Perfect: Brian Williams to lead MSNBC's coverage of pope's visit

Things have gone so well with Holt in the anchor chair, Williams is not going to return to it. Not that he ever had any hope of doing so in the first place. And Williams hasn't been seen on the air since we learned that - while most mainstream journalists are shameless liars - Williams is a much more creative and self-aggrandizing liar than the rest. As far as we know.

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At any rate, Pope Francis has arrived in Washington and in keeping with its usual practice of covering religion with honesty, integrity and knowledge of the subject, MSNBC has announced the man who will head up its coverage of the pope's visit. Drumroll please . . . Brian Williams.

Oh, by the way, Brian Williams recruited John Bonham, Keith Moon and every former drummer from Spinal Tap to do that drumroll in his honor. The coverage starts at 3 p.m. Eastern today (Tuesday, September 22 if you're not reading this immediately upon its posting), so get ready for Williams to brave sniper fire and natural disasters to get himself in front of the camera: This past June, NBC announced that Brian Williams would no longer be hosting NBC Nightly News after news broke that he fabricated stories, including one about being shot down by enemy fire in Iraq — but the anchor is making his comeback Tuesday as a breaking news anchor when he leads MSNBC's coverage of Pope Francis' visit to the United States.

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Williams remained at the network after Lester Holt took over his poston NBC Nightly News in June, although he hasn't appeared on television — except for in a June interview with Matt Lauer — since beginning his suspension (which ended in his dismissal from the program) in February.

The pope's plane is scheduled to touch down in Washington around 4 p.m. Unfortunately, tragedy has struck again. On the way to the airport, Williams's car was intercepted by pirates in pewter pants, demanding that the MSNBC crew divert from the pope story and give more attention to the plight of Mediterranean Barbarians seeking economic justice from aristocratic owners of luxury watercraft. Fortunately, Williams fought them off with his MSNBC microphone - with the exception of one who got bored listening to Rachel Maddow clips that kept playing over the car's specially equipped satellite video feed. Which Williams himself installed. And I'm talking about the satellite. And there is exciting news! Williams will bring us an exclusive with the pope, including an unprecedented television moment when Williams will perform all seven sacraments of the Catholic Church at the same time - mankind's first example of a news report, a religious ritual and the filming of a Sports Authority commercial all at the same time. Exciting times. I'm sure you expected nothing less than this level of seriousness from MSNBC in its coverage of the pope's visit. By the way, if Williams does well in this assignment, he's a lock to cover the return of Jesus. Those trumpets? He'll be the one playing them, you know.

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