Ok, I just canNOT with all this sexual misconduct, y’all. I mean - Matt Lauer? Are you freakin’ kidding me right now? I can’t even believe it.
WATCH: Here are TODAY's headlines on this Wednesday morning pic.twitter.com/opzA3IcYmP
— TODAY (@TODAYshow) November 29, 2017
I’ve grown up watching Matt. But not just watching him, knowing him. Matt and I shared some laughs - albeit unbeknownst to him - over his Halloween costumes throughout the years.
We shared tears through the unbearable sadness of the events of 9/11.
We traveled the world together through his annual Where In The World Is Matt Lauer series.
We shared the same disdain for Tom Cruise when Tom used that gorgeous mouth of his to blast Matt with an embarrassing misuse of his vocabulary by calling him “glib.”
I trusted Matt.
Remember when Brian Williams was exposed for lying about being shot down in Iraq?
It took me weeks to get over that. That’s what this feels like.
Matt is one of the good guys.
There are just some people who don’t seem to be cut out for behaviors like this, and Matt is one of those people. I’m just not seeing it.
I’m going to say something and I don’t want you to get all tangled up in a pair of panties about it.
I hope this is just a case of some overly sensitive person coming out with an experience and it’s a “story” because we’ve become hypersensitive and we’ve started to drown in the deluge of people pointing their finger at powerhouses abusing their position, and that her story is just an example of someone riding the hot-button-tidal wave.
A few weeks ago, Anita Hill told a room of 7,500+ women at the Texas Conference for Women about her experience blowing the whistle against Clarence Thomas. As she spoke, I remembered that we had a cat during the time that her story was the top news story, and our cat was super touchy, so we nicknamed her Anita.
If you’re too young to remember, the general opinion about Anita Hill at the time was that she was unstable, touchy, and a supersensitive woman looking for job-related revenge.
I feel like an a-hole for that, now, of course. For making light of a serious violation against her by nicknaming my psycho cat after her.
It turns out that Anita Hill was a pioneer for all these people (not just women) speaking out against sexual harassment, and it’s only taken 26 years to gather momentum.
Things are different nowadays. In a good way, but also in a bad way.
We’ve progressed and become less neanderthal in the way we treat women, thank God.
We’ve also lost our sense of humor, though, and we’ve become so uptight about things.
Don’t misunderstand me. I’m not victim-blaming. I’m not saying that any of the stories coming out recently aren’t true or that the accusers’ complaints aren’t valid. And I’m not saying that women should let it slide when they are the object of sexual misbehavior.
I’m just saying that - in general - we’ve become so touchy about every single thing, and there are “those people” who will take advantage and blow the whistle at the slightest whisper of a touch or benign comment, screaming that they’re offended - or worse - assaulted.
Like the old "soccer flop" stunt they pull in soccer:
We’ll probably never find out all the details of the person accusing Matt Lauer of misconduct, and all I’m saying is that I hope it’s somebody doing the soccer flop.
