In a radio interview this morning, David Paterson let loose with something of a bombshell claim that HE was the source for the news story about his contacting a woman who alleged a top Paterson aide has assaulted her.
It sounded far fetched, but the Governor, when pressed on the radio show, maintained that had it not been for him, the news wouldn't have broken.
Not true, wrote reporters from The New York Times, which broke the story. Paterson was not the source, the reporters said.
So now what? What are we supposed to surmise? The Times is lying? The Governor's lying? This is all a weird Twilight Zone of a misunderstanding? Sheesh. The fear is that reality isn't part of the equation here, and that's troubling on so many fronts.
We'll try to unravel all this, tonight at 11.
Also at 11, we'll have the latest on the investigation into a crashed Toyota Prius in Westchester County. A woman, taking the Prius in to a dealer to get fixed for acceleration problems, accelerated uncontrollably and crashed into a brick wall. Today, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said that it was not Toyota's fault - it was basically operator error.
"Information retrieved from the vehicle's onboard computer systems," said the NHTSA, referring to the car's black box, "indicated there was no application of the brakes and the throttle was fully open."
No brakes. Her foot never even touched them.
Also at 11, we'll have the latest the flooding that's still affecting thousands of people in New Jersey, and the power outages still affecting thousands in Westchester County. Not pretty.
Two people worth noting in this space. Christiane Amanpour, who has for two decades been a fixture of international reporting for CNN, has been hired by ABC to takeover hosting duties for "This Week." She'll start in August, and we welcome her to the ABC family.
The other person is Fess Parker. And if you're under 50, he probably doesn't mean much to you. For the rest of us, Fess Parker was godlike. He was Davy Crockett, king of the wild frontier, whose TV series on ABC - and produced by Disney - made him a hero to baby boomers in the mid-1950s, and made the coonskin cap all the rage.
Davy Crockett may have been born on a mountain top in Tennessee, but Fess Parker died in a vineyard in southern California - his winery. He was 85 and died from what his spokesman says was "complications from old age."
We saw him die at the Alamo - I remember it like was yesterday, that scene. And now, for so many baby boomers who are now approaching dealing with their own mortality, we have seen that he's died in real life.
It's still a great song, by the way. We found it online at www.televisiontunes.com/Davy_Crockett.html
We'll also have any breaking news of the night, plus Jeff Smith (in for Lee Goldberg) with the AccuWeather forecast, and Scott Clark with the night's sports. I hope you can join Liz Cho and me, tonight at 11.
BILL RITTER
