A new report has surfaced that makes the compelling case that everyone at NBC, including top execs, knew full well that Matt Lauer was a sexual deviant preying on women.
The new report brings to light a 2008 private Roast of Matt Lauer, with mostly NBC employees and top brass and top comedians in attendance.
So what’s so comdemnig about that?
Just the fact that nearly every joke focused on Lauer being a perverted sexual deviant. Funny how nearly every roaster picked up on the same theme huh?
Take a look, from PageSix:
Warning: This article includes graphic language and content.
Embattled NBC executives have been falling over themselves to insist they had no idea about Matt Lauer’s pervy past. But if anyone doubts that New York’s media elite was aware of Lauer’s reputation, they should look no further than a top-secret “roast” of Lauer that took place in October 2008.
The notorious event — now legendary in New York media circles — pushed the outer limits of sexist, racist, homophobic and obscene jokes — and left little doubt that Lauer’s colleagues knew NBC’s biggest star had a troubled marriage and a wandering eye.
Last week, NBC’s own Joe Scarborough, who attended the roast but said he left early, feeling uncomfortable, brought it up on “Morning Joe.” Lauer’s peccadillos, he said, were not just known about. At the roast, they were celebrated.
“The whole theme was that he does the show and then he has sex with people, with employees,” Scarborough said. “So was this whispered behind closed doors? No. It was shouted from the mountaintops and everybody laughed about it.”
The 2008 Friars Club roast took place at the New York Hilton and was attended by everyone from future President Donald Trump to TV legend Norman Lear to a constellation of New York’s media elite including Brian Williams, Diane Sawyer, Nancy O’Dell and Howard Stern. Also on hand were numerous top executives from across the business and almost everyone who was anyone at NBC News. Fox News has confirmed many details of the roast with a media executive who attended, and has also drawn on the one contemporaneous account of the roast, which appeared in the Village Voice.
Speaker Martha Stewart joked, “I hear NBC executives call Matt the ‘Cock of the Rock,’” according to the Voice.
Another of the roast’s speakers was current CNN Worldwide president Jeff Zucker — then the chairman of NBC Universal — who last week adamantly denied he had any idea about Lauer’s in-office sexcapades.
“It’s just good to see Matt up here and not under my desk,” Zucker said from the podium. “I don’t want to say Matt is a germophobe, but he’s the only guy I know who uses Purell both before and after he masturbates.”
Zucker also made a pointed allusion to Lauer’s marital problems.
“Matt was having some trouble at home with the wife,” he said. “He was sleeping on Bryant Gumbel’s couch.” Lauer and Gumbel, a former “Today” host who is black, are known to be close friends. “What’s more boring than that?” Zucker joked. “Two white men watching golf.”
“Today” co-host Al Roker was the “roastmaster” and Tom Cruise (who had famously feuded with Lauer on air over Scientology) made peace with a surprise appearance as a guest roaster. But while Cruise kept it relatively PG-13, once he finished, jokes focused on Lauer’s in-office sexcapades.
Then “Today” co-host Meredith Vieira was especially crude, making jokes about Lauer and Roker partaking in anal sex during the Turin Olympics, with Roker as the receiving partner. Former “Today” star Katie Couric went next, reading a David Letterman-style Top 10 list of facts about Lauer. Among the digs: “No. 10 — According to his wife, he’s not really an early riser, if you know what I mean.”
But a shot at Lauer’s in-office relationship with Curry, who was in the room, got the biggest laugh of Couric’s routine.
“No. 2 — He loves to eat Curry,” she said as Curry (sitting in the audience) went pale and the crowd roared with laughter. “What? Indian food! What’s wrong with you people?”
Comic Bob Saget eventually took the stage to offer Lauer some marriage advice: “Do what I’m doing, Matt. Come into the Dark Side. My next wife hasn’t even been born yet.”
Another comedian — one attendee believes it was comedian Jeff Ross — made racist jokes about Lauer using a naked Roker on all fours as his coffee table.
Comedian Gilbert Gottfried was so obscene that Fox News can’t even publish a highly expurgated version of his material, but part of his racist routine — filled with Asian sex jokes about Ann Curry — included detailed remarks about Curry’s genitals.
But the most cringeworthy comments, in hindsight, were made by Lauer himself, who spoke at the end of the roast. The “Today” star alluded to sex with two former colleagues, Couric and Curry.
“Let me just say that I saw that colon a lot before the rest of you saw it,” Lauer said in an anal sex joke about Couric (who famously underwent a colonoscopy on air).
But the twice-married Lauer wasn’t finished joking about sleeping with female contemporaries.
“What’s with all the small-d— jokes? It was fun to look over and see Ann Curry laughing … like she doesn’t know how big my d— really is,” Lauer said, wrapping up an event that the Village Voice called “three hours of d— jokes.”
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