5:30 pm Update: NBC management has suspended NBC anchor Brian Williams for six months, the idea being to symbolically send Williams into the desert to meditate while everyone waits for the media attack mob to move on to something or someone else. Earlier: Brian Williams didn’t embellish in ’03 but he recently embellished on Late Night with David Letterman. For this he’s probably a dead man. Probably doomed to become some kind of internet news guy and possibly “wander the wilderness of National Public Radio.” But he’s not the new Dan Rather, who didn’t go down over an apparent character flaw but over a story that was strongly challenged (and which may have been wrong), resulting in political pressure and his being severed from CBS News. Either way I respect Bill O’Reilly for his fair-minded remarks about Williams, which were shared last might with Jimmy Kimmel.

Jon Stewart is dead-on in pointing out that the media’s failure to challenge and basically giving a pass the bush adminstration b.s. about Iraqi “weapons of mass destruction” et. al. was far more heinous than any of Brian Williams’ embellishments.