He may not be one to fist pump, but Brian Williams is officially the ultimate Jersey boy.
“Nowhere else on Earth would I want a second home but the Jersey Shore, as tough as a name it has gotten,” the “NBC Nightly News” anchorman said to laughs as he co-hosted a screening of “Absence of Malice” with Nick Clooney at the Newseum on Tuesday night.
Clooney had brought up Williams’ frequent trips back to the Garden State.
“If someone says, ‘Snooki,’ you’re going to have a problem,” Williams then warned.
While he can throw out a Snooki reference like the best of them, does the newsman seriously watch the profanity-laced, binge drinking-filled MTV reality show?
That’s a big affirmative.
“I watch it out of my sense of Margaret Mead journalism because you have to understand all civilizations,” Williams told Yeas & Nays. “I’m from there, I know exactly where their house is, I know where that Astroturf roof is, I know that section of boardwalk in Seaside Heights. No it’s not the Jersey Shore I know, which is probably the one place where I am happiest in the world.”
The veteran journalist moved to Middleton, N.J., when he was 10 years old and considers his old stomping grounds his home away from home.
“I can still drive by my old firehouse and get jeered,” he said.
