The Me Too movement certainly harmed some innocent people but the real travesty of the movement is that it didn’t go nearly far enough in targeting the people who really deserved it. Matt Lauer, for instance, became the sacrificial lamb for a culture at NBC which clearly enabled and made light of his behavior for as long as it possibly could. Now Lauer is enjoying a comfortable exile and his former colleagues are smugly lying to the public about their friendship with him.
Matt Lauer reportedly still thinks he’s innocent
Lauer returned to the news recently with the publication of a memoir by former colleague Katie Couric in which Couric claims that the revelations regarding her former co-anchor were a complete shock.
In actuality, Couric and others at NBC who have since condemned Matt Lauer were apparently aware and approving enough of his behavior to joke and make light of it before it became public knowledge.
An article from People conveniently omits this fact and suggests that Lauer himself is rich enough to not be particularly bothered by the fact that his career came to an abrupt end.
The former anchor apparently feels that he was “railroaded” and was unfairly fired. It isn’t hard to see why Lauer might think this given that NBC consistently refused to punish him until it became absolutely unavoidable.
The specific allegation which led to his firing came from another NBC employee who claimed that Lauer had raped her at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi.
Even if one is extremely charitable to Lauer and believes his claim that this particular incident did not happen, his pattern of predatory behavior at NBC was extensive.
Media protected prominent sex pests
Like everyone affiliated with Harvey Weinstein, no one who worked closely with Matt Lauer was apparently aware of the sexual misconduct he was hardly trying to disguise at NBC.
NBC as a whole seems to have done its best to protect Lauer from facing any consequences until a public outcry finally made him more trouble than he was worth.
What is even worse than if they had continued to stick up for Lauer after his behavior became public knowledge is the fact that his former colleagues have been allowed to issue vehement condemnations and pretend to have been completely ignorant.
Katie Couric and others almost certainly knew about Matt Lauer and his workplace activities. In 2008 they were happy to tell jokes about it at a private function held in his honor.
Now they can issue the occasional statement about how shocked and disgusted they are and their own involvement is conveniently forgotten by the rest of the media.
It is abundantly clear that, for all its bluster, the Me Too movement failed to purge any more than a fraction of the sex pests and criminals infesting Hollywood and the mainstream media.
