If you’re in the United States, you might be familiar with Megyn Kelly. She was a news personality for Fox News from 2004 to 2017. She was a panelist at one of the Republican “debates”, where she had a bit of a row with one of the candidates, the one who ended up getting the nomination.
I imagine it’s why she was hired by NBC to be their “conservative female journalist.” On her short-lived Sunday evening show, she interviewed conspiracy nut Alex Jones, which was not a popular move.
Then she was given the third hour of the four-hour block of the TODAY show, but she never fit in thematically, or, apparently, personally. Her rating were disastrous.
When she was in a discussion about Halloween and described that using blackface had been considered acceptable when she was growing up, a couple things happened. One was that she was heavily criticized, especially by her NBC colleagues.
She gave up an apology, acknowledging the painful legacy, but diminishing her statement by mentioning how she tended not being “politically correct.” She lost her post as host of the 9 a.m. hour of the “Today” show.
I wish there had been a bit more of that explanation, not merely that it was “offensive.” CBS News Sunday Morning provided Blackface: A cultural history of a racist art form.
Borowitz of the New Yorker, wrote, satirically, Fox News Says Megyn Kelly’s Blackface Comments Not Racist Enough to Get Old Job Back.
The other reaction was from where she grew up, which happens to be Delmar, Albany County, NY. Students from her high school alma mater condemned Kelly’s comments, saying she was not accurately describing their town.
One prominent Albany Law School grad complained that, largely based on her race-baiting arguments on Fox, the law school shamefully put Kelly, class of 1995, on the cover of its alumni magazine, hosted her book signing, and had her speak at a graduation.
Ivan Rodat, who went to high school with Megyn Kelly wrote a measured response in Blackface in the ’Burbs.
A good friend of mine told me that the family now lives in the house Megyn Kelly grew up in. I only recently learned that when NBC first signed Kelly, the network wanted the current owners to “meet cute” the former resident. That was, to say the least, a non-starter.
Kelly is about my age, and I was puzzled by her contention that blackface was okay when she was a kid. I mean, it wasn’t a “big deal” simply because, at least in southeast Pennsylvania, no one did it – it never entered my mind to do it, and I never saw anyone else do it either, despite the severe lack of black people in Bucks County. So I don’t know what she was talking about. Even if it were true, how stupid is Kelly to ask that question? Even if white people didn’t care if something was racist decades ago, she wonders why it’s actually racist after years of people explaining it? Isn’t she supposed to be a journalist? Sheesh.
Apparently she doesn’t score high as eye candy, either: She Politico, a YouTube channel that runs gratuitous photos of the legs of women in or adjacent to politics, and Megyn’s has the fewest views — except for Senator Blackburn, and that one just went up today.