It’s official, Megyn Kelly’s off the air at NBC. According to an NBC press release Friday, a variety of other anchors will fill in the slot that she previously occupied. It wasn’t just her racist gaffe on Tuesday about it being okay to wear blackface with a Halloween costume. That was just the proverbial straw. There was the disastrous Alex Jones interview, the boring Vladimir Putin interview, (both failed to get the expected ratings) the imbroglio with Jane Fonda over her plastic surgeries, the crack to an actor “Did it make you gay?” and so on and so forth. Kelly was pitched as one thing and the product she delivered was something radically different. Vanity Fair:
“When NBC News chief Andy Lack brought Kelly on—for $23 million annually, reportedly—the hope seemed that she would embody the voice of some segment of the population: white female viewers just waiting to see someone like Kelly express their same maternal, ruffled concerns about decency and family values. Kelly pitched herself in that direction, trying to model herself after Barbara Walters (but without the journalistic rigor), or the adored Kelly Ripa (but without the endearing attitude), or even one of the queens of daytime television, Ellen DeGeneres (but without the warmth or personality).” In the end, though, she turned out to be an empty vessel—a woman who only looked the part.
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Megyn Kelly looked like a star anchor, and for a while at NBC and Fox News—and on our own cover—that seemed like enough. But the more money and effort that has gone into her brand, the fewer actual results have emerged, whether you measure ratings success, cultural clout, or acts of fearless journalism. It’s unsettling, and incredibly depressing, to witness how potent the myth of a graceful, beautiful, conservative woman was for so much of the media establishment—and how much money Kelly made trading off the image of herself, versus the actual substance of her talents. In a season of scammers, Kelly’s emerging as the consummate con woman. She sold us all exactly what we wanted to believe in.
Now here’s a bizarre note to end on. New York Times:
In an odd twist, Mr. Freedman, Ms. Kelly’s recently hired lawyer, made a request to NBC asking that Ronan Farrow — a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter who has said NBC impeded his reporting on the Harvey Weinstein story last year — join the meeting where they plan to negotiate Ms. Kelly’s future, the person said.
What in the world is all that about?
Paid to be a failure.