Matt Lauer fired

Segnosaur said:
Would be ironic if sacking Lauer would discredit Liberals. After all, Lauer may have been a factor in Trump's victory. Remember back in the 2016 elections, there was the town-hall debate on foreign policy where Lauer interviewed both candidates. Clinton was hammered for a good 10 minutes on her emails, while Lauer treated Trump with kid gloves (allowing him to get away with some pretty blatant lies... his support of the Iraq and Libyan wars).

I'm not saying Lauer was the only thing that led to Trump's victory (and in some ways he's more of a symbol of the failure of the media as a whole to deal with Trump.) But, had he actually been competent at his job, maybe some of Trump's lies would have had more exposure early on.
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By that criteria, everyone working for CNN should be sacked.


I always hated Matt Lauer.
 
This news is so 3 hours ago! Garrison Keillor is gone now.
 
Wolrab said:
But Trump?
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It's an interesting question. We held a national referendum on Donald Trump last November. The overall consensus, taking everything into account including the allegations against him, was pretty mixed, and he only ended up squeaking by on a technicality. A different voting system might have returned a very different result.

It's possible Matt Lauer would fare better if he were subject to such a referendum. Or he could fare worse. The people complaining about Lauer, and the people firing him, are probably people who would have voted against Trump. We might assume they are somewhat consistent. Or we might not. After all, it seems NBC knew about Lauer's behavior for years without acting.

But of course Lauer's employment isn't subject to national referendum. Instead, NBC must consider the reaction of their own staff, the reaction of their target audience, and the value that Lauer brings to NBC. Obviously, asking "but Trump?" won't mollify the NBC employees who have been harassed by Lauer. It might mollify some of NBC's viewership, but the trade-off might not seem worthwhile to NBC.

In a sense, I think this is part of the same phenomenon as the recent flurry of statue-hate: Anti-Trump Transference. A lot of people are very upset about Trump's election. But they're largely powerless to actually do anything about it. So their rage and frustration gets transferred to other things. They can't depose Trump. But they can topple statues that have gone without public outcry for decades. They can't remove Trump over sexual harassment allegations. But they can remove any other public figure they have power over. Which turns out to be a surprising number of prominent, powerful, and influential people on the left. People whose abusive behavior was quietly tolerated for years.

It's not the swamp Trump talked about draining, but it is a swamp, and it is being drained. Ironic!
 
You know, at this point someone could put together a killer line-up for a media outlet composed solely of popular entertainment figures disgraced by scandal. Have to scrape the bottom of the barrel for sponsors, though.
 
Beerina said:
This news is so 3 hours ago! Garrison Keillor is gone now.
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Rush to judgement? He touched a woman's bare back? :boggled:

"If I had a dollar for every woman who asked to take a selfie with me and who slipped an arm around me and let it drift down below the beltline, I'd have at least a hundred dollars. So this is poetic irony of a high order," Keillor later said.
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:popcorn1

USA Today
His firing came one day after publication of a Washington Post column in which he argued against the idea that Minnesota Sen. Al Franken should resign his seat over allegations he groped radio host Leann Tweeden during a 2006 USO tour before he was elected to public office.

"Eleven years later, a talk show host in L.A., goes public, and there is talk of resignation," Keillor wrote. "This is pure absurdity, and the atrocity it leads to is a code of public deadliness. No kidding."
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Maybe this will draw attention to the minor nature of three of those Franken accusations.
 
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theprestige said:
Or we might not. After all, it seems NBC knew about Lauer's behavior for years without acting.

.....

People whose abusive behavior was quietly tolerated for years.
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Spindrift said:
Not a surprise. Lauer's behavior was an open secret and ongoing for a long time. My neighbor works at NBC and we discussed this several years ago.
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NBC and Spindrift knew about it??? For shame! ;)
 
Great googli moogli.

Lauer, who was paranoid about being followed by tabloid reporters, grew more emboldened at 30 Rockefeller Center as his profile rose following Katie Couric’s departure from “Today” in 2006. His office was in a secluded space, and he had a button under his desk that allowed him to lock his door from the inside without getting up. This afforded him the assurance of privacy. It allowed him to welcome female employees and initiate inappropriate contact while knowing nobody could walk in on him, according to two women who were sexually harassed by Lauer.
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alfaniner said:
A mainstay and important anchor for The Today Show for over 20 years. Hosted many events like the Olympics, Macy's Thanksgiving day parade, and many exposes and investigations.
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He was a hard-ass interviewing Hillary, and Mr. Softball with Trump. But, y’know, who’s to question someone making $20 mil a year?
 
LTC8K6 said:
Keillor just thinks that might be the incident he was fired over.

Maybe it isn't?
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That's why I made the popcorn. Should I make a bigger bowl? :p

But while we are at it, here again is an offender that it turns out a whole lot of people knew for years Lauer had a sexual abuse at work problem.

Matt Lauer Accused of Sexual Harassment by Multiple Women .

I don't know about Keillor yet, but here are all these people with whom their behavior was a well known secret. And then there are a couple people accused and no such 'we all knew' stories have come out.
 
Craig4 said:
That's disturbing. If I were to think of him as a sexual being, I'm pretty sure I'd visualize him as an amoeba.
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From the Statesman linked by applecorped:
Sue Scott, who worked on the show as a voice actor for 24 years with Keillor, told the AP she was stunned. She said she saw no evidence of inappropriate behavior from Keillor.
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:popcorn1
 
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