This has been a week of incredible revelations and seeming obfuscations over at NBC Nightly News, and of delighted daggers of wit over at Twitter.
On Wednesday, news emerged that the anchor of NBC Nightly News, Brian Williams, had exaggerated, for years, the extent to which his life was put at risk during a helicopter flight in the Iraqi desert in 2003.
By Thursday, Mr. Williams had delivered an apology-of sorts, acknowledging the untruthfulness of his claims of a harrowing experience, yet wrapping his mea culpa in an ill-fitting suit of self-justifications.
Whereas he and his crew had indeed been aboard a Chinook helicopter on the heels of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, his copter did not sustain enemy fire, nor was it forced to land because of a hit by a rocket-propelled grenade, as Mr. Williams contended as recently as one week ago.
Here, then, was a man, fresh from signing a $10 million per year, 5-year contract to read and write the evening news, who apparently had been for at least ten years experiencing a sense of “not enough.”
Here was a man who looked to have all anyone could ever want–and more, yet felt a less-than so huge that he had to fabricate a better-than, a braver-than, a more-extraordinary-than too big for any single human to contain.
If it weren’t so tragic, it would be comedic. Given enough time, it may very well be.
