Are you not… ENTERTAINED?

So NBC is undergoing a gut check, and it’ll be interesting to see if they discover an existence proof.

Brian Williams’s imaginary traumas in the desert have come home to roost on his head like loose-boweled pigeons, and the network is in a bit of a tizzy. What to do? Dozens of millions of dollars are already

I shot this picture while we were under fire. Even my camera was on fire. Then I got fired.

invested in making Brian Williams suitable for prime time, and that money is a sunk cost–they’re not getting it back, whether or not they continue to parade him as their newsiest hood ornament.

It’s not like there isn’t a history of exaggerations, fabrications, fallacies, and bald-faced lies in the news industry. If it were some kind of lofty calling, rather than entertainment business with profit motive above all, they’d call it something like the “news profession.”

But it’s degenerated into the “news industry,” where big players bet on bullshit like it was pork belly futures. FOX News cherishes partisan lying as its core competency, and the now-revered Al Jazeera got its start by collaborating with terrorists to be first on the scene. If it bleeds, it leads, so paint the scene to the viewers’ satisfaction…

NBC is beholden to its shareholders and managers, and they look to the viewers, so we are about to find out whether what we like to think of as “objective journalism” remains desirable to Americans at any level.

In the meantime, NBCUniversal CEO Stephen Burke will busy himself suckling at the man root of a different Brian, CEO Roberts of NBC’s parent company, Comcast. Mr. Roberts may take a dim view of anything making his company look bad while Comcast looks to lock loins with Time Warner Company.

The irony is delightful. Comcast doesn’t want to “look bad” as it prepares to merge with TWC, in a world where those two concerns have already rung the bell as the most loathed companies in America. Honesty, transparency, and honor are irrelevant. It’s all about whose bullshit rules the market.

Brian Williams, speaking at Harvard on the day he graduated summa cum laude from Stanford and Oxford.

Going out on a limb here, I would venture that neither Brian nor Brian holds to the same definition of “look bad” as most of we peasants, out here in the peanut gallery.

There’s major money on the line, and it starts at the bottom in this trickle-up world.

Whose bullshit are we buying next?