The Sexual Predator’s TV Wife

Brian Stelter is mistaken. I have never met any woman who fantasized about Matt Lauer. That's just crazytown. Lauer wasn't very intelligent and he reeked of being full of himself and boring! I refused to watch NBC in the AM until he was dismissed. I was shocked when I heard his salary. lol NBC made a bad deal, they already had people that were more impressive right under their noses and they chose Lauer. His interviews were so bad, people use to make fun of him because he actually took himself seriously but he came off looking like an SNL skit.

Everyone who works is in an environment where a potential for coercion, abuse, harassment, fear, and more, exists. I certainly do not deny that women face challenges that (most) men do not, but again, coercion can arise in many environments regardless of gender. Take higher education. All students are in fear of their instructors. Tenure-track PhDs are in fear for their job for six (6 !!) years until they are granted tenure (and then they have a job for life). See that Prof, that peer, sleeping with the doctoral student? Gonna say something? Bet not. So, let's be honest about where coercion, etc., can arise, and stop playing the gender game. We are either in this rat-race together, male and female, or we are not.

I am a woman in a very male profession. I related to every female character on The Morning Show. There are very few women who lived through the Clinton impeachment who didn’t think horrible things about Monica Lewinsky. I am so grateful to Ms. Lewinsky for getting through those times with as much grace and humor as she has. We don’t deserve her forgiveness, but I’m glad she processed what happened to forgive us. The majority of us were/are all complicit in some way in making women convenient pawns for male power. We must learn from this and become better as a society. We owe this to our children, to the next generations. We denigrate half of our population. How great would this world be if we valued all people as they should be valued?

I hope #MeToo succeeds. It could bring about much needed change. But that would require meant to give up some of their power, and the perks that they have taken as their droigt du seigneur. At least as likely is that women will simply be shut out of internships and entry level jobs. Then they’ll be “unqualified” for higher level jobs. Harassment has been endemic not just in network news, but in corporations, business, education, classical music, popular music, environmentalism, politics and sports... what am I forgetting? I don’t hold my breath that a little self-awareness is going to fix everything for the next generation of young women.

I'm repeating and expanding on my comment I tweeted to the writer of this piece: In your breathless handwringing over the stress in the newsroom for the "thin, white blonde" brigades. You never managed to include the shameful, career ending dismissal of respected journalist Tamron Hall. Her show with solid ratings, was cancelled to shoehorn in the shadiness of Ms Kelly's "great white hope" poorly rated quasi-Fox like hour. The executive suite were the only ones surprised at the appalling racist musings of Kelly, when horrified, pearl clutching, they fired her for uttering as much to a perceived base they weren't reaching. Though there was no real tangible reason given for not enfolding Tamron back into the previous hours fold, the subtext was the chancred, whorish hand of Matt Lauer once again at work. You managed to briefly write about slights of women of color not being included, while NOT covering the story of a similar situation to a woman of color. Instead, you insert a story referencing an ACTRESS portraying a journalist when the REAL story of Ms Hall's dismissal was never mentioned. Irony deficient much? There's a pill for that, consider my comment as your first dose.

And you don't think Pretty Woman is creepy and a really bad example for our young women????

Thank you for reminding us just how odious Megyn & Gretchen's antics were on-air. Hope they have gained some empathy from it all.

if apple wanted their own the larry sanders show, they could've turned their expensive fire onto their own king's landing of misogyny and racism (exhibit a at least), l. ellison's oracle but they choose to pull their punches, at least at "present".

Sexual harassment stunts the careers of even those women who aren't harassed. I always wore buttoned-up clothes and kept myself at arms-length from male co-workers and superiors precisely because I wanted to avoid anything even approaching a sexual harassment situation. I did it instinctively at first, more consciously later. This cost me politically -- in terms of finding mentorships in a male-dominated field, in forming friendships at work, in being dismissed as a "frump," and even in feeling I could feel at home and be myself in the workplace. I've always had my guard up on a subliminal level, on a day-to-day basis. It erodes energy and focus that could otherwise be devoted 100% to getting the job done. And, yes, the same kinds of concerns cause me to make online comments under male or gender-neutral names.

I am somewhat relieved that fate gave me only sons. If I'd had a daughter, it would have broken my heart to see how, through no fault of her own, she would always have it tougher than her brothers and have to endure harassment of a kind they would likely never experience. We have to call out, socially ostracize and legally punish this type of behavior to make life fairer for women in general and better for society overall.

this is sad but such inside baseball. There are a couple of older ladies on cable who are experts in their field and when they come on I have said for years "they must be smartest women in their field" not knowing about all these issues. I have worked 40 years in banking, finance, manufacturing, telecom and very tuned in and except for a couple of mutual infidelities that resulted in divorce/marriage I saw nothing but not prevalent in non media.

In college (early 1990s), as a broadcasting major, I got an internship with a local news show in a very large market. I am female; there was also a male intern. I got sexually harassed by the well-known anchor and left the internship. The male intern is now on CNN. Low level harassment derails the lives of women.