Like Katie Couric, NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams admitted (on NBC’s Daily Nightly blog) he was dazzled to be invited to the White House state dinner on Tuesday night. Also like Couric, he failed to explain whether a national news anchor attending a White House dinner might be compromising their appearance of being independent of presidential power. Instead, we were offered pinch-me talk:
At one point last night – at several points, actually – I turned to my wife and asked, "What, exactly, are we doing here? Can you believe where we are?" I suppose there are people who are blasé about State Dinners, but we are not among them. I was honored to attend. It was a warm and glittery evening in a beautiful place...with better-than-average people! It was a thrill to see everyone – the boldface names, obviously...
And he also then saluted all the military people, Secret Service guards, and ushers and other helpers. But mostly, we was thrilled to hang out with the Obamas:
Needless to say, it was wonderful to see the President and First Lady and to greet their distinguished honored guests from India. It's not something you ever get used to...nor is there a way to describe how strange it was just now -- while typing this -- to look up and see my wife and me on cable, in a clip from the arrival last night.
Needless to say, Williams doesn't always feel this dazzled in front of presidents. He pushed George W. Bush around with the charge he mishandled Hurricane Katrina because of his "clueless patrician" upbringing.
In addition to Williams and Couric, the other TV journalists on the official White House invitation list were Robin Roberts of ABC, as well as Sanjay Gupta and Fareed Zakaria of CNN. (Although it was implied on air, ABC's Claire Shipman was not on the list.) General Electric (and thus NBC) CEO Jeff Immelt was also on the list.
There were also print journalists who made the White House list: Thomas Friedman of the New York Times and Raju Narisetti and Rajiv Chandasekaran of The Washington Post.
