To be fair to Sully it's hardly like he was telling Lauer about his sex swing and collection of dildos. In the interview with the pilot and his wife Laurie for NBC's People of the Year Special Lauer asked if his new-found celebrity had helped or hurt their relationship. Laurie, out of nowhere, replied:

He doesn't know I'm gonna say this, but I had joked the other day that ... the hero sex really helps a 20-year-old marriage

To which Sully, that sly old dog, added:

Rock star sex

Let's hope he was exaggerating somewhat. Some rock star sex is more dangerous than his river exploits.

As soon as the New York Times broke the news of New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer's habit of patronizing high-end call girls on the afternoon of March 10, 2008, his communications director Christine Anderson pretty much knew she was out of a gig. But along with managing the media frenzy surrounding Spitzer, she also had a new boss, Gov. David Paterson, who almost immediately stirred up his own press storm by disclosing past affairs and drug use.

But before all that happened, Anderson was getting buried with requests for Spitzer. Among the first out of the gate was Matthew Zimmerman, Matt Lauer's booker at the Today show. He didn't land the exclusive Spitzer interview everyone was clamoring for—that went to CNN's Fareed Zakaria a year later—but in the course of pursuing the get, Zimmerman casually mentioned to Anderson that he'd be more than happy to help her find work at NBC News. He also turned up his nose at a shot at Paterson just hours before news broke of Paterson's past infidelities, at which point Zimmerman immediately did a 180 and begged for an interview with Paterson. Because governors are boring unless they're fucking people they shouldn't be fucking.

Read on to see how the exchange unfolded in e-mails, which we obtained by filing a public records for correspondence between the press and Spitzer's communications office during the crisis.

This is Zimmerman's first e-mail seeking the interview that every news producer wanted, just a few hours after the Spitzer story broke. It has the standard expression of sympathy common to television bookers ("I'm sorry to be reaching out to you in such circumstances") but reminds Anderson that he's not your run of the mill news lackey: "I am Matt Lauer's producer at NBC." Anderson politely brushed him off with a terse "will get back to you as soon as I can," which considering the circumstances could be a way of saying don't hold your breath.

Two days later, Zimmerman and Lauer decided to up their efforts and go the direct route. Lauer had written "a personal note" to Spitzer, and Zimmerman wanted to know if he should it "walk it over" to Anderson's office or leave it with his Spitzer's doorman. Anderson says, "Feel free."

Five days later, on March 17, Spitzer's resignation became effective and Paterson was elevated from lieutenant governor to become the first African American governor of New York. Zimmerman circled back to thank Anderson for "all her help" during the crisis of the previous week, and to let her know that he's thinking about her. Anderson wrote back to say she heard Today was interested in talking to the first African American governor of New York, and she seemed to be willing to entertain the idea. How about it? At this point, though, Paterson was, in national news terms, the previously unknown politician who had replaced the celebrity governor who had been accused of sleeping with a hooker. Zimmerman's response to the offer is underwhelming and puzzling: "Believe it or not, I think it might have been related to the weather for Gov. Paterson... I'll check with Missy Dunlop who would be handling that request." The weather?

We're not sure what Zimmerman's "weather" comment referred to, but it could have been to this request of March 15 from another producer for Paterson to appear on the weekend edition of Today to talk to Lester Holt about the crane collapse that had killed seven people in Manhattan that day. Weather, cranes—both involve things falling from the sky, right? In any event, Zimmerman didn't exactly jump at the chance to book Paterson for Lauer, and Dunlop's request was for Weekend Today, which has a different staff. The Spitzer story had sex, scandal—the things people want to see Matt Lauer talking about at 7 o'clock in the morning. Paterson was kind of boring.

And Today has shown that it can be picky about the governors it books. We know they spurned an interview with some another lame boring governor who would become newsworthy because of scandal just a few hours later. Back in December 2008, Today had booked Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich on what turned out to be the morning of his arrest by FBI agents. But they bumped him at the last minute in order to make room for a segment flogging the announcement of Jay Leno's 10 p.m. show.

But back to the conversation Anderson and Zimmerman were having on March 17. Once Anderson told Zimmerman that she wouldn't be sticking around the governor's office, Zimmerman—who seemed to be aware that Anderson once worked as a producer for Good Morning America—thoughtfully offered to help her secure a new job: "If you ever want to get back into tv (and not ABC!) let me know and i can see about openings here."

Gosh, that was nice of him, wasn't it? Then, in the very next sentence after he offered to help her get a job, he got back to business, letting Anderson know that he'd been in touch with a flack at Sard Verbinnen & Co., the PR shop that Spitzer's law firm hired to handle media requests, and expressing doubt about his chances. But Anderson promised to keep Zimmerman "apraised" of Spitzer's thinking, and thanked him for the "kind offer."

Was it a generous and human thing to do for Zimmerman to offer to keep his ears open on the job front? Yes, it was. Was he also trying to get Anderson to help him secure access to Spitzer at the same time? Yes, he was. Both things are true, and the casualness with which he made the offer speaks volumes about the relationships between flacks and—oh, who are we kidding? It's Today.

Anderson's quip about how dealing with a hooker disclosure is nothing compared to working for Shelley Ross, the legendarily horrible producer who was her boss at GMA, gave them a chance to gossip together. Zimmerman joked about how awesome it must be for Spitzer that former New Jersey Gov. Jim McGreevey's one-time aide recently claimed that he'd engaged in threeways with McGreevey and his wife. There would be more news to take the pressure off Spitzer in just a few hours....

...when the Daily News story detailing Paterson's past marital troubles hit the web that night. All of a sudden, Zimmerman was much more keen on having Matt Lauer talk to the first African American governor of New York on the Today show, because he had screwed state employees in the past. Anderson hadn't even seen the story yet, so Zimmerman sent it to her.

Anderson promptly forwarded it along to political consultants Ryan Toohey and Jeff Pollock to brainstorm how to spin it. Hilarity ensues: "Unreal." "Ideas?"

Neither Spitzer nor Paterson ended up appearing on Today during the height of the scandal, and Anderson wound up getting a job as vice president of communications at the Blackstone Group, a private equity firm. But eventually Today got their man: Spitzer sat down with Lauer this past April as part of his public image rehab campaign and told the nation that there were "no excuses" for his behavior.

Zimmerman didn't respond to requests for comment, and Anderson declined to comment.

We reported a little over a month ago that the Today show had booked Blagojevich to appear on the morning he happened to be arrested by the FBI, but bumped the interview so they could flack for Jay Leno's new show. We found that out through a Freedom of Information Act request to the state of Illinois asking for e-mails from representatives of the media to Lucio Guerrero, Blagojevich's press secretary (we got the idea from South Carolina's The State, which did the same thing—to comic effect—after Mark Sanford's Argentinian Rhapsody).

The first raft of e-mails we got were from December 8, the day before Blagojevich got popped, and it included one from Today producer Lexi Dauber apologetically canceling a scheduled remote Q-and-A with Matt Lauer to make room for Leno news. We just got another batch covering the 48 hours after the arrest, and guess what? Dauber and her fellow Today producer Stephanie Siegel all of a sudden really wanted to talk to Blagojevich!

The traditional route for a reporter desperately trying to convince someone to submit to an interview when it's obviously not in their interest to do so is to drop all pretense of toughness and objectivity and lie to them: We will be your friend! Not like all those other mean reporters. While Dauber and Seigel's e-mails to Guerrero are understandably sympathetic, an internal write-up of a phone call with Siegel outlining the terms of her interview request shows what they were really willing to give up. Matt Lauer or Meredith Vieira would call Blagojevich before the interview to "go over the line of questions," and Seigel stressed that "they are sensitive."

CBS's Early Show also went the simpering route, telling Guerrero that there is "far too much hearsay going around" and offering Blagojevich an opportunity to "set the record straight" and "clear his own name." They were even willing to "rent a private space to keep him away from the rest of the media's view." We all know how annoying prying reporters can be.

ABC News' Diane Sawyer, on the other hand, didn't try to buddy up to Blago. To her credit, Sawyer's producer offered a fairly straightforward pitch that managed to avoid over-the-top sycophancy.

Larry King's producer relied on the rogue's gallery that has traipsed through King's studio in the past, positioning the host as the go-to guy for crooks, liars, and other humiliated figures—go with us and you can be in the fine company of Jeffrey Skilling, Gary Condit, and Bob Packwood!

King's CNN colleague Anderson Cooper wasn't even trying: His producers sent in a perfunctory, We-asked-Governor-Blagojevich-to-come-on-the-show requests that they knew weren't going to open any doors.

Likewise the producer for CNN's Campbell Brown dashed off an email that would allow her to dutifully report that a request was in.

Sometimes brevity is your best bet when dealing with a harried flack who's clearly deluged with requests. That's what Andy Shaw, a political reporter for Chicago's local ABC station, decided to go with.

That kind of approach is important when you know your target is dealing with all manner of zany proposals. Like a request for comment from "a representative for Dan Ackroyd [sic] and Jim Belushi" on their call for Blagojevich's resignation. When a press aide forwarded that message to the governor's press assistant, she responded, "What? I want you to explain."

(For the record, it looks like that was a hoax call—we can't find any evidence that one-half of the Blues Brothers and the talentless brother of the other, dead, half ever made such a demand.)

The most pathetic request comes from Pat Curry, the news assignment editor for WGN, a local Chicago station. He wasn't even asking for an interview with Blagojevich—he wanted Guerrero himself to come on, and delivered a masterwork of flattery and faux sympathy. "I wouldn't expect you to be able to comment on a federal investigation, and could easily brush that off," Curry wrote, signing off with, "Humbly, Pat Curry."

A producer for a local Chicago talk radio show hosted by husband-and-wife pair Don and Roma Wade wins the award for discretion, declining to put in writing the "incredible offer" he had for Guerrero.

We'll never know what that offer was, but guess who got the first post-arrest interview with disgraced Gov. Rod Blagojevich?

You can read the whole batch here. Interestingly, not one e-mail from Fox News turned up. It could be that they relied solely on the phone, or that their e-mails somehow got missed by our FOIA requests. Or maybe they figured it wasn't worth trying.

It seems crazy now, but there was a moment when Blagojevich was actually sought after by news organizations, and not the other way around. But according to e-mails obtained by Gawker, Today dumped him because of an "NBC related" story that the show "need[ed] to cover—Leno getting his own show at 10 p.m."

Back in early December, Blagojevich was making a name for himself both as a crusader for the victims of the recession and as an obviously corrupt thug who was about to be arrested—the Chicago Tribune reported on December 5 that the feds were listening in on his phone calls. Sounds like a good guy to interview, for news and such! So on December 8, 2008—the day that Blagojevich appeared at a sit-in held by laid-off workers at an Illinois window factory and announced, "I don't care whether you tape me privately or publicly, I can tell you that whatever I say is always lawful"—Today Show producer Lexi Dauber set up an exclusive interview with Blagojevich for Matt Lauer. Here's the e-mail exchange between Dauber and Blagojevich's press secretary Lucio Guerrero confirming the interview for the morning of December 9 (click on the image for a larger version):

Unfortunately, "news" intervened. By 8:30 on the evening before Matt Lauer was set to interview a sitting governor who was being wiretapped by the federal government, Dauber e-mailed Guerrero with her regrets, citing the fact that the show had to make room for a segment about the announcement of Leno's new show at 10 p.m.:

It was obvious to anyone who was watching MSNBC and NBC on the day of the Leno announcement that the company's news properties were ordered to cover the story like a missing white girl. But it's nice to have the directive in handy e-mail format, and to know just what sorts of stories NBC News is willing to shitcan to make way for in-house press releases. Indeed, on the morning of December 9, Matt Lauer sat down with the New York Times' Bill Carter to talk about Leno and how "you're going to get to laugh along with him a little earlier in the evening."

Hmmm, what else happened on the morning of December 9? Oh—Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich was arrested by FBI agents at his home in Chicago. So, yes, in NBC's defense, the interview almost certainly would never have happened anyway. But according to the e-mails—which Gawker obtained from Illinois under the state's Freedom of Information Act, because we really thought the State was onto something—Blagojevich was scheduled to show up at NBC News' Chicago studio for a remote at 5:45 a.m. He was arrested at his home at 6:15 a.m., after an FBI agent woke him with a phone call to let him know they were outside. So it's possible that if Today hadn't bumped him for Leno, he might have left his house before the feds got there. Or maybe they were sitting on his house 24 hours a day and would have just popped him as he was leaving. Or maybe they would have tailed him to the studio and arrested him live on the air! We'll never know, because NBC News is Jeff Zucker's personal PR shop and makes a mockery of the the "values" that Brian Williams and his colleagues claim, preposterously, to stand for.

After being contacted via e-mail for comment for this story, an NBC News spokeswoman asked us not to publish it until she could talk to us about it on the phone. So we called her, and she refused to comment for the record.

Also, here's what Guerrero e-mailed back to Dauber after she cancelled the interview, about 10 hours before his boss was arrested:

So for the next hour or so he continued to rib her about being selfish and self-involved, giving her weather updates for the places where her other kids live (Stanford and Northwestern, good job Mer!). At one point an exasperated Meredith just looked over at him and said "I hate you." Yeesh.

Was it all theatrics? Were they just making fun coworker morning blather jokes? Or does the awkwardness and the tenseness hint at a rift between the two sunshiny morning folks? We hope it's the latter because maybe that means the problem will grow and swell and eventually burst, raining a parade of embarrassment and discomfort on everyone, most of all poor caught-in-the-middle, good-God-I've-been-doing-this-a-long-time Matt Lauer.

You two don't play nice now, y'hear?

Prejean says she was fired because she's an opposite-marriager, and that her beauty pageant handler Keith Lewis undermined her by...liking gay marriage? We can't figure it out. She doesn't blame Donald Trump, can't explain why he would fire her now because she doesn't like gay people when he publicly supported her immediately after she said she didn't like gay people, and says that before all this started Lewis never asked her to make any appearances and she used to call people and say, "Hi, I'm Miss California—would you like me to attend your event?" No. No we would not.

There is an implication of nudiness in the trailer, but it seems to be only suggested or deftly covered-up. Lauer even cops to the fact that there's an obscuring washcloth involved. (This IMDB thread seems to confirm it's only partial.)

So why is Matt all tittery? Either he's just having an early morning chuckle because it's a rainy Tuesday and why the hell not, or Matt Lauer is very easily aroused. The mere suggestion of Bullock bits gets him red-faced and awkward. Has a longstanding celeb crush just been revealed?

Not that any public statement this woman makes on her disastrous senate "run" can be believed, but on Today today the Princess of Camelot said "nonsense" to charges that Rose and whatever the others ones are named push her around.

"Anybody who knows my children and knows me knows that that is absolute nonsense," said Ms. Kennedy, who was appearing to promote this year's winners of the Profile in Courage Award, founded to honor her father, former President John F. Kennedy.

"All in all, it was a great experience for me," Ms. Kennedy added. "I know you may find that hard to believe, but I met a lot of interesting people, I saw, you know, how much there is to do."

And when asked what had driven her to withdraw abruptly in January, Ms. Kennedy deflected the question.

"That was the right decision," Ms. Kennedy said, adding, "When you make the right decision, it doesn't really matter what anyone else thinks."

And when faced with a question on David Paterson, the guy who embarrassed the nation by jerking around a woman who thought she was entitled to be appointed to a Senate seat for no reason in particular, she was all annoyed! "As I said, I've moved on, I'm looking on to, you know, what I can to, and hopefully I will be able to be, you know, courageous in my future services," she said. And then she bit Matt Lauer's face off and the world rejoiced. Except she was appearing via remote so that didn't actually happen.

Anyway, breaking, Paterson and the press are still the actual real-life reasons Caroline gave up the Senate thing.

The problem is that Elizabeth has long had, quietly, a shitty reputation as a complete horror to work with or for. And frankly no one (where "no one" means "no one in the DC establishment, especially the women of the DC establishment") ever much liked her. Which is sort of why Maureen Dowd wrote that bizarre column on how Elizabeth Edwards is a bitch for promoting her book so much. The important code words in that column are "tough, smart women"—which means evil frigid bitches married to charming rakish men—and "Saint Elizabeth," which means "uppity self-important drama queen." It is a remarkably catty, terrible column, about a woman whose crime was marrying and therefore castrating a self-important womanizing politician who basically represents Maureen's ideal, except that he's a bit fruity.

And then Sally Quinn wrote a column that was almost worse—do you see what we mean, about Elizabeth's reputation?

So today Elizabeth submitted herself to the brain-damaged banality junkies of morning television, with a trip to Today. She has a book out! About cancer but also mostly about how John Edwards is a complete dick! And this woman could die basically any day now (or she could live another couple years) and here she is shilling a book on survival because her loser husband is so reviled and someone's gotta take care of the kids.

And the entire thing, top to bottom, is embarrassing and depressing. Elizabeth is forced to tell slick idiot Matt Lauer that she loves her miserable cheating husband, because last time she was on TV she accidentally sounded too honest about the bargaining involved with staying with a narcissistic dick, and she's selling a crappy book about "resilience," which just means "justifying your biological urge to keep going despite the fact that everything sucks," though she is rich and she does live in a fancy house, so it definitely could be worse.

The forced cheerfulness already makes every morning show host seem mentally ill, but the second they switch to Diane Sawyer "serious interviewer" mode all vestiges of humanity and dignity leak out through their wingtips.

We know Bristol, an adult, is holding herself out there as the poster child for... something about pregnancy being bad, we guess, but still—no one deserves to have Chris Cuomo ask you where your baby came from on television.

Biden told Matt Lauer that he has advised his family members not to travel on airplanes, cars, subways, or go to any "confined" spaces, including schools. That sentiment, which is rather at odds with Barack Obama's measured advice last night that everybody wash their hands and cover their mouth when they cough, has provoked a shitstorm. It's almost as though Biden has become such a connoisseur of gaffes that he couldn't resist the opportunity to commit a formally exquisite, potentially panic-inducing one when the opportunity presented itself.

Biden's comments were in response to a question from Lauer about why we haven't closed the border with Mexico. A normal person in the vice president's situation would have said something along the lines of: "Well, because things aren't that bad yet, and our scientists are telling us that it wouldn't help." Biden went the other way: Close the border with Mexico? You're so naive. We're way past that, man. Don't you see? Closing the border with Mexico won't stop the scythe of death that is sweeping across this nation—it's too late. It's too late!

Instead of closing the border, Biden recommends living out a contemporary version of The Decameron: Get out to the country and wait out the plague. "If you're out in the middle of a field and someone sneezes, that's one thing. If you're in a closed aircraft, or closed container, or closed car, or closed classroom, it's another thing."

Within hours of the Today Show appearance, Biden's office released a statement asserting, falsely, that his advice was merely what the president had been saying all along: "That [Americans] should avoid unnecessary air travel to and from Mexico. If they are sick, they should avoid airplanes and other confined public spaces, such as subways."

The beauty of Biden's penchant for saying unbelievably stupid things is that the more he does it, the less seriously people take him, and the more he can relax and just be the crazy uncle in the White House. This episode will likely not cause too much lasting harm, simply because the fact that Biden is a serial exaggerator is already so widely understood. After his bone-chilling announcement, Biden laughed it up a little with Lauer about the fact that he didn't make People magazine's list of Barack's Beauties. So it's pretty clear that he's not to be taken seriously. Which seems fine by him.

A year's past since then-New York governor Eliot Spitzer got caught in a DC hotel tryst with a young prostitute. He resigned in disgrace and laid low. But now, hey, no one remembers all that nonsense, right?

So today Eliot went on The Today Show for his final, official public shaming at the hands of Matt Lauer. Lauer is gentle and polite, of course, but because the only thing Matt Lauer knows about is gauzy emotionality (and probably geography) the interview never really actually got around to the finer points of economic policy, which is what Spitzer was technically coming forward to talk about. But, you know, he got on the TV!

'Cause Spitzer is a narcissist, of course, which is why he is pretty sure we need his advice, even when his advice generally doesn't vary from the advice of Simon Johnson or Paul Krugman.

But hey we learned about how he has wonderful daughters and a wife who has forgiven him, so, there you go. Any day now he'll be an MSNBC fixture on economic issues, right? That is the point of this: he doesn't want public office, he wants to just be recognized for how bright and tough he is.

Spitzer can also feel vindicated now that Shelly Silver and the MTA have helped give his accidental successor even worse approval ratings than the guy who slept with hookers.

Everyone from Brian Williams to the unfrozen caveman Smuckers salesman Willard Scott made jokes about Lauer, who swerved to avoid a deer while pedaling in Long Island and was thrown from his bike, separating his shoulder. So essentially he was playing chicken with a deer and lost. You're right to make fun of him, NBC news staff. Carry on.

Thanks video intern Whitney Jefferson for the clip.

Ann Curry of the Today Show accused Matt Lauer of being on drugs.

New Yorker writer Susan Orlean had a drink.

Technology Review fauxmosexual-in-chief Jason Pontin kept up the appearance of working.

Gawker alumnus Alex Balk learned something new.

AllThingsD blogger Peter Kafka tried to keep the music industry afloat.

Did you witness the media elite tweet something indiscreet? Please email us your favorite tweets — or send us more Twitter usernames.

*In South Carolina. Click to watch Cheech McWeedy spill.