NY Post Cover Imagines ‘Ghost’ of Tom Brokaw Haunting Brian Williams

One of the revelations from this week’s Brian Williams exposé, published by New York magazine, contains the fact that Williams believes he is haunted by the ghost of former NBC Nightly News anchor Tom Brokaw:

…Williams began to tell friends he was thinking of making his side gig his main act. He relished the freedom of improv and expressed frustration at the conventions of network news. “Brian chafed at reading the prompter,” a senior NBC executive said. He also felt embraced by the entertainment community in a way he never was by NBC’s old guard, especially [Tim] Russert and Tom Brokaw, his predecessor. Brokaw’s coldness seemed to heighten Williams’s sensitivities about being a blue-collar guy from New Jersey who had never finished college or been a war correspondent. Last summer, around the time Chuck Todd took over as moderator of Meet the Press, several staffers recalled that Williams told him: “At least your ghost is dead. Mine is still walking the building.”

Now, Williams was utilizing a metaphor here: Brokaw is very much alive, and not an actual ghost. But we’ll be damned if some plucky news organization with an impulse to Photoshop didn’t take the ghost quote to its logical conclusion.

Have you seen the ghost of Tom?
Long white bones with the skin all go-oh-oh-oh-one
OoooooOOOOOooOOOOOOOoo.
Wouldn’t it be chilly with no skin on?

Apparently Williams did. A lot.

[h/t Gothamist]

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