Brian Williams, dismissed as “NBC Nightly News” anchor in 2015 for serial embellishment and lying, has decided to walk away from his MSNBC show “The 11th Hour.”
CNN’s Brian Stelter, from a competing network, previewed the last show: “There’s no word on what the Thursday finale will entail, but here’s hoping for a sendoff befitting his position.”
Williams should be sent on his way with a lump or coal.
Stelter wasn’t quite as bad as one of his favorite Sunday-show guests, journalism professor, and former Baltimore Sun reporter David Zurawik. “I have separation anxiety about Brian Williams leaving at 11:00 because it means so much. We’re losing big stars in this medium and I don’t know what the impact is.” He also included Chris Cuomo and Rachel Maddow in this lickspittle sendoff.
Separation anxiety? This is not a case of “sometimes when we touch, the honesty’s too much.”
In case anyone forgot, Williams uncorked a series of tall tales that caused him to resemble Jon Lovitz’s “Saturday Night Live” character Tommy Flanagan, the Pathological Liar, who said he was married to actress Morgan Fairchild and added, “Yeah, that’s the ticket!”
Williams claimed Secret Service agents helped to meet Pope John Paul II at Catholic University in 1978. He claimed he was present at Brandenburg Gate in 1989 as the Berlin Wall fell. However, the only American broadcaster to be there was Tom Brokaw, his predecessor at NBC.
His greatest exaggeration was in war zones where he imagined himself in great peril. He claimed he was on a Chinook helicopter hit by a rocket-propelled grenade in Iraq, at one point comparing his experience to “‘Black Hawk Down’ meets ‘Saving Private Ryan.’” He also claimed that he not only flew into Iraq in 2003 with Navy SEAL Team 6 but they later sent him gifts and souvenirs from the raid carried out to kill Osama bin Laden.
The question of Williams’ future in journalism was the dominant topic in 2015. Then NBC picked him up, dusted him off, and put him on MSNBC, first as a “breaking news” specialist and then on the “11th Hour” show, which then doubled from 30 to 60 minutes.
Williams, like everyone else on MSNBC, spends his on-air hours ripping on Republicans, like deriding Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, in May as “Kremlin Cruz.” But he’s most vividly remembered as one of the most embarrassing Obama-polishers in the press. In 2008, he gave a glowing magazine article to his hero, Barack Obama. He asked him to comment about how great it was.
During that year’s Republican convention, Williams asked Michelle Obama, “What of the attacks has busted through to you? What makes you angrier at John McCain, the Republicans. What’s being said about your husband that you want to shout from the mountaintops is not true?”
When Obama won the presidency the first time, Williams announced: “This nation woke up this morning changed. As one columnist put it, America matured in 2008 by choosing Barack Obama.”
All of this shows Williams’ obsequiousness towards the Obamas. But he was shameless enough to mock others as up someone’s intestine in June. “If [Texas Gov. Greg] Abbott wants to, say, run for president, he must be more further ensconced in a particular area of Trump’s anatomy than even [Gov.]Ron DeSantis from Florida. And that won’t be easy.”
Williams’ separation from MSNBC will not cause any anxiety in the Republican half of America.
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