Foot in mouth

If you live anywhere there is any type of media, you’ll no doubt have heard of the NBC News anchor Brian Williams, whose career has crashed and burned through self-inflicted RPG fire.

In case you haven’t heard, Williams claimed he was in a helicopter that was shot down by RPG fire while covering the war in Iraq in 2003. As it turns out, this was completely a figment of his imagination—the chopper he was flying in during that incident may or may not have taken small arms fire, but it was not shot down. He might in fact have arrived on the scene up to an hour after a chopper was taken out by an RPG; it’s hard to know at this point.

It’s not clear to me when Williams started telling this particular story, but he’s repeated it over the course of years, and it seems like in every telling the danger to his person magnifies. It’s mildly interesting to me that a man who makes his living by reporting news, and who ought to be aware of how easily such fabrications can burn and crash once a spark ignites the surface (think Hindenburg here) would walk on this particular wild side. But Williams told the porky, and because he got away with it, he kept on telling it.

The story broke last week, and as of this writing, Williams has apologized and, when that didn’t stem the tide, he announced he’s taking a “hiatus” from his anchor duties. He may be trying to find a cave somewhere that has no Internet connectivity and no cell reception.

But that’s not why I’m here today. No, I’m here because the Twitterverse just went to town on Williams, just as it did on Nicolas Sarkosy horning in on the A-list participants in the unity march against Islamist terrorists in Paris, and on that Fox News self-proclaimed “terror expert” who assured us that no non-Muslim dares to enter the UK’s second-largest city, Birmingham. The hashtags #BrianWilliamsMemories and #BrianWilliamsMisremembers were trending like the Left Shark at Superbowl.

Viz:

Everyone with Photoshop gave Williams just that little bit more of a hold on immortality. 

Helping OJ:

Hanging with JC:

Advising Macarthur:

Or just:

And, in fact, his combat experience predates even WWII:

But you didn't need graphics software to get in on the fun:

But then there were the corrections:

And these are only representative of the Twitter tsunami that has swept the planet several times since late last week.

This is one of the things I really love about social media: while pols and pundits flap their hands about and bemoan this and that, the Twitterati just get stuck in, skewering the perps. It—alongside Death—is truly the Great Leveler.

As for Williams, he gives new meaning to the expression "shooting yourself in the foot".