Brian Williams is being ridiculed online in part with Photoshop images of the NBC star in historic photos.
Editorial: NBC's Brian Williams and Hillary Clinton's self-aggrandizing fabrications under fire and President Barack Obama's lies to the nation for years on his position on gay marriage raise a question. Does truth matter?
Do all politicians lie? Is media honest in reporting the facts? Those questions fade to the base issue: What will you abide?
Personally, all 318.9 million Americans determine the national moral standard. So what is your standard for truth? Next, how will you communicate that standard to those who presume leadership in local and national public life? Will you turn your back on those that lie?
In discussion on Fox Channel's Sean Hannity Show, Senior Independent Contributor to the Daily Signal and former CBS Correspondent Sharyl Attkisson argued that Hillary Clinton’s and Brian Williams’ war zone deceptions were “very much like the other.”
“I would just argue that one is very much like the other. So, however you feel about one incident, you should logically, probably feel about the other. if you don’t care in either case, you don’t think it’s a very important breach, you shouldn’t care if you didn’t care the first lady, former secretary of state, made such a statement. then maybe you shouldn’t care too much about Brian Williams. If you think Brian Williams made a huge breach, then so did, logically, the former Secretary of State and the woman who wants to be a presidential candidate” Attkisson stated.
Hot Air Assistant Editor Noah Rothman pointed out “this fortuitously, happens on the same day we learn that President Obama was lying to the nation for a long time about his stance on gay marriage, and this has been lauded in the press as something clever, and actually something to celebrate, that a politician would so deftly maneuver around this issue and mislead the public for his own political gain. That’s cancerous that’s dangerous to the state of the nation’s moral center.”
No one is perfect and all make mistakes, but deliberate serial deception for career gains are an embezzlement - a fraud - a crime in some instances in business and must not be allowed or accepted in public life. While Williams, Clinton and Obama are all apparent raging Progressives, it can also happen on the Right - in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Tulsa County Assessor Ken Yazel is a patriot and retired-Marine, but he developed a shtick that worked. He accuses every other elected official of wasting money and claims he has saved millions for the taxpayers. Those assertions have never been proven, but Yazel keeps getting elected. Yazel also argues outlandish theories in court - all of which have be rejected to date. No other elected county assessor in the State of Oklahoma (76) agree with him.
Yazel’s oft repeated and final statement to the Republican Woman’s Club of Tulsa County August 14, 2012 debate was, “Wear yourself out proving me wrong.”
In other words, Yazel can lie faster and more often than you can prove the truth. He is a demagogue, defined by Webster as, “a leader who makes use of popular prejudices and false claims and promises in order to gain power.” Click here for the 2012 coverage, "Assessing the assessor's debate" on Tulsa Today. There is no difference between Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and Ken Yazel beyond ideology (left and right) in truth telling.
Tulsa Today will not abide public dishonesty or abuse of public authority. We have and will hold public officials and public media accountable. We will stand, as we have since 1996, fully responsible for what we write online. If we make a mistake, we will acknowledge it and correct the record. We will abide by journalism standards. Our contact page provides opportunity for you to call or write us at any time. Real people answer your phone calls and email.
Is such a declaration meaningful? We are just a small corner of the Internet and just one voice among many even in our own community, but we will maintain our allegiance to truth and honor. We are declared independent free thinking citizens of America - Right and Left.
We believe there is hope for "the nation's moral center" as individually Americans decide what we will abide. Individually you are that important - you are the foundation of the nation. Together, we are the center; good or bad, accepting or rejecting, truth or deception.