Brian Williams Quickly Going from America’s ‘Cool Dad’ to America’s ‘Dad with a Secret Second Family’
Brian Williams was “America’s cool dad,’’ the one who took his kids to the school parking lot and let them drive around when they were 10 years-old, the one whose kids got to have Reese’s Peanut Butter Puffs for breakfast, the one who “did the voices’’ of all the Sesame Street characters.
That’s why it hurt so much when he lied about being in a helicopter that was shot at in Iraq in 2003.
But based on a new report out of Louisiana, it turns out that Williams is more like the dad who had a secret second family in Cincinnati, the one who knew where his high school-age kids kept their weed and stole some of it every once in a while.
Now he’s being investigated by his own network.
The New Orleans Advocate ran a story about claims Williams made after reporting on Hurricane Katrina in 2005:
“When you look out of your hotel window in the French Quarter and watch a man float by face down, when you see bodies that you last saw in Banda Aceh, Indonesia, and swore to yourself that you would never see in your country,’’ Williams said in a 2006 interview.
Except the French Quarter was never underwater.
It was generous to suggest Williams simply remembered incorrectly. But if there are other times he’s put himself in positions of danger in the stories he tells, the likelihood of it being an honest mistake goes from very slim to none.
Vox put together a meticulous timeline tracking Williams’ telling of the helicopter story, and this wasn’t a gradual slip. The first time Williams claimed the helicopter he was in came under fire was in a blog post he wrote in 2008. And he hasn’t updated his tale since then.
It took getting called out for Williams to address and apologize for changing the story, and even then, the soldiers he’s apologizing to say he still hasn’t gotten it right.
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