May 4, 2013
On Thursday night, Matt Lauer was a guest on the "Late Night Show" with Jay Leno -- and after watching Lauer speak about what he had to go through, and seeing how emotional he was at the last part of the interview when he thanked Leno for standing by him and Lauer getting a bit choked up, I changed my view on him.
If I'm wrong, the hell with it, but I'm guessing this whole situation Lauer had to go through is about the Ann Curry firing.
I never hated, or never really cared about Lauer being accused for the reason of Curry's departure from the "Today Show". I just thought it was wrong, useless and senseless. I thought Curry was doing well and had a lot of things going for her; she's attractive, massively intelligent, stylish -- everything a female journalist would want to have. So I didn't get why was the reason to get her off the air. The show couldn't be doing that poorly, that made Curry the culprit.
Though, Lauer and the other NBC executives felt that Curry was getting up and age. Which I didn't see, and did know she was 55-years of age, because she looks so damn good.
But Curry was hurt by it; which is 100% understandable; also she felt helpless and non-supportive from her co-workers -- that's very hard to deal with. And with all that, you had a lot of people against Lauer.
Lauer went through -- what it seems -- a tough period with the press and the fans who watch Today, who bashed him over this decision. And he felt the pain. You can tell he was a broken guy. And so was Curry. But I think Lauer understands what he did, and he's learned from it. You have to look at it as a business decision. He had to do what was right for the business. Was it handle wrongly? Yes, seems like it. But he's not Adolf Hitler. It was about business.
And it's not like Curry is living in a cardboard box in an ally. NBC gave her $10 million to vanish. I think anyone would like to get fired and get paid $10 million.
What Lauer got for what he did, is never fair on anyone. No one in this world should be mistreated for something that didn't cause heavy harm on someone, or on someone's family. It was about business. Lauer's got a family to come home to -- he's got to be the best father and the best wife when gets home from work. Shouldn't be able to deal with this anymore.
I did make a joke about Lauer being overprotective of Rihanna when he had an interview with Chris Brown a couple weeks ago on this site, and made a reference saying: Rihanna's image will be more relevant than Curry's. It was a joke. I didn't mean it seriously. Though at the time, I didn't know Lauer was going through that much pain. And I admire him for being strong for his image and his family. If this is his last year on Today, I hope he ends his tenure as the great NBC journalist that he is.
