Let me preface this by saying that Brian Williams of NBC Nightly News has always seemed like a decent enough guy to me.

But his performance on Letterman’s program Monday was over-the-top.

Describing the inauguration, Williams said:

To see people, whatever your politics, that excited about our new chief executive after a line of what the ordinary voter would maybe describe as bad choices or choices of evils, for years, generations. [audience laughter] It is unbelievable to me.

“Choices of evils” for generations? Does that mean Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush were “evil?” I thought that since America elected The One we weren’t allowed to use that word anymore.

It gets even more ridiculous. Williams goes on to applaud the new first family’s ability to take a good photo. He then goes on to praise Obama’s quotation of scripture in the inaugural address (which was out of context):

I think regarding temperament and training, intellectual vigor, this guy is a, is an, has an enormous brain. He’s a hugely capable man. He’s going to need everybody’s help, though. When he says it’s time to put away childish things, you can read all sorts of tangents in that one sentence in his inaugural address.

As an aside, the verse Obama quoted was I Corinthians 13:11 — and it has nothing to do with putting aside partisan banter or working together. The verse, and the one following, reads:

When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I become a man, I put away childish things. For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.

Paul, the author of Corinthians, is talking about growing in the knowledge of God through faith. It has nothing to do with helping each other out, getting along or the such.

There’s a transcript and more over a NewsBusters.