Daydream Believer

Has any war brought out more of a parade of lies than The Bush/Cheney Iraq War? The whole fucking show was built on  lies built by that administration and promoted by the media. We're supposed to be shocked that Brian Williams got in on the lies in an up close and personal mis-remembrance of events? When this story first broke I joked that Brian Williams probably was Chris Kyle's spotter as the American Sniper picked off looters from atop the Superdome. Not quite that bold of a lie but Williams did claim to have seen bodies floating by his French Quarter hotel. Problem with that was, the French Quarter did not flood, thus, no bodies floating by. Close enough for jazz and close enough for journalism, I guess.

Brian Williams is no journalist. He's an entertainer. He gets paid $10 million a year to read the news and in his spare time he's slow-jamming the news with Jimmy Fallon and being Jon Stewart's Jersey boy buddy. Brian William's is a celebrity. He's no Walter Cronkite.

The thing is, we are supposed to believe and trust him.  Why? Well, because of Walter Cronkite, I guess...

Tradition? Brian Williams didn't kill television journalism with his lies about a incident that sorta-kinda happened in the vicinity of him years ago. Maybe it died when Cronkite retired. I don't know. Williams just last year signed a contract paying him more than $10 million a year...just to read the news....

Six corporations own all media in this country. Something like that. Consult your local Facebook page for the exact meme. The point is, Brian Williams gets NFL quarterback money to read whatever they tell him to read, five nights a week, for thirty minutes. His personal truth issues pale in comparison to the issues of those who tell him what to say. They are the concern, not his daydreams.

Do you even know anyone under the age of 60 who watches any major network news? There's three of them, ya know. He can slow jam the news and hang with the hip guys like Fallon and Stewart and have a daughter on a popular cable show but, no one under 60 really cares. Yet it's important to the powers that be that he and two others are paid millions to be the face of news. And it's now important to them to punish him. He has been suspended for six months, without pay. That'll learn him, I guess. Not sure what the lesson is for us though.

Good night and good luck, indeed.