I’m not surprised at all. Like Louis CK his work (not least Sheila the Christian Jungle Girl and other not-landing 50s-style skits) over the decades has had that whiff of bleach from the grave of male wanna-make-it-so… when it comes to women. He shared with Charlie Rose the title of priggish minder of public broadcasting through the 80s and 90s.
Prairie Home Companion was never cool, but my Dad liked it. Stopped listening when I left home. I could never understand why it kept going through the 90s. It was really not good, apart from performances-by-performers-not-Keillor.
Also pretty sure NPR did not pull all its old episodes of Prairie Home Companion off the air forever because of some lady saying he touched her back.
Now, what do we think about the fact that Matt Lauer had a button on his desk to lock the door to his office automatically? Like, when the Today Show had that installed, what did they think the use case for that was?
Probably the Today Show staff was getting suspicious about the time they installed the automatic door locking button in his desk…but they said nothing and approved installation and hired the contractor to do the work never the less.
Who knows, maybe he sold them on the idea that, as a journalist, on occasion he might have to have the occasional off-camera interview in his office, or on his phone, and might need to secure the room quickly to avoid even accidental eavesdropping by passersby. Either to make the interviewee more comfortable, or just to protect the conversation’s privacy. I could swear I recently saw somebody’s office with a remote-controlled office door that was ostensibly used for that purpose. (Normally kept open to facilitate back-and-forth with the executive assistant, sometimes it needed to be closed for conversational privacy.)
Hell, maybe they even believed him. Sometimes beds are used for snoozin’, and sometimes penises are used for whizzin’. It’s conceivable that eight out of every ten times he remote-locked the door, it was for a completely mundane and boring reason. Nevertheless, it certainly could be used for nefarious purposes, and there’s no reason to assume those reasons weren’t paramount in his mind, even if the production company was oblivious to it.
At the school where I grew up, 1 popular teacher (who I’d known since I was 2) hit on me. 1, the choir master, was molesting a friend of mine, his pianist. Another I learned after I graduated was physically abusing his adopted children - one who ended up dead very young of a drug overdose.
If he really had a need to lock the door for professional reasons, he could just get up and lock it. The only reason to have a button that does it automatically is to trap someone in the office.
Weeeeelllll… or to have a toy. In my experience people on power trips do like their toys, and I’m sure having a button to push instead of having to get up and lock the damn door like a normal mortal would have appealed.
Queen Victoria and Prince Albert used to have a button by the bed so they could lock their kids out without getting out of bed and spoiling the mood.
It’s true. Buddy of mine who’s a bigshot Executive Producer has a remote-controlled office door. He once used it on me when I was gabbing a little too loudly with his executive assistant in the outer office while he was trying to write. He’s also successful enough to be able to afford a big-ass plasma TV that rises magically from the foot of his bed. (He’s also, in his own words, “gayer than Christmastime at Bloomingdale’s,” for whatever that’s worth.)
Some people like to spend their money on goofy not-all-that-necessary shit.
It’s not a far remove away from a garage door opener. Plenty of people prefer to use those rather than get out of the car and haul the damn thing open by hand, even though most garage doors older than ten years or so can open relatively easily by hand, and have handles for that very purpose.
Sometimes people’s offices are too big. Poor folks.
