Do your research you idiot! Live show asks Martin Short about relationship with his dead wife

This is not a recent story but kind of falls in line with what it is that I focus on here about people in the media not doing their homework and creating horrible situations because of it. This goes back to 2012 but in an interview on The Today Show Kathie Lee Gifford has a fluff interview with Martin Short, who was promoting Madagascar 3 and she changed gears away from the movie and asked how it is that he and his wife manage to stay so in love after all of these years. Kathie was just drooling over the fact that the couple managed to have such a magnificent relationship after all of these years.

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I suppose it would be understandable why this would be a talking point because in Hollywood it seems that people change partners and spouses like they change characters in the movies they are in. There are very few relationships that last in tinsel-town, so the question was fair enough if it hadn't been for one really big problem: Martin Short's wife Nancy had actually died from cancer two years prior to this interview.

Martin Short handled the situation very well, and didn't even mention the fact that Kathie was horribly mistaken and out of order asking this question. Instead, he answered in a kind manner and Kathie's co-host, who may have been aware of the huge gaffe, quickly changed the subject.

I'm not saying that news anchors have to be aware of every little thing about their guests but not knowing something that was in the news cycle repeatedly and not doing any research at all and then asking a traumatizing question like this is extremely poor form. I guess Kathie is lucky that Martin handled it as well as he did but if you watch the 30 second clip above you can see that Martin's usual "always smiling" demeanor changed very quickly when Kathie asked the question.

It made me think of this fictional interview from a great film called Walk Hard where the interviewer asks a series of very uncomfortable questions.

These on-air personalities like Gifford are paid a ton of money for these shows that I normally do not watch and you would think that given all the money and staff that they have at their disposal that they would do some level of research on the guests that they are going to have on their program, especially when it comes to their relationships and also the very public and traumatizing sudden and expected death of a spouse.

Gifford would later apologize on air for her mistake but honestly, seeing as how so few people are able to even have a chance at these jobs, I don't think it is too much to ask for the hosts to actually have some idea what they are talking about and more so, some level of compassion.