Topic: NewsBusters
Leave it to Noel Sheppard to defend the honor of Richard Nixon, which he does in a Jan. 9 NewsBusters post complaining that NBC's Brian Williams said that fellow NBCer Al Roker's unfortunate post-stomach-stapling incident of incontence in the White House "hasn't happened in the West Wing since Nixon discovered the tapes."
This leads to a lengthy rant from Sheppard:
Yet why did Williams feel the need to go so far back in history to something that likely most of the audience would be too young to understand?
Certainly there have been other things that have happened in more recent American history that have similarly shocked and disturbed a president.
For example, Williams might have said, “That kind of thing that happened to Al hasn't happened in the West Wing since Carter heard about hostages being taken at our embassy in Iran.”
Or how about, “That kind of thing that happened to Al hasn't happened in the West Wing since the Drudge Report broke the news about Clinton and Monica Lewinsky?”
Or “That kind of thing that happened to Al hasn't happened in the West Wing since Clinton heard he was being impeached?”
On the other hand, if he really wanted to express how rare such an occurrence is, Williams might have said, “That kind of thing that happened to Al hasn't happened in the West Wing since the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor.” At least this wouldn’t have involved a political scandal.
No, the butt of this distasteful joke about a president having an embarrassing accident in the White House of course had to be a Republican.
Color me very unsurprised.
And color us unsurprised that Sheppard is exactly the kind of partisan hack would defend a notoriously corrupt politician simply because he's a Republican.
