I give him a pass and here's why: The Gulf war was the first war where the attack was televised from the inside. You had members of the press imbedded with the military going across enemy lines. The Pentagon wanted to win the war publicly and what better way than to show it unfold live from the inside. Now you have reporter types who are seeing combat up close and personal. These are not military types but people who live in a studio and in front of a camera. They are not experiencing what is happening the same way military people are. Everyone has a job to do but for a news anchor to be exposed to that kind of danger has to be a terrifying assignment, not your every day story.
So my take on what happened is you have a news guy flying around in military helicopters around the edges of battle. He's keeping his eyes open, pupils fully dilated, heart pounding trying to ask questions so he can do his job and report on the war. A job both his network and the Pentagon wants him to do. He flying a route where some helicopters proceeded him into enemy territory and he finds out that one of them came under enemy fire and was hit. Holy crap, he thinks. The same route I just flew on and here you have a chopper that went just before us and got hit. Wow, that could have been me. This is dangerous, i could have been killed. We're still across enemy lines. I'm scared ####less. He calls his bosses. Holy crap, he says, the chopper convoy I'm riding with took fire and one of them went down. We're across enemy lines. He's genuinely frightened. Why wouldn't he be? He's usually just a guy who stands in front of a camera.
So the years pass and as he recounts his frightening ordeal he remembers coming under enemy fire and a bird going down. He remembers how scary that time was and how crazy that it was that he, a news guy, was on a military chopper that took enemy fire. He's asked about that day all the time and as the years pass the day becomes more dangerous, the soldiers he was traveling with become even more brave, the memories seem even more surreal. Can you believe it, he says, i was on a military chopper that came under fire in the middle of a war. How nuts is that?
So now 12 years later he's recounting the story yet again in a profile for a retiring soldier and he gets called out on his account by the other soldiers who were there. You have to think for them that day was not close to harrowing experience that is was for Brian Williams. it would be like being on the set of a Martin Scorcese movie for a day. You got to watch the Billy Batts murder scene from Goodfellas from way off to the side of the set. You saw Scorcese, Deniro and everyone else. You tell all your friends. Oh my God, DeNiro walked right by me, he smiled and nodded to me. I saw it all from up close. The movie comes out and you tell all your friends that you were right next to the bar. You got hit with a little splatter of fake blood. You had a long conversation with the lady who styled Liotta's hair. You were right there! Then years later you're telling the story again on the internet and someone who was working on the film. someone who works all the time in the movie business, who was also on the set that day says your account of what happened is an exaggeration. He says you were nowhere near the bar, that you were hundred of yards away, in a tent, watching everything from a great distance. You couldn't even see in the bar. Maybe you got a glimpse of Deniro walking into the bar. Maybe. Maybe you talked to an assistant of an assistant who told you they were filming a murder. Maybe it wasn't even the Billy Batts scene at all, maybe it was another scene that didn't even make it into the movie. Maybe it wasn't even Goodfellas. You think about your memories and maybe in the excitement of being around a movie set for the first time you over exaggerated your experience. The more you think about it, you definitely did. Oh well, it was an exciting day for me anyway. Haven't had an experience like that before or since, to be so close to something like that. Anyway, you're right, sorry for exaggerating.
Brian Williams and the everyone else will move on. He's not going anywhere. The next time he has a harrowing experience like that, if he ever does, he'll recount it a little less spectacularly but tough to blame his if he added some panache to it anyway.
Gotta hand it to you. That has got to be the biggest pile of you-know-what of a justification I've read in maybe forever on this board. Are you William's agent or something?
