Those of you who have seen any of my posts know that I am a huge Oregon fan and that our biggest annual rivalry game is the Civil War versus the Oregon State Beavers. Still, this story, stemming from Brian Williams misidentifying Oregon State Men's BB Coach and Obama brother-in-law Craig Robinson as Obama's personal assistant Reggie Love is too good to pass up. Particularly since Brian Williams has apologized, more on that below the jump...
The Basic Story:
At about 8:15 Pacific on inauguration day, while randomly mentioning the guests that were arriving at the ceremony, the camera focused on a tall good looking black guy wearing an orange and black scarf around his neck. Immediately, Brian Williams misidentified the man as Reggie Love, Obama's personal assistant and proceeded to tell a whole bunch of stories about working with Reggie. Problem was, as Williams admitted only about 20 minutes later, it was Craig Robinson, the head Men's BB coach at Oregon State. He then compounded the error by referring to as a "Princeton scarf", which although the colors are similar, it was not.
Williams apologized in a LTE published in today's Oregonian:
To the Oregon State Community,
My sincere apology. Whatever you have called me over the past few days can't be any worse than my own anger over my mistake. I made an inexcusable error when I confused the great OSU coach Craig Robinson with a friend of mine, the personal assistant to President Obama, Reggie Love. I am sending personal apologies to both men, and this is my apology to all members of Beaver Nation. It was a mistake committed during 9 hours of live programming -- I was distracted and watching many incoming video feeds, but that's no excuse for the error, which was no one's fault but mine. I have felt awful about it since, I forced myself to read the coverage of it on OregonLive.com, and I hope that someday you can find it in your hearts to forgive my error.
Respectfully,
Brian Williams
Anchor and Managing Editor, NBC Nightly News
Let's compare, shall we:
Reggie Love
Craig Robinson
Well I guess they look a little alike and it was worth a laugh....