Feet of Clay

As the old song goes, another one bites the dust. Brian Williams’ career as a major network TV news anchor may be numbered, due to his apparent fabrication of an experience covering combat in Iraq. For the time being, he is the butt of jokes.

Our news anchors seem to have a special place in this country. In the UK and elsewhere, these people are called “presenters,” because that’s what they do -- they present the news. Not good enough for us here! We expect them to be people of impeccable morals, unassailable integrity, and unquenchable heroism. We have the Cronkites and the Murrows to thank for that, I guess.

Mr. Williams will never find himself up there with Saints Edward and Walter. He did something really stupid, especially since it was unnecessary – he didn’t need to make anything up to burnish his image. He was doing just fine. Does this incident make him bad at his job? Or negate his successes?

We spend a lot of time putting people on pedestals, but it only takes a character flaw or two to pull them down again. I may be off base, but there’s a part of us that seems to enjoy this process. It’s as if our love of celebrities carries the hidden seed of envy, so that part of us smiles at seeing the mighty fall. People that we once loved and admired for their accomplishments: Bill Cosby. Joe Paterno. Lance Amstrong. Woody Allen. David Petraeus. Helen Thomas. Richard Nixon. The list has no end. The sad part is that almost every time, once the offense is committed, we don’t remember them for their accomplishments, just the offense. It can be a peccadillo or a heinous crime. It almost doesn’t matter.

Who knows, maybe this is why we need religion. Human beings can’t stand up to worship. Inevitably we seem to find something the matter with them. But we still crave the perfect and the pure, and if we don’t find it here, we make it up. Or, perhaps since we can conceive of it, it must be real, and out there. Too big a subject for tis humble post.

We may not be able to fully forgive everyone who sins. But are we able to accept a few dings in our heroes, or find any compassion at all for those who squander the investment in our opinion of them with more serious offenses? Can we ever say, there, but for the grace of God (or reasonable facsimile thereof), go we?