Less than a day after The New York Times reported that Matt Lauer committed at least one violent sexual assault in his NBC office, his former “Today” show…
Less than a day after The New York Times reported that Matt Lauer committed at least one violent sexual assault in his NBC office, his former “Today” show co-host Savannah Guthrie read, solemnly and with great sympathy, Lauer’s self-serving statement.
Why would she do that? Why would she act as body armor for a known predator who spent decades victimizing her female co-workers?
Guthrie’s not alone. It’s been startling to see, over the past few weeks, those friends and colleagues — ostensibly smart, together, professional women — who publicly agonize over deviant criminal behavior.
What, really, is there to understand?
After The Washington Post reported last week that eight women had accused former PBS and “CBS This Morning” host Charlie Rose of sexual harassment — including walking around naked — his colleague, Gayle King, was saddened. Yes, for his victims, she said — but also for him.
“What do you say when someone that you deeply care about has done something so horrible?” she lamented on-air last Tuesday. “I’m really grappling with that.”
Rose, however, was not. After issuing a bloodless statement that glancingly “accept[ed] responsibility,” Rose was caught by TMZ happily ambling into his apartment building that night. Asked if he had anything to say to the women accusing him of wrongdoings, Rose chuckled.
“It’s not wrongdoings,” he said.
Still, the next night, King went on “Watch What Happens Live” and told Andy Cohen that “I can’t turn off my feelings for him” and that it was she who was desperately hoping to see Rose that week, not the other way around.
“Can you love someone who did bad things?” Comedian Sarah Silverman posed this question two weeks ago, after “one of my best friends of over 25 years,” Louis C. K., admitted what he’d spent years denying: He did, in fact, force female comics to watch him masturbate, and his victims feared for their careers if they ever spoke up.
As the story broke, Silverman’s sister, Laura, tweeted that C. K. masturbated in front of her “about 20 times” on a cross-country trip years ago.
“I hope it’s okay if I am at once very angry for the women he wronged and the culture that enabled it,” Sarah Silverman said. “And also sad, because he’s my friend.”
The question really should be: What’s so toxic in our culture that some of our most accomplished women seek to rationalize such vile behavior? To salvage what they still see as friendships with men who’ve revealed themselves to be nothing but craven misogynists?
NBC execs, of course, claim no prior knowledge of Lauer’s predation.
“Everybody knew,” one high-level industry source told Vanity Fair. An NBC employee added that “the real focus right now should be on this complete disingenuous behavior by NBC to say, ‘I’m shocked.’ ”
Yet Kathie Lee Gifford, another “Today,” co-host, actively defended Lauer on-air and encouraged the American public to forgive him. “No person is perfect in this world,” she said Thursday. “I texted [Lauer] this morning and I said, ‘I adore you.’ ”
Saner voices, though in the minority, should prevail.
On “CBS This Morning,” as Gayle King emotionally flailed about, co-host Norah O’Donnell kept her focus on the real story: The women who came forward, the unknown victims who may not, and what this moment tells us about how far we have to go.
“Women cannot achieve equality in the workplace or in society until there is a reckoning and a taking of responsibility,” she said. “This has to end. This behavior is wrong. Period.”
O’Donnell never mentioned Rose by name.
Guthrie should have refused to read the folksy “statement from Matt.” She should demand, on-air, to know which NBC executives allowed Lauer to install a button under his desk, one that allowed him to close his office door remotely. She should have fought NBC for allowing Lauer to issue an insincere apology under their aegis instead of on his own lonely Twitter feed, as Rose was forced to do.
Right now, Savannah Guthrie has arguably more power than any on-air personality at NBC. She should consider how best to use it.
