Brian Williams Stepping Away From ‘NBC Nightly News’ Amid Scandal
But the REAL question remains did he or did he not live in Ridgewood ?
Brian Williams is stepping away from NBC Nightly News for a number of days.
The anchor sent a note to the show’s staff, announcing that Lester Holt is replacing him for an unspecified amount of time. The news comes as Williams is embroiled in a scandal surrounding his story about being a passenger in a helicopter that took fire in Iraq in 2003.
On Jan. 30, an NBC Nightly News clip was posted to Facebook in which Williams repeated a story he had told previously about having been in the helicopter that was hit and went down during the Iraq invasion. After the story was questioned, Williams apologized on Wednesday’s Nightly News, saying that his helicopter was following the one that was hit.
“I feel terrible about making this mistake, especially since I found my OWN WRITING about the incident from back in ’08, and I was indeed on the Chinook behind the bird that took the RPG in the tail housing just above the ramp,” Williams wrote on Facebook.
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/brian-williams-stepping-away-nbc-771102
The man is toast. There’s no return from this. Not that this would make any difference, but I do wonder if he came up with this bullshit story by himself, or whether it was presented to him as a good story to tell?
This stuff is simply indicative of the times. I see this behavior every day at work, with our politicians, on social media, and even among some of my friends and associates. It’s this overwhelming urge to stand out, or be more interesting, by embellishing, exaggerating, or even outright lying if the person thinks there’s a reason chance they won’t get caught out.
You will find Maureen Dowd’s column pretty interesting today…..
there really is no way to come back from this…..I’ll never watch him again.
It’s all over but the birthplace: either Ridgewood, NJ or Elmira, NY can claim Williams as their own native-born fibber McGee. If he was actually born in Ridgewood, as he has recently been claiming, we should probably start a wax museum forthwith, housing likenesses of notorious liars and puffed-up phonies, starting with (Former?) NBC News Anchor Brian Williams (born here?), Obamacare Architect Jonathan Gruber (grew up on S. Irving St.), and NASA Scientist and Anthropogenic Global Warming Charlatan James Hansen (raised his children on S. Irving St.), and moving on to Former Newark Mayor and current Twitter Senator Cory Booker (visited Starbucks on Ridgewood Ave.) and any other examples of integrity-bereft individuals other TRB.net readers may have in mind to nominate?? Also, we could use some ideas as to where in the Ridgewood Business District to house this brilliant new business venture…
https://pagesix.com/2015/02/08/residents-debunk-brian-williams-encounter-with-christmas-bandit/ this article says Red Bank
As of November 2014 he was apparently claiming a Ridgewood, NJ nativity. Most sources continue to have him down as a native-born New Yorker (Upstate, in Elmira). This is very strange, and merits further research before Williams gets his old job back. Here is a full transcript of the November 14, 2014 Today Show segment:
7:13 AM ET
NATALIE MORALES: And a big honor and a huge surprise for NBC’s own Brian Williams Thursday night. He was inducted into the New Jersey Hall of Fame, but it was a surprise to almost everyone when The Boss showed up to make the presentation. Take a look.
[ON-SCREEN HEADLINE: Brian Williams Honored; Bruce Springsteen Surprises NBC Anchor]
BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN: To paraphrase a friend of mine, if Walter Cronkite and Jon Stewart had had a baby, and if due to the ongoing controversy over same-sex marriage they had to abandon that baby on the New Jersey Turnpike, and it grew up to be a news anchor, its name would be Brian Douglas Williams.
MORALES: Very good one. There’s an intro like no other. Williams, a Jersey boy through and through, born in Ridgewood, New Jersey, and he spent much of his childhood in Middletown.
Late Soprano’s star James Gandolfini, by the way, also inducted posthumously on Thursday night as well.
SAVANNAH GUTHRIE: Congratulations-
MORALES: Congrats, Brian.
GUTHRIE: That’s like a Brian Williams dream sequence right there.
MORALES: That’s like up here. Yes.
GUTHRIE: I know.
MORALES: Amazing.
GUTHRIE: Now what do you do, come to work and read the news? I mean, gosh.
MORALES: I know.
WILLIE GEIST: Brian talked about, too, as a young man, hanging out at these bars around the Jersey shore, hoping maybe Bruce would show up that night to play. And now Bruce is introducing him, inducting him into the hall of fame. Pretty cool.
GUTHRIE: Pretty awesome.
GEIST: Congrats, Brian.
– See more at: https://newsbusters.org/blogs/kyle-drennen/2014/11/14/brian-williams-if-walter-cronkite-and-jon-stewart-had-baby#sthash.CEktniTi.dpuf