George F. "I'm a hypocrite" Will weighs in on Armstrong Williams

[nixonwasbetterthanW]

GFW (rightly) takes a knife to the Dept. of Education, hooking on the Armstrong Williams payola scandal.

<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A5313-2005Jan12.html>

... This building-as-billboard is the workplace of those eager beavers who had this brainstorm: Let's pay a million taxpayer dollars to a public relations firm to manufacture enthusiasm for the No Child Left Behind Act, including a $241,000 payment to columnist and television talk-show host Armstrong Williams for his praise of the legislation. The eager beavers are long on energy but short on judgment. ...

and yet, when it comes to his own glass house of journalistic compromise, Will just can't be bothered:

<http://www.commondreams.org/news2004/0111-01.htm>

.... After spending two paragraphs describing complaints about George W. Bush's preparations for the invasion of Iraq, Will wrote: "Into this welter of foolishness has waded Conrad Black, a British citizen and member of the House of Lords who is a proprietor of many newspapers, including the Telegraph of London and the Sun-Times of Chicago."

In the column, Will failed to mention that he has been a paid employee of Conrad Black, who named Will, along with several other mostly conservative luminaries, to the international advisory board of Black's Hollinger International. Each time he attended the board's annual meetings, the New York Times revealed (12/22/03), Will received compensation of $25,000.

Asked whether he should have revealed that the mogul whose views he was promoting had paid him substantial sums of money, Will told the Times, "My business is my business," adding, "Got it?"

--

So it's okay for a renowned columnist to take lots of money from a man looting shareholders via his own publicly traded company and then write about what a sage and sane thinker his (undisclosed) benefactor is, but it's not okay for a renowned radio personality to suck lots of money from the public teat and become a mouthpiece for an administration initiative.

George F. Will, the very embodiment of hypocrisy.

[MajorFlaw]

1. IIRC, Will appeared on ABC after a Reagan-Carter debate in 1980 and

graded the performance of the candidates without disclosing that he had helped Reagan prepare for the debate.

[SHRED]

3. Will

Is a pile of dung.

Funny how relatively reasonable righties(I know that is a contradictary statement) like David Gergen are nowhere to be seen anymore. At least I don't see them.

[yellowcanine]

5. Yep - good to point that out as well. However, whenever a right wing

nutjob is saying mean things about another right wing nutjob it is a good thing regardless of how strong the hypocricy stench abounds.

[eg101]

2. George Will == Biggest Whore Around (Hey, George We Remember Conrad Black!

George Will needs to be sitting in a prison somewhere....

http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0102-10.htm

[KlatooBNikto]

4. A Polysyllabic Pompous Ass with a Thesaurus and Bartlett's.

[hector459]

6. Among other things, G. Will is another example of Republican family values

Divorced his wife after an affair with his Nanny or some other staff person. All the while writing columns about the low morals of the liberals in this country. I am trying to verify this but I worked with someone who worked for Will as a second job. I am trying to contact her by phone to get all the facts as this was at least a decade ago.

[hector459]

7. Here is what I found so far. I hate muckraking but Will deserves it!

"First from Eric Alterman (1992, p. 96):

"Rumors about the self-declared 'thoroughly married' George Will and Lally Weymouth, globetrotting, rigidly Marxist reporter, daughter os Post owner Kartherine Graham and former main squeeze of Alexander Cockburn, were initially dismissed by Washington wags as Too Good to be True, but then Will left his wife and children to buy a $990,000 house a few blocks away from his family in Chevy Chase, only to see, according to the Washingtonian magazine, his office furniture left on his front lawn with a note reading 'Take it somewhere else, Buster'. The cocktail party circuit exploded. Will and Weymouth both denied that the relationship had been romantic and threatened to sue the Washingtonian. The Washingtonian offered to write a correction if it would be allowed to investigate the matter and Interview Will's friends. The matter was dropped there....

Since breaking off with Weymouth, Will apparently found love again with former White House communications worker Mari Maseng, thirteen years his junior. The couple was married in Will's home on October 12, 1991."

http://search.netscape.com/ns/boomframe.jsp?query=%22george+will%22+divorce&page=1&offset=1&result_url=redir%3Fsrc%3Dwebsearch%26requestId%3De06890320dcedbc9%26clickedItemRank%3D7%26userQuery%3D%2522george%2Bwill%2522%2Bdivorce%26clickedItemURN%3Dhttp%253A%252F%252Fwww.johnjemerson.com%252Fzizka.will.htm%26invocationType%3D-%26fromPage%3DNSCPToolbarNS%26amp%3BampTest%3D1&remove_url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.johnjemerson.com%2Fzizka.will.htm

[bobbieinok]

8. didn't Will leave his wife with a developmentally disabled child????