It's not that Jon Stewart doesn't think Brian Williams should be censured for his shifting, increasingly heroic (and misleading) tale of being shot at in the Iraq War in 2003 — though he argued on Monday night's Daily Show that like most cases of, um, self-love, "typically, being caught is punishment enough." The NBC lead anchor's TV news colleagues don't seem to see it that way. Indeed, cable news is a feeding frenzy of criticism and speculation about Williams' professional demise.
That may sound like overkill, Stewart said, teeing up his big point. But "I am happy. Finally, someone is being held to account for misleading America about the Iraq War." The media that helped pave the pay for the 2003 invasion by "plagiarizing" Dick Cheney's first-draft of history is now nit-picking whether Williams saved one puppy or two early in his career, he added. "Never again will Brian Williams mislead this great nation about being shot in a war we probably wouldn't have ended up in if the media had applied this level of scrutiny to the actual f---ing war." It's not all that heavy-handed. Watch for Stewart's droll pointers on when a news anchor is telling the truth and telling crowd-pleasing anecdotes. —Peter Weber
The Week
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