Matt Lauer in Time: Tougher On Tom Cruise Than On 'Smeared' Hillary

Time magazine devoted its "Ten Questions" interview this week to NBC Today co-host Matt Lauer. Time’s Jeanne McDowell had a light touch, asking about Meredith, and Katie, and squabbling with Tom Cruise. The interview quickly draws the reader to this comparison: Lauer was tougher on Tom Cruise than he was with Hillary Clinton in the famous "vast right-wing conspiracy" interview of 1998, despite the great difference in importance between a president lying in court and an actor/Scientologist fighting with Brooke Shields over anti-depressant pills. It unfolded like this:

What do you consider your best interview?

Hillary Clinton because of the convergence of events that were happening at the time. It was a few days after the Monica Lewinsky story broke. I fully expected Mrs. Clinton to cancel. She was a scorned woman whose husband had just been exposed for cheating. [The exchange] went extraordinarily well and resulted in the often quoted "vast right-wing conspiracy" interview. But it required as deft a touch as I ever have had to use. 

Speaking of deft touches, were you trying to set off Cruise?

It just happened. Once it happened, I had a lot of choices to make. The street fighter in me wants to lash out. But the host in me said this is extraordinary television and don't let it end. I knew this would be great TV...

So where was the street fighter in 1998? Tougher questions for Hillary would have been great TV, too. Obviously, Lauer needed a "deft touch" because he was probably thinking of his co-workers (liberal, feminist, Hillary-lovers) at the time. Not to mention that it would be much easier in his milieu to attack Tom Cruise when liberal, feminist Hillary-lovers would have lined up with sister Brooke Shields and her sympathetic struggle with post-partum depression over Cruise's science-fiction religion.

But it's important to note that Hillary was NOT presenting herself as a "scorned woman" whose husband was "exposed for cheating." She came to the set with the tactic of deny, deny, deny anything unethical had occurred, that there was anything in reality that would make her scorned or her husband exposed. The only misbehavior came from the obsessions of those pathological conservatives. How does Lauer judge it went "extraordinarily well"? Because it was memorable? Or because the Clintons eventually "won" the impeachment battle?

Lauer certainly didn't suggest to Hillary that day that she had been scorned, or her husband exposed. He asked vague questions trying to establish how well the Clintons knew Lewinsky, then went head-over-heels into Suckup Territory after Hillary denied, denied, denied: "So if what you have heard is something you can believe, and if what the president has told the nation is the whole truth and nothing but the truth, then you’d have to agree that this is the worst and most damaging smear of the 20th century?" Hillary demurred, "Well, I don’t know. There have been a lot of smears in the 20th century. But it’s a pretty bad one."

Perhaps encouraged by Lauer's softness, it was then that the VRWC line broke out. Lauer said James Carville – "Great American," Hillary interjected – said this was now a war between the White House and Ken Starr. Then the famous line was born: "This is the great story here for anybody willing to find it and write about it and explain it is this vast right-wing conspiracy that has been conspiring against my husband since the day he announced for president. A few journalists have kind of caught on to it and explained it. But it has not yet been fully revealed to the American public. And actually, you know, in a bizarre sort of way, this may do it."