What’s it like to be a news anchor who manages to accrue a significant portion of power in your industry but coerces sex and sexual attention from less powerful female colleagues? You’re still the guy on top, still getting the sexual attention. But doesn’t every get confirm that you’re a pathetic and loathsome sad sack?

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Lauer looked shrunken in the photos outside his home. Perhaps the first image of him since he was exposed as a deviant predator who threw tantrums when women resisted his lewd entreaties is more aligned with his self-image than the image Today marketed to viewers for more than 20 years.

In other words, Lauer suddenly seems not a powerful and sexually dominant man, but a threatened and puny man-child who forces compliance from women to compensate for what he lacks.