MET OPERA DIRECTOR IN KID-SEX PROBE
IT’S A bit of morning-show fluff turned real-life question: Where in the World is Matt Lauer?
For 20 years, Lauer reigned as the global face of the “Today” show and NBC — from the Olympics and the Great Pyramids to the Taj Majal, from coast to coast with your morning cup of coffee.
Now it’s hard to find the disgraced, deposed accused sexual predator’s likeness anywhere on anything associated with the network that unceremoniously sent him packing last week.
The annual Rockefeller Christmas Tree lighting right outside his old office at 30 Rock? No Lauer.
The “Today” show’s social-media pages? Totally Lauer-free — with even a cutesy shot of a smiling Matt holding a puppy yanked from the site.
The fired morning show cohost’s own verified Twitter, Facebook and Instgram accounts are as dead as Lauer’s career. According to business-communications expert Karen Friedman, the almost instantaneous scrubbing of Lauer’s likeness from social media indicates a change in the treatment of accused sexual abusers. The days when a public “I’m sorry” was meant to wash away all sins are now dead and buried, she said.
“At the ‘Today’ show, CBS, Netflix and other companies who have come under fire for the bad behavior of their employees, we are witnessing management doing the right thing to reinforce what their organizations stand for,” she wrote in a Philadelphia Business Journal column.
“The immediate firing, publicly communicating and not tolerating this kind of behavior shows us that as organizations, they are the ones who are sorry, ashamed and embarrassed that this has happened under their watch.”
Some cringeworthy Lauer clips that the network would rather see buried remain available via the internet.
The worst includes a 2006 onair crack where the married Lauer urges co-host Meredith Vieira to “keep bending over. It’s a nice view.”
Lauer is still angling to collect some of his reported $25 million salary for 2018, although the network is reportedly pushing back hard. The 59-year-old was fired last Tuesday after his long-time employer/promoter learned about charges of sexual impropriety against their respected host.