NBC news anchor Brian Williams and likely 2016 presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton are a couple of lying shames Both lied about being under enemy fire and both thought they could get away with their outrageous tales
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Sunday, February 8, 2015, 2:00 AM
 APIf Brian Williams was reporting during Revolution, he might have put himself on boat with George Washington.
Question: Is it worse for a news anchor to lie about being forced down by enemy fire in Iraq than it is for a perennial presidential candidate to lie about ducking sniper fire — with her young daughter, yet — in Bosnia?
Both are horrible, but it’s worse for Hillary Clinton, who expects to run the country, to lie about something like this than it is for a blow-dried TV anchor to lie.
The fact that Brian Williams and Clinton (inset with daughter) thought they’d get away with their outrageous war stories despite there being living, breathing witnesses, video and now social media, is bizarrely disturbing. The hubris of the famous in believing that they can get away with lying forever because they are above it all never fails to astound. And never fails to happen.
Interesting, too, is that Clinton said she misspoke and Williams said he misremembered.
If you can’t remember or are mistaken about something as gigantic as getting shot at, how in hell can you report the news, let alone run a country?
At the time, Clinton said, “So I made a mistake. That happens. It proves I’m human, which, you know, for some people, is a revelation.”
And Williams conceded, “I said I was traveling in an aircraft that was hit by RPG (rocket-propelled grenade) fire. I was instead in a following aircraft.” Then, he said his fictional account was just his way of thanking veterans. By what — claiming he acted like one?
As a respected journalist, expected to report the truth, Williams’ despicable tall tale humiliates all journalists.
Worse, while his half-ass/cover-his-ass cover story-cum-apology showed great disrespect for viewers, more importantly, vastly more importantly, his made-up war story has done a great disservice to all the soldiers wounded and killed in that war.
 Jonathan Leibson/Getty Images for VarietyKatie Couric lacks the gravitas for the anchor seat.
Let us also not forget all the real journalists and their families who were also wounded and killed that have been disrespected by Williams.
So, if anchor man won’t man up and do it for real, then I will. On behalf of all reporters, we apologize for Williams’ great lie and disservice to all the wounded and dead, including journalists: CBS News cameraman Paul Douglas and sound man James Brolan, who both left families behind; reporter Kimberly Dozier, who was seriously injured; ABC News anchor Bob Woodruff and cameraman Doug Vogt, who suffered serious head wounds, and Williams’ own colleague, the late David Bloom, who died from a blood clot that he incurred while traveling with troops in Iraq.
It’s unacceptable for reporters and elected (and not elected) officials to lie. We deserve more, and it’s about damned time we demanded it.
FOX HUNT TO FIND 9/11 LINK Imagine if Fox News was unwittingly in bed with an alleged royal Saudi 9/11 financier?
Impossible as it sounds, the prison deposition of a convicted 9/11 conspirator, the possibly crazy Zacarias Moussaoui (top inset), which was released by the lawyers for 9/11 families, includes the name of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp.’s biggest nonfamily investor, Saudi Prince al-Waleed bin Talal (who last year sold most of his 6.6% stake).
Moussaoui claims he delivered letters from Osama Bin Laden when he was flown to meet several Saudi princes, including Waleed, Prince Abdullah (who became king) and Prince Salman (who is now the king). As reported by Phil Hirschkorn in Salon, Moussaoui says moneys came, from among others, Waleed.
Thing is, we won’t know the truth of Saudi involvement unless the 28 “Saudi” pages in the 9/11 Commission Report are unsealed, which former Senate Select Intelligence Committee Chairman Bob Graham requested.
SCHOOL'S GOT BAD HOBBITS A 9-year-old fourth-grader, Aiden Steward, was suspended from his Kermit, Tex., elementary school. Why? He not just brought to school, but threatened to use his magic Hobbit ring to make a classmate disappear.
 Courtesy Jason StewardThis little boy needs to use his magic ring to make his dopey principal disappear.
The boy (l.) and his family had just watched “The Hobbit: The Battle of Five Armies” and Aiden told his classmate if he put the ring on his head, the kid would disappear.
This is Aiden’s third suspension since the family recently moved to Kermit. One was for calling a classmate “black,” and another for bringing “The Big Book of Knowledge” to school. A disappearing ring is bad enough, but referring to someone’s race in the appropriate way and bringing an encyclopedia to a school? Downright dangerous!
The parents should use the ring to make the principal disappear — into the unemployment line.
TIME TO PLAY 'DEAD' Want something to live for? “The Walking Dead” returns Sunday night, and it’s finger-licking/finger-falling-off good. Sure, there are billions of dead men walking, but millions of female hearts are still beating — for Daryl (left). Therefore, we beating hearts need to know why Carol — who may be clueless about the reason her hair hasn’t grown back since her prezombie apocalypse chemo six years ago — hasn’t jumped Daryl’s bones. That’s not just clueless, that’s positively brain-dead. Forget walking the Grammy red carpet. Walk Dead!
CONGRATS, BLAZ, FOR FINALLY WISING UP Mayor de Blasio is finally doing what he should have been doing from day one: visiting firefighters on scene and stopping in at local police precincts. These are the people who keep us alive, who come to our rescue, whether we protest against them or not. Next time Al Sharpton rescues a child from a burning building, let me know.
NO BRAINS COURIC Katie Couric, who has been at every network, is rumored to want to be back at NBC, now that Brian Williams’ blood is stinking up the joint.
Good luck with that. Couric (whose spokesman denies the story) lacked the gravitas to keep the anchor from drifting away at “CBS Evening News,” her daytime show on ABC tanked after a great start, and, despite being Yahoo’s global anchor, is hawking BMW electric cars with she and Bryant Gumbel acting as two techno-idiots. “Nightly News” anchor material? |
