Lana Del Rey Blasted By NBC's Brian Williams in Leaked Email to Gawker

Brian Williams, NBC anchor and apparent Gawker fan, was less than amused by singer Lana Del Rey's performance on Saturday Night Live over the weekend, a performance he skewered in a widely-read email leaked by Gawker editor Nick Denton.

'One of the worst outings in SNL history.'

Williams, writing to Denton in an email yesterday, wondered why the media blog hadn't joined other news sources blasting Del Rey for her lackluster showing, going on to both insult the singer and tell Gawker to step up its game.

Brooklyn hippster [sic] Lana Del Rey had one of the worst outings in SNL history last night, Brian Williams wrote. Booked on the strength of her TWO SONG web EP, the least-experienced musical guest in the show's history, for starters.

Lana Del Rey is one of only a few musicians ever to appear on Saturday Night Live before the release of a debut album in the U.S. She has been roundly slammed for her nervous and rather mediocre performance, both on social networking sites like Twitter and by popular blogs across the online community.

'I'll no doubt get a withering, detailed critique.'

But Williams wasn't content just to go after Del Rey. He also poked rather pointed fun at Gawker itself.

In my humble opinion as a loyal customer (you know I love you but the Blog View button will be the eventual cause of my death) and while I know you're in the midst of an editor chance, weekends have been allowed to grow awfully fallow... for those of us who check your s--t 10 times a day by iphone, he wrote.

I know you've been watching NBC Nightly News religiously every evening, Williams closed in his email to Denton, and I'll no doubt get a withering, detailed critique from you straightaway.

'Anchordude' vs. 'Blog Villain'

Instead of responding to Brian Williams' email, however, Nick Denton chose to publish the email in full on Gawker's web site, a move that caused William's reaction to go viral and NBC to go into a PR frenzy.

Though Williams has yet to respond to the leaked email (and something tells us he doesn't care much that his widely-shared views were made public), and NBC Universal representative emailed Gawker early this morning to ask that the email between Williams and Denton be taken down immediately.

That was sent in confidence as friends and absolutely never intended to be public, the NBC employee wrote.

A speedy removal would go a long way in maintaining the trust and respect we have for your site.

Rather than take the message down, however, Gawker chose simply to include NBC's response as an update to its original article, calling the response a message from the frazzled PR team over there at NBC.

In Gawker's defense, the site maintains that anchordude Brian Williams and blog villain Nick Denton are close friends, and that the anchor himself isn't likely to care that his critiques have gone viral.

Below, watch Lana Del Rey's Saturday Night Live Performance: