Megyn Kelly Is No Nellie Oleson
That's not a compliment.
Netflix announced last week that it’s planning an adaptation of the Little House on the Prairie books by Laura Ingalls Wilder. The stories were based on Wilder’s experiences growing up in the post-Civil War American Midwest. Wilder’s books were previously adapted into the popular NBC series starring Melissa Gilbert, who played the young Laura Ingalls, and Michael Landon as her father Charles Ingalls. The series ran from 1974 to 1983 and produced 200 episodes. (A streaming series is likely to produce 20 episodes over the same period.)
The new Little House series is billed as “part hopeful family drama, part epic survival tale, and part origin story of the American West, this fresh adaptation of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s iconic semi-autobiographical Little House books offers a kaleidoscopic view of the struggles and triumphs of those who shaped the frontier.”
Perhaps the words “fresh” and “kaleidoscopic” triggered the Bigot Signal, because Blackface Santa scholar Megyn Kelly emerged from her cave to stamp out potentially inclusive television before it starts.
“Netflix, if you woke-ify ‘Little House on the Prairie’ I will make it my singular mission to absolutely ruin your project,” she posted on Elon Musk’s digital Nazi salute. NBC paid Kelly $30 million to just go away and stop tanking their ratings, so she knows about ruining projects.
Gilbert immediately dismissed Kelly’s impassioned gibberish.
“Apparently Megyn tweeted (I’m not on that platform) asking that Netflix not ‘woke-ify’ their ‘Little House’ remake,” Gilbert posted on non-Musk social media. “Ummm…watch the original again. TV doesn’t get too much more ‘woke’ than we did. We tackled: racism, addiction, nativism, antisemitism, misogyny, rape, spousal abuse and every other ‘woke ‘ topic you can think of. Thank you very much.”
Little House on the Prairie was no Bridgerton. It didn’t present a fantasy version of the past where racism seemingly didn’t exist or only truly mustache-twirling villains expressed racist beliefs. One standout episode, “The Wisdom of Solomon,” features Todd Bridges from Diff’rent Strokes as Solomon, a Black child who briefly attends school at Walnut Grove. Although the series is set in the late 19th Century, the story itself confronts the very modern topic of integration. Slavery is over but that doesn’t mean the nice white people of Walnut Grove want a Black kid living in their town.
Solomon’s mother warns him that he can’t attend a “white man’s school.” He demands to know “Why? If we free, why can’t I?” His mother’s response is heartbreaking but true for the period: “You’re free to be what the white folks want you to be.”
Later, Solomon is admitted into the school after Charles Ingalls tells school board member Harriet Oleson that Solomon is his son from another marriage — a bold declaration but one that proves Solomon’s mother correct, of course. He’s only free to attend the school because of who a white man says he is.
There’s a gut-wrenching scene when Walnut Grove teacher Eva Beadle asks Solomon if there’s something he dislikes. “Being a nigger,” he says. I won’t resort to euphemism here because the show didn’t. A town member also uses the racial epithet to describe the child whose very existence offends him.
The episode also challenges Charles’s liberalism. Solomon asks him if “Would you rather be black and live to be a hundred, or white and live to be fifty?” Charles can’t honestly answer. Instead, he leaves the room in shame.
I doubt that a teacher today could show “The Wisdom of Solomon” without blowback — from right-wingers like Kelly who feel like the show dwells in the past and makes white students feel bad but also from many liberals who’d object to the use of that racial epithet and how Solomon sees his race as a burden, even given the context.
The Little House books weren’t necessarily progressive, but the TV series was always “woke.”
Justice for Nellie
When Megyn Kelly threatened to “ruin” the upcoming Little House on the Prairie adaptation if she deemed it too “woke,” I responded on social media, “How will you ruin it? Are you going to play Nellie Oleson?”
I realize now this comparison is unfair to Nellie Oleson, who Vanity Fair once ranked as the No. 1 female villain in TV history. Nellie was the pigtailed bully you love to hate, while Kelly is a bully who inspires no such affection. That comparison is especially unfair to Nellie’s actor, Alison Arngrim, a generous, compassionate person who’s embraced her character’s status as a gay icon. After Little House ended, Arngrim struggled to escape typecasting.
“I remember thinking, ‘Hmm, I’m not working much,’” she said in a 2013 interview. “Instead of fighting it, I decided to grab Nellie and run with her and never look back … I turned toward the people who were still clapping the loudest for her.”
That year, she performed her one-woman show Confessions of a Prairie Bitch at the gay resort Parliament House in Orlando, Florida.
Arngrim was good friends with her co-star Steve Tracy, who played her husband Percival. Tracy was gay, but not openly. “During the two years I was on the series,” Tracy said in an interview, “I tried my darndest to keep [anyone on set from knowing he was gay.]” Remember that these are the “simpler” times people like Megyn Kelly prefer and would like to see return.
Tracy unfortunately died from AIDS complications in 1986 at just 33, and I recall the repulsive but typically ignorant rumors that Arngrim might have contracted AIDS herself, simply from kissing Tracy on screen. In his final interview, Tracy said, “I confided in my close friend Alison that I had AIDS, and she has been very supportive— just terrific.”
“I took him to the doctor’s for six months,” Arngrim said in 1992 when this was still a daring admission. “He got really bad in the end. He was a skinny little guy to start with and gradually dwindled down to nothing I talked to him on the phone for four days before he died.
“I told him I loved him, and he told me he loved me. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘It’s not the end, it’s just a change in the relationship.’ He gave me a necklace with a heart inscribed: ‘To my devoted wife Nellie. Love, Percival.’ I wear it whenever I speak on AIDS.”
After Tracy’s death, Arngrim dedicated her life to helping people with AIDS.
“Steve was lucky enough to have a family to take care of him,” she said. “I began to realize there were people who did not have that, so I made myself available to them.”
“I’m godmother to two children with AIDS,” she said, “and I work with an agency that provides food, diapers, transportation and shelter to families who have children with AIDS.”
She hosted the Los Angeles cable television show AIDS Vision for seven years, and she’s provided AIDS education to doctors, nurses, prison inmates, service clubs, churches, department stores and schools. She raised thousands of dollars at AIDS benefits as a stand-up comic.
“It’s funny,” she said, “when I bring guys on stage to show, discreetly, how condoms prevent the spread of the disease, they think they're being propositioned by Nellie Oleson.”
She started this more than 30 years ago, when advocacy for people with AIDS, even gay people in general, was perhaps more “controversial” than standing up for trans people today. One newspaper headline of the period declared, “TV ‘bitch’ fights scourge of AIDS.” Arngrim was humble enough to laugh that off and focus on the good work.
Kelly might dismiss Arngrim’s activism as too damn “woke,” but Arngrim is someone who can sleep at night and still look at herself in the morning without shame.
Oh, man, Stephen, the story of Alison Arngrim and Steve Tracy literally made me tear up. I would say that I'm usually not that emotional but I seem to be a lot more so lately—especially when I read something about the great good in people these days because we're being flooded with so much hate from the other side.
Thanks for this, Stephen. As ever, fantastic read. I absolutely loved this show growing up. I referred to it as my “prairie people.” I only vaguely remember episodes now but this definitely sounds like the show I loved.
Also, “Kelly might dismiss Arngrim’s activism as too damn “woke,” but Arngrim is someone who can sleep at night and still look at herself in the morning without shame.”
To be fair, Kelly isn’t capable of casting a reflection so … she’s fine there.