How tasteful, Meredith. Why is it that everyone always focuses on the gay sex in this movie rather than the movie itself?

Omg please no. I’ve always had the biggest crush on Matt Lauer and he’s always seemed like the sweetest, intelligent gentleman. Please, Matt–tell me there’s some kind of explanation for this. Please!

“Keep bending over like that. It’s a nice view”

Meredith Vieira didn’t see Katie Couric’s send-off from the “Today” show - and maybe that’s a good thing.

Vieira, who’s leaving “The View” to replace Couric on “Today,” gets her own show-long farewell next Friday, her last day on the ABC morning gabfest after nine years.

“I wasn’t able to see Katie Couric’s send-off yesterday, but I got a copy,” Vieira said on yesterday’s “View.” “I thought that was fantastic … she’s an amazing woman. It was very moving, very touching.

“I thought it was terrific,” she said, “and also scary.”

“The View” is taking a different approach with Vieira’s farewell, keeping the hoopla to a minimum.

Unlike Couric’s marathon goodbye tour, spanning several weeks and capped off by a three-hour tearfest, “The View” will devote only three shows to Vieira’s departure, starting next Wednesday (11 a.m./Ch. 7) with segments highlighting Vieira’s “most memorable, outlandish and hysterical” on-air moments.

What the show has in store for Friday’s finale is anyone’s guess.

“Nobody likes to laugh like Meredith, and on her final day, the joke’s on her,” executive producer Bill Geddie told The Post yesterday via e-mail.

“There will even be a big surprise for the audience - a guest who will need no introduction.”

ABC is already trumpeting Vieira’s finale with a promo showing clips throughout her years on the show.

“She’s a mom, a married lady, a millionaire,” the promo blares. “She’s a co-host, a clown, a cut-up and a klutz.

“And now she’s history. Meredith is leaving ‘The View‘ for a better tomorrow - make that ‘Today‘ - so join us at ‘The View‘ as we say goodbye to Meredith.”

Vieira, 52, joined “The View” upon its launch in 1997, and has been considered the show’s “anchor” and “voice of reason” ever since.

She also hosts the daytime version of “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.”

Vieira inked a reported four-year, $40 million deal in April to co-host “Today” with Matt Lauer. She begins her new gig in September.

Rosie O’Donnell will replace Vieira on “The View.”

Matt Lauer has many more Todays in his future.

In the wake of Katie Couric’s decision to jump ship to CBS, her NBC morning coanchor has re-upped his contract through spring 2011 in a deal pegged at $13 million a year by the New York Times.

NBC confirmed the deal Tuesday, after Lauer spilled the beans in an interview with the Times.

The pay increase makes Lauer roughly as well compensated as Couric was on NBC and will be on CBS. Had she stuck around Peacock headquarters, Couric would have been upped to a reported $20 million a year. In contrast, Couric’s replacement, Meredith Vieira, will reportedly earn around $10 million a year.

Lauer joined the show in January 1997, replacing Bryant Gumbel as Couric’s sidekick. He maintains a relatively low profile on the show, beyond keeping up a rigorous travel schedule as star of the running segment “Where in the World Is Matt Lauer?”

His prior contract had been scheduled to expire in 2008, but the cohost had no qualms about extending his stay.

“I like it here,” Lauer, 48, told the Times. “I can be cagey about it and do all the things you’re supposed to do. I like this job.”

Meanwhile, Vieira, Lauer’s newly announced cohost, with whom he shares a Dec. 30 birthday, has found herself increasingly under the spotlight since being announced as Couric’s replacement.

In a recent interview appearing in the May issue of More magazine, the current View talking head revealed that she was once involved in an abusive relationship.

“He would slap me and then make up, saying, ‘I’ll never do this again,’ crying,” Vieira, 52, told the magazine of a man she dated years ago. “It escalated to the point where he actually threw me out of the apartment naked. I sat out all night in the stairwell, and the next morning he let me in.”

After that incident, Vieira said she decided to leave her boyfriend. “It took almost 12 months,” she said. “I consider myself a pretty smart woman, and I got into this situation…I can look back and go, Where was my respect for myself?”

In an effort to educate the public about domestic abuse, Vieira later made a news documentary about the Framingham Eight–women who were jailed for killing their abusers.

Today the newswoman is happily married to journalist Richard Cohen, her husband of almost 20 years, with whom she has three children: Ben, 17, Gabe, 14, and Lily, 13.