Tuesday, February 10, 2015

Just one more! 

One of the dominant news stories in America the last few days reached a crescendo tonight. NBC News announced that anchor Brian Williams has been suspended for six months without pay. The NBC Nightly News is the most popular of its kind and Williams has been hosting it for 22 years. Williams lied about an experience he had while "embedded," remember that term?, at the beginning of the Iraq War.

So that's the deal. Not hard. I confess I have never gotten this, I don't care much at all; one of the few things I've read said that other pencils care more about this than the American public does. If that is true I do understand pencil angst. What should be done? the pencils have written and they have written ALOT.

So, I write this brief note tonight not about l'affair Brian Williams but about pencil angst. David Brooks, Adult Table-Big Pencil-David Brooks wrote a deeply thoughtful column BrooksonMartinLutherKingBrianWilliamsWait!What?
about it quoting Martin Luther King, Jr.--I'm serious--Hanna Arendt and maybe somebody else I forget--Now that I write this out it sounds like the point of this post all along was to poke fun at Brooks again. I did not start out with that intent but maybe he should be made fun of! When I read Brooks' well-thought column I instantly thought of the wisest, most generous thing I ever heard somebody say about this kind of thing. I quote the wife (whose name I have forgotten) of a former colleague:

"Never judge a person by the dumbest thing (s)he has ever said."

Brooks coulda saved hisself a lotta thinkin' and his newspaper a lotta space if he'd a quoted my former colleague's wife whose name I've forgotten.

All right. DONE! POPSICLE STAND BLOWN! 10-4, Over and outta here.