Man-Rule: Never Lie, Part V

I don’t know about you, but my memory isn’t what it used to be. Frequently my lovely and talented wife Kristin will send me to the store, and when I get there I wander the aisles trying to remember what it is I’m supposed to buy. Was it cat food? Bananas? A pint of Ben & Jerry’s Americone Dream Ice Cream (“Contains 1776% of your recommended daily allowance of freedom!”)? A two-carat marquise cut diamond ring? Snow tires?

Fortunately the staff of our local Publix has become accustomed to seeing me meandering aimlessly around the store like a lost puppy, and they’ve learned to call Kristin when this happens. “He’s doing it again,” they’ll say. “What should we tell him to get?”

As bad as my memory is, though, I’ve never forgotten the truly traumatic events I’ve experienced – those times when you know your life could be snuffed out at a moment’s notice, with no warning. The car wreck in 1976, the airplane engine failure in 2002, the time I gave Kristin a waffle iron for Christmas … all of these are etched indelibly into my consciousness. I remember every nuance, every detail, of these occurrences.

Which makes the ongoing saga of NBC News anchor Brian Williams so weird.

Brian Williams: Boyishly handsome,
memory skills on par with a dead octopus

Brian, as you know, is the boyishly handsome head news guy at NBC who claimed that when he was in Iraq in 2003, the helicopter he was flying in was hit by an Iraqi rocket-propelled grenade and forced to land. This so traumatized him that the following year he was forced to take Tom Brokaw’s place as the anchor of the NBC Nightly News and make millions of dollars to read stories on the air.

The only problem is, Williams’ helicopter wasn’t hit by an Iraqi rocket-propelled grenade. Another helicopter was, but it was 30 minutes ahead of the one carrying Williams and his crew. Williams finally came clean about the story recently, saying first that he “misremembered” the events.

“Misremembered” is an interesting word choice. What he did would be like you or I hearing about a car wreck on the radio, passing the site of the wreck 30 minutes later after everything had been cleaned up, and then telling everybody we knew (along with several million strangers) that we’d been in the car wreck.

Naturally folks began examining other claims Brian made over the years, such as the one that when he was covering Hurricane Katrina in 2005, he could look out his hotel window and see bodies floating by that were being hit by Iraqi rocket-propelled grenades, or that he’d seen Morgan Fairchild naked, or that he personally invented some of the techniques featured in 50 Shades of Gray. He’s now saying he misremembered these events too.

Like I said: My memory is bad, but it’s not THAT bad.

So of course, Brian has been suspended for six months without pay by NBC. They had to do something, because there’s an old saying in the journalism business: “If you don’t have your credibility, and some great stories of dangers you’ve personally faced, and a rumpled safari jacket, and an expense account big enough to choke a St. Bernard, and a nightly audience of several million people, you don’t have anything.”

So, Brian, a little advice, man-to-man: Never lie. It didn’t work out for Manti Teo, and it’s not working out for you, either.

But while you’ve got some down time, would you mind running to the store for me? Kristin needs some orange juice. Or possibly a harpoon. I misremember which.

 

(c) 2015 John Puckett

 

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