In Katie Couric’s new “scorched earth” memoir Going There, the media empress promises to go there, by which she presumably means spilling some unapologetic tea on all the celebs and sleazy media folk she’s encountered over the course of her decades-long career. Where she goes however, is somewhere entirely more surprising: to the defense of disgraced former colleague Matt Lauer.
In the memoir, Couric reportedly recalls Lauer’s 2017 fall from grace following allegations of workplace sexual assault as “excruciatingly painful,” insisting that the former Today show co-host accused of pretty damning displays of sexual harassment — including having a button installed under his desk to lock his door à la Donald Trump’s rumored Oval Office Diet Coke button — is a “decent” man, one for whom she felt a great degree of empathy.
“I am crushed,” she recalls texting Lauer amid the fallout. “I love you and care about you deeply. I am here. Please let me know if you want to talk. There will be better days ahead.” Couric also recalls fretting that her friend was “sleepless, haggard, depressed, maybe worse” as a result of facing the consequences of his actions, and felt “heartless to abandon him, someone who’d been by my side, literally, for so many years.”
In Couric’s defense, I can only imagine it would indeed be very distressing to learn terrible things about a dear friend. I also think it is probably natural and human to feel some degree of sympathy for a friend going through a difficult period in front of the entire world, even if that friend wrought that difficult experience on himself. Still, publicly simping for a sex offender is never a good look, especially in a “scorched earth” memoir in which you let plenty of non-accused-sex-offenders have it.
Indeed, Lauer reportedly gets one of the most positive treatments in the book. Meanwhile, Couric comes after relatively innocuous figures including Prince Harry — who, frankly, does seem pretty annoying, but only in a try-hard, do-gooder kind of way — and even my fiancée, Martha Stewart, ex con and proud owner of not 16, but 21 peacocks, who deserves nothing but respect.
Anyway, Katie Couric is going there, and by there, she apparently means right to horny jail for simping over her friend, the alleged rapist. Personally, I will not be accompanying her, and will instead go back to simping over Martha Stewart, whom I believe is owed an apology.
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