Brian William Will Retire After 28 Years of Lying While Wearing Circus Makeup

I believe this is an "up or out" situation. I think Williams expected that one day he would be allowed to sit again in the Big Chair of NBC News anchor.

The network said, "Nah, Brian."

Newsbusters remembers The Secret Life of Brian Mitty.

On Tuesday, MSNBC 11th Hour anchor Brian Williams announced he was not renewing his contract with the network at the end of the year as he stated: "This is the end of a chapter and the beginning of another."

What Williams didn't say was how this latest chapter began. His move to MSNBC was a demotion following a suspension from his exalted perch as NBC Nightly News anchor after multiple revelations of Williams lying over the years.

It began in February 2015 when Williams was caught lying about his helicopter being under fire while covering Iraq invasion in 2003. At one point he even likened it to "Black Hawk Down meets Saving Private Ryan." Soldiers complaining on Facebook led to an article in Stars and Stripes newspaper, where those brave men who escorted Williams said all his stories were junk. Williams apologized for it. But then the floodgates opened. The internet started digging up other falsehoods.

During the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Williams claimed he worked through a bout with dysentery and claimed he witnessed a dead body floating outside his Ritz-Carlton hotel room. Actually, he told three different versions: there was a body floating, there was a dead body on a street corner, and someone told him he’d seen a body floating. He also claimed he’d seen armed gangs at his hotel.

On an NBC prime time special a year after Katrina in 2006, Williams treated New Orleans as the most dangerous town on Earth, complete with weird boasts like "I carried a case of Vienna sausage... as collateral in case we had a smash-and-grab carjacking. I was going to offer it to someone in exchange for my life." Williams claimed he was so starving for food that "I remember seeing a box of Slim Jims and thinking, 'That’s better than any restaurant meal right now. That's the greatest thing I've ever seen.'" The section of the French Quarter from which Williams was reporting suffered minimal flooding, and in some parts, no flooding. There were no bodies floating. The city's former health director has declared that no one in the city was treated for dysentery, even a month after the flooding. The manager of the Ritz-Carlton (where he stayed) actually won an award for keeping the place safe from roving gangs with a cadre of police.

posted by Ace at 02:44 PM

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