Disgraced NBC News anchorman Brian Williams has been pilloried nonstop over his embarrassing and possibly career killing series of lies but at least one big name celebrity has his back. The unstable, Coke shorting, tiger blood drinking, porn star banging, rehab hopping madman Charlie Sheen has come out in defense of his “hero”. It is a sign of just how truly tough that times are for Williams when a guy like Sheen and all of his scandal drenched baggage is his most prominent advocate.
As is being reported by a number of sources including the New York Daily News in the story entitled “Charlie Sheen defends Brian Williams, calls him ‘victim of a transparent vile witch hunt’ during Twitter rant”:
It looks like Brian Williams has at least one person still behind him.
Charlie Sheen proved to be a big fan of the NBC anchor who was suspended Tuesday night without pay for six months.
Sheen took to Twitter and tweeted, what seems to be some sort of letter in poem form beginning with, "Dear Mr. Williams."
His tweet, which he had to use the app "TwitLonger" because of its length, thanked the "Nightly News" anchor for his "24 years of inimitable professionalism and top shelf brilliance, as a stone cold passion drive and perfectly fact based journalist."
"You good sir, are a hero in my "Entire Library," the actor added.
Maybe the strangest part of the tweet was when he called Williams a "victim of a transparent and vile witch hunt."
At the end of the message to the host he offered his protection "if you need it."
"I remain humbly and on dangerous standby at your service," he added.
Possibly the former "Two and a Half Men" actor feels he can relate to Williams after he too was sacked from the CBS sitcom in 2011.
Sheen has since taken the tweet off his Twitter page.
Good time Charlie must have tumbled off of the wagon again with that Twitter blast that is right up there with his infamous “strafing runs in my underwear” comment that was even too bizarre for the Alex Jones Show. Sheen’s entire rambling defense of lyin’ Brian can be found in stories at the Wall Street Journal online and the conservative blog Breitbart.com.
The Washington Post did an extended piece over the weekend that was a bit kinder on Williams entitled “Storytelling ability connected Brian Williams with viewers but also led to his downfall” from which I excerpt the following:
On camera, Williams was preternaturally gifted, cutting a handsome figure with a serious but easygoing manner. His prominent chin skewed slightly to his left, giving his face a kind of permanent complexity and expressiveness. He could play it straight delivering the news in a rich baritone. He could stick to the facts.
Tom Bettag, a veteran producer who worked with Williams on the short-lived news magazine “Rock Center With Brian Williams” and has held top positions at all of the major networks, called him one of the “most meticulous anchors” in the business.
“His insistence on fact-checking approached being a pain in the butt,” Bettag said. “That side of Brian is largely being lost as he faces what I consider to be an appropriate punishment.”
But when Williams was talking about himself outside the confines of his anchor’s desk, he seemed to want to make his experiences more dramatic, colleagues said. He was the biggest news anchor in the country, the undisputed ratings champ, but he often pushed stories to their limit — and sometimes beyond.
“That’s Brian being Brian” became the newsroom shorthand.
“Brian’s not a liar,” said an “NBC Nightly News” journalist, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because network management has strongly discouraged staffers from speaking publicly about Williams. “He’s a guy who gets caught up in the story. He’s a great storyteller. But sometimes storytellers embellish. But you don’t embellish about getting hit by an RPG.”
You just have to love the “Brian’s not a liar” quote that attempts to downplay Williams’ fibbing and the massive breach of trust with the public. It’s like Slick Willie wagging that finger and claiming that “I did not have sexual relations with that woman” and we all know how that turned out. I realize that the American language has taken some pretty severe hits in the Orwellian wasteland of the post 9/11 era but a lie not being a lie is right up there with 2+2 = 5.
So as he sweats out his six month suspension while Comcast/NBC executives drool over the prospect of landing Jon Stewart as his replacement, Williams may be so toxic that he will only be left with Charlie Sheen in his corner. It's like a perverse modern Greek tragedy.
It is an American story that serves as a brilliant example of how poorly served that the public has been by the merger of the news with the cult of celebrity.
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