I watched the Today Show periodically when I was in high school and college, but it's not been part of my morning routine as an adult. As a result, I don't really know much about Matt Lauer, or Ann Curry, or Meredith Vieira, or any of the other players in the particular psychodrama going on right now. From what we've learned in recent days, Lauer is a scoundrel of the first order and maybe more than that.
What I do know is the world they inhabit has little to do with the world most of their viewers experience. The familiarity of television personalities is artificial and we really know nothing of their lives beyond the reach of the cameras. I also know this -- if you are a serious person, you should take the promises you make seriously, especially where Topic A is concerned. While I am hardwired to notice the physical attributes of all women, I'm a married man and therefore I shouldn't be trying to get into a physical relationship with any woman aside from my spouse. Cheating on one's spouse is a betrayal at the most basic level. Matt Lauer is a married man. If you are willing to betray someone you promise to share your life with, you aren't someone who can be trusted. We need to remember that.
9 comments:
i dont doubt mrs Lauer was knowledgeable of her husbands actions, and probably was ok with it as long as the money was good. he was probably that way when she married him, and she knew about that too.
i dont want to play blame the victim here, but there were an aweful lot of women who gave up without much of a fight to lauer. if you didnt leave his office with a few bruises, i'm not totally buying the rape story. if you got got done by a man you didnt want to get done by, you were either fighting him or weak willed.
Gino, I think the trick is that the women he used had a choice; sleep with him or have their career torpedoed--basically go back to covering church potlucks for the Podunk Democrat-Gazette. OK, for those of us whose means aren't that much higher, not as much of a big deal, but....
I would imagine you’re correct about the relationship in the Lauer household, Gino. Not my business to judge on that part, although I can’t imagine being so, ahem, transactional about it.
Bubba’s point is the more important one — if you’re a young woman and the price of staying at 30 Rock is allowing Lauer to do as he pleases, that’s a problem. Unless Lauer was shtupping dudes, too. Maybe we’ll find that out, too.
if you’re a young woman and the price of staying at 30 Rock is allowing Lauer to do as he pleases, that’s a problem.
its a problem because other women have set that price for you to pay. if some women werent willing to go along, other women wouldnt have these standards to live up to.
men are hardwired. we know this, and so do women, many of whom trade themselves for financial gain and status.
lauer was able to set his price because so many women were willing to pay it.
It ought to be noted as well that if indeed that is "the price of staying at 30 Rock" (do we add Tina Fey to the perv pool?), one inference is that there just might be a TON of people out there with far greater skills who could be utilized to beat the living tar out of 30 Rock.
Unless, of course, 30 Rock and the like are popular because they are a mirror to society in general. That could well be the case.
Yes, we are hardwired, but one of the primary purposes of civilization is to give us ways to handle those issues. Civilization seems to have had a short-circuit in the wiring at 30 Rock. And no, I don’t suppose it’s a coincidence that Al Franken worked in that building for the better part of his career, either.
Notice that Lauer's ex-wife is standing up for him; she at least isn't admitting an open relationship. I would guess that his current wife, a former model, wouldn't exactly be thrilled about such an arrangement, either.
Some of the claims don't make sense. I get how you'd verify the door locking thing, but I'm at a loss to figure out how someone would pass out from that sexual abuse unless some really freaky stuff was going on. Which would expose Lauer (no pun intended) to New York criminal law, which has no statute of limitations for aggravated sexual assault.
Suffice it to say I'm glad I have no chance of being on a New York jury, where such things could be explained to me in nauseating detail.
I saw an editorial headline in the Strib to the effect that we need to "change the way we think about sex." I didn't bother reading it.
My take is, "No, we don't", at least when it comes to saying what is right and wrong. There was never a time when it was considered proper in polite society for a man to use his power and position to garner sexual favors. Not that it didn't happen, but it wasn't acceptable. Even now in our libertine age, the exposure of this brings outrage (unless you're a Clinton). No one can say he didn't know he shouldn't do that. If there's anything we need to change our thinking about it is the issue of double-standards, and that includes giving a pass to "artists" who call women bioche and ho in their art.
RA, another way of viewing the matter is that if indeed a lot of shows--I really know little about 30 Rock, BTW--are reflective of how large portions of the nation think about sex, that portion may need to rethink what they're doing. However, since the media have a lot invested in the sexual revolution, don't count on them to trumpet that need, and therefore, it's probably unlikely many people are going to be rethinking their own sexual revolutions.
To the loss of us all, really.
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