Matt Lauer Asks for Sympathy at This Difficult Time as He's Ordered to Allow Access on His $9 Mil Estate
Daily Mail, New Zealand – Matt Lauer has found himself at the center of another controversy, this time on the other side of the world.
The former Today host purchased a long-term lease for Hunter Valley Station in February 2017, a 16,000-acre parcel that stretches from the mountains down to the shores of Lake Hawaea and Lake Wanaka on the country’s south island.
As part of the deal, Lauer was required to allow public access to a national park that surrounds his land and is only accessible via the gravel path that runs through his property.
Lauer, 60, has been allowing a minimal amount of people to pass through, but now some local organizations are asking for more access for those hunters and hikers looking to travel to Hawea Conservation Park.
The disgraced news host has responded by refusing, while his lawyer argues that the government should pay his client a six-figure sum if they are going to demand him to allow unrestricted access to the land. …
Lauer, in a rare interview, spoke with Radio New Zealand on Tuesday and said that the uproar over access was essentially nonsense.
‘This easement that’s been proposed is being proposed to solve a problem that does not exist, and that’s the misinformation that’s out there and it’s out there on purpose,’ said Lauer. … ‘I believe the groups that are behind this are in some ways unfortunately taking advantage of some difficult times I’ve been through over the past six months and I think they see me as an easy mark.’
You want to know about my politics in a nutshell? To me, it all comes down to this: As a general rule, I’m for individuals and against government. To me, the individual is the ultimate minority, deserving of all the protection that can be reasonably afforded. That’s why the greatest document ever written by the hand of man is the Bill of Rights; it puts limits on otherwise limitless power. It levels the playing field between a citizen and the government that is supposed to serve him/her.
And in that vein, I want to take Matt Lauer’s side. I really do. So here I go. Arrrggghhh … Gasp … Unnnnhhh … Deep breath … Grrrrr … Annnd, that’s it. I got nothing. And I better stop now before I blow out an O-ring.
Here’s the thing. While in principle, I would agree with a landowner being pushed around and told what he can and cannot do on the property he paid good money for, I’m a just a human being. And not a very compassionate one at that. I have a very limited reservoir of sympathy, so I try to ration it the best I can. So if, say, a local zoning board told some middle class homeowner he has to let people cut through his yard, I’ll stand by him all day. If some lady living on her husband’s pension is told by her mortgage company she has to buy flood insurance when her property has never had a water problem, I’ve got her six. But try as I might, I can’t work up a sympathy boner for a serial workplace sexual deviant who has to let hikers use a path on his $9 million fuckpad on conservation land. Especially Matt Lauer. From a news report I blogged last year:
As the co-host of NBC’s “Today,” Matt Lauer once gave a colleague a sex toy as a present. It included an explicit note about how he wanted to use it on her, which left her mortified.
On another day, he summoned a different female employee to his office, and then dropped his pants, showing her his penis. After the employee declined to do anything, visibly shaken, he reprimanded her for not engaging in a sexual act. …
His office was in a secluded space, and he had a button under his desk that allowed him to lock his door from the inside without getting up. This afforded him the assurance of privacy. It allowed him to welcome female employees and initiate inappropriate contact while knowing nobody could walk in on him, according to two women who were sexually harassed by Lauer.
And let us not forget this bit of blatantly sanctimonious hypocrisy by him:
Quote: “Think about those five women and what they did. They came forward and filed complaints against the biggest star at the network they worked at. Think about how intimidating that must have been. How nerve-wracking that must have been. Doesn’t that tell you how strongly they felt about the way they were treated by you? …
“Have you done some soul searching? Have you done some self-reflection? And have you looked at the way you treated women that you think about differently now than you did at the time?”
So yeah, I’m somehow just not feeling it. Reading Matt Lauer complain about getting fucked over by the government when he himself has never had to face justice for molesting Today Show employees behind the safety of his Rape Door to the point they sometimes passed out just doesn’t bring out the milk of human kindness in me. Because of these “difficult times I’ve been through” that New Zealand is “taking advantage of,” he wants us to play him a violin. But I’m playing the slide whistle instead. Here’s hoping those hikers and hunters just go about their business instead locking him in a room and forcibly raping him. But it would be more karma than him just getting to live in paradise between two lakes and acting like an asshole.