going to be convinced by the facts on anything. But NBC either thinks they might be, or at (more probably) putting on a fig leaf of a six-month suspension to let the dummies forget, and to make it look like they are credible.
Maybe I am the naive one - nobody in their right mind is going to trust NBC less because Brian Williams told some whoppers about how brave he was, and not in a news story but on Letterman or in an interview or wherever it was. But maybe people who are not in their right mind are NBC’s target demographic.
Regards,
Shodan
No.
The corner of Iberville and Burgundy is visible from the Ritz, and the water there was deep enough for things to float. I doubt he actually saw a body; I believe he thought he saw a body.
I think NBC is justified in saying “As the head of our news department (with a salary of $10M/yr) we expect you to be both smart and unconfused. If you’re telling fanciful tales, we don’t much care whether they arise out of mendacity, confusion, poor memory, or another cause - we’re more concerned with the effects of this nonsense than its causes.”
Oh, absolutely. I couldn’t agree more – NBC has every right to be concerned about perception and the value of their brand. I certainly didn’t want to hint otherwise.
I’m just saying that in my opinion, the man didn’t deliberately deceive. His error is nonetheless serious enough that it’s reasonable for NBC to take action.
YMMV on this, and reasonable people can disagree.
But as I stated, there have been two times in the military where I said to myself “f**k, I’m not going to make it out of this.” And I remember these things like they were yesterday. And I really don’t believe that I’d confuse those moments with others that were “merely” stressful.
And his “confusion” on events in New Orleans just solidifies my feels in this regard.
I’m not saying he should or should not be fired. But like Clinton, Blumenthal (Republicans too) and other famous people who are full of it, the “I’m brilliant, except for this one little time where my memory got the best of me” defense is very hard to swallow.
He also talked about armed gangs overrunning the Ritz-Carlton, and he talked about holing up on a mattress in a stairwell, and he talked about the lack of access to medicine. The then-manager of the Ritz-Carlton casts serious doubt on each of these claims.
If it were one thing, I’d be inclined still to give him the benefit of the doubt. As it is, he’s kind of coming across like the Red Rascal here.
Not necessarily. There are plenty of second acts in American lives, despite FSF’s dictum. Williams’ best bet is probably to disclose a substance-abuse problem; preferably with prescription pain-killers (which have a more respectable cachet, compared with alcohol and illegal drugs).
As in:
‘I couldn’t believe what I heard coming out of my mouth while sitting there on David Letterman’s set, but I was helpless to stop myself. The pills had kicked in with a vengeance; it was like floating in a dream. But now that I’ve gone through rehab, that dream–that nightmare–is behind me.’
(Sorry to be a cynic, but: okay, I’m a cynic.)
Not according to the hotel manager. The area the hotel sits on is high ground. If you look at Google Earth Canal street maintains it’s level past the interstate to the North West.
She also states there was no shortage of medicine at the MASH unit that was set up and the hotel didn’t have “roving gangs”.
I like him over all the others in his field but he put himself and the network in a difficult position. I think he’ll end up doing Jeopardy or some other show that isn’t news related.
More accidentally deceptive misspeaking for Brian?
From one cynic to another, let me add:
“I (BW) have been on pain meds since I was 10 years old. My local newspaper sent me to Viet Nam to cover the war, and I was severely injured saving the life of a soldier named Forest Gump.”
Even he would know better than to mention either Gump or Zelig.
These latest revelations about the Seal Team claims are particularly embarrassing. Presumably Williams has so much money that he doesn’t need to work again…but it’s difficult to come up with plausible ideas for jobs he could be hired to do. If he has talent as a writer, he could go that way, but I can’t see him returning to the airwaves in any capacity.
Well, he’s an amazing rapper, unless that turns out to be fake, too.
Haven’t Jerry Springer and Dr. Oz proved that you can be a success in broadcasting without needing credibility?
Good point. Though presumably Springer and Oz don’t lack credibility with their actual audiences. It’s just those of us who wouldn’t waste time watching their shows, who think of them as mountebanks.
Perhaps Williams could host a revival of the old game show To Tell the Truth. Per Wikipedia, that’s the one in which a panel tries to decide which of three people is, er, telling the truth about their “unusual occupation or experience.” The better the two imposters are at spinning lies, the more entertaining the show is.
…By the way, I do have a bit of shame about being so flippant about Williams and his travails. No doubt he’s going through a terrible time. I guess my lifelong dislike of self-promoters is showing.
I remain of the opinion that he did not at any point sit down and decide 'I’ll say [blank] and those idiots will never guess that I’m making it all up!’ or anything of the kind. I think that in his zeal to seem Important and Special and Admirable, he took too flexible a position on what was the case and what was merely almost the case.
But he’s lost his credibility as a journalist. I can’t see any way back from that.