The Gist

Brian Williams Responds

We spent some time on this yesterday on the show, hoping Brian Williams would respond to the criticism. Good as You had alerted us all to Williams saying that marriage is "under attack." Go and check it out.

Now Williams has indeed responded. He says on his blog that he didn't mean the gays -- he meant divorce. Do you buy it? I think that might be the case but 1) he likely hadn't really thought much about it at all, as it was probably written for him and looked good (a nifty transition: London was under attack -- now marriage is under attack), and; 2)even if his claim is true, it reveals him as being very removed from the political battles in this country and the rhetoric being thrown around, something not admirable in a news anchor. The religious right, politicians, pundits and a slew of others have claimed over and over again that gays are attacking, dismantling, threatening and taking apart marriage -- the president of the United States has made the claim too. No one has said that "divorce" is "attacking" marriage. Divorce is an outcome of bad marriages -- not a cause of them. So no, I've not really seen divorce described as "attacking" marriage.

Again, I believe he'd not really thought about it all, just went with what sounded good -- which is the ultimate kind of media manipulation by the right, when they just hit on a theme so much it becomes the accepted position. And his response is rather smug, offers no apology and then claims some unnamed gay person as agreeing with him. It's the typical arrogance we see among the traditional media. Why not just say yes, that makes sense, bad wording, sorry about that, thanks for pointing it out? By the way, in his clarification he says that he noted that marriage "seems under attack" but in fact he'd said marriage "is" under attack.