In Defense of Brian Williams

Poor Brian Williams. The MSNBC anchor is getting it from all sides, from the liberal elites who are appalled at his supposed glorification of war, and from the anti-elites, who hate everything that comes out of his mouth.

So what did Williams do to provoke this fake controversy? As the U.S. was firing Tomahawk missiles at a Syrian airfield, Williams, in his trademark dramatic, resonant voice, said: “We see these beautiful pictures at night…I am tempted to quote the great Leonard Cohen: ‘I am guided by the beauty of our weapons…They are beautiful pictures of fearsome armaments making what is for them a brief flight over to this airfield.”

Maybe I’m in the minority, but I think Williams was spot-on. Nothing he said was remotely offensive, ill-conceived or poorly executed. Rather than glorifying war, Williams was making a powerful and absolutely appropriate observation about the paradox of modern warfare: That the pictures may seem beautiful, but make no mistake, these are FEARSOME armaments that can inflict serious damage in a matter of seconds.

He effectively used words – poetry if you like – to capture how surreal the whole scenario was, spectacular and terrifying at the same time. In doing so, he forced his viewers to consider the images they were witnessing on their screens. The idea that modern warfare can appear, from a distance, to be both beautiful and frightening is nothing new, nor is Brian Williams the first to point it out.

After all, TV is a visual medium. And how the media cover the story visually – what’s seen and what isn’t seen – is an important part of the story. In the book “Making Sense of Media and Politics: Five Principles in Political Communication,” the author Gadi Wolfsfeld writes: “War coverage has become even more dramatic in recent years.” This is because there’s more live coverage and because “the military has become adept at feeding the media a constant flow of visual images and stories.”

Bill Maher had a similar, if more cynical take on how the media cover warfare. In his April 7th show, he said that the image of the Tomahawk missiles lighting up the sky was, for the media, their “money shot.” Maher’s use of the pornography metaphor was also spot-on.

How did we get here? The turning point was the first Gulf War when, according to Wolfsfeld, “journalists were provided with seemingly endless supply of exhilarating images of the Baghdad sky lighting up like fireworks.” Even then critics charged – this was almost 30 years ago – that the war was being covered like a video game instead of a war in which thousands were dying. Granted, it could be that some of the people attacking Williams on Twitter were not even born in 1991. Maybe that explains it.

And then there’s the fact that Williams, who looks better, talks better, and probably smells better than his detractors, is just an easy target, especially given past lapses. For many, this is about tearing down the guy who they think personifies the liberal media-elite establishment.

The furor on the left is just as disappointing. I’m suspicious of liberals who use Williams’ words as an opportunity to highlight their own moral superiority. How dare Brian Williams say war is beautiful! War is ugly! Well, thank you for chiming in and stating the obvious.

What if others waxed poetic about warfare – would they be similarly rebuked on Twitter? Take the recently demoted Trump advisor, Steven Bannon. The very mention of war gets him all hot and bothered. Julia Jones, a close friend of Bannon’s over many years, told the Daily Beast: “Steve is a strong militarist, he’s in love with war—it’s almost poetry to him.”

And, unlike Brian Williams, Bannon is part of an administration that decides whether to send our men and women into harm’s way.

Yet Bannon receives no rebuke from the right for his poetic preoccupation with war, suggesting it’s not the words that were said on MSNBC that are at issue but the person that delivered those words.