Time & Perspective Quote by Frank Rich

The knife twist here is in the phrase "only this month": it paints Mr. Williams as a late-arriving convert to "media ethics", someone freshly baptized in a public scandal and already auditioning for the role of moral authority. Frank Rich isn’t interested in a neutral accounting of hypocrisy; he’s diagnosing a media ecosystem that rewards it. The line works because it turns a personal rebuke into an institutional indictment, implicating CNN and NBC as eager accomplices in the performance.

"Purports" does heavy lifting. It signals that the claim of sudden ethical awakening is itself strategic, a PR maneuver disguised as contrition. Rich’s syntax then quietly reassigns blame: yes, Williams is self-serving, but the more telling offense is how quickly television converts damaged credibility into bookable content. The jab isn’t that Williams is unethical; it’s that cable news treats "ethics" as just another segment format, an aesthetic of seriousness you can put on air between panels.

The subtext is about the media’s circular economy of scandal: transgression creates a narrative, the narrative creates airtime, and airtime rehabilitates the transgressor as an "expert" on the very norms he violated. Rich’s restraint sharpens the cynicism. He doesn’t need to call anyone shameless; he simply notes the "undue amount of time" spent posturing as an ethicist, letting the disproportion speak for itself. The point lands as a critique of credential laundering: cable news doesn’t just cover moral failure, it monetizes redemption arcs and sells them back to viewers as insight.