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Since news broke yesterday of Matt Lauer’s firing — the latest in an ever-growing list of powerful men facing consequences for alleged sexual misconduct at work — I‘ve been having a repeated flashback: Mr. Lauer as moderator of a 2016 presidential forum, interrupting Hillary Rodham Clinton as she tried to lay out her plan to defeat the Islamic State. (She needed to speak quickly, he reminded her, as they were running out of time.)

Even then it sent Twitter into a flurry: “tough to be a woman running for president,” the pundit Norman Ornstein noted, while a variety of journalists mused that Mr. Lauer would have been far less likely to interrupt a male candidate that way.

Now that interruption seems far more meaningful. In the remarkable moment we are witnessing, it is a reminder of how men like Matt Lauer — and Charlie Rose and Mark Halperin and Leon Wieseltier, and now Garrison Keillor, the public radio host fired just hours after Mr. Lauer — shaped our view of politics and world events, our very cultural narratives. And all of them now stand accused of sexual harassment, or assault, or both. (Mr. Lauer apologized Thursday morning, expressing “sorrow and regret for the pain I have caused.”)