Why Megyn Kelly Can Only Wish She Were Jimmy Kimmel
Small thoughts from a small person
Jimmy Kimmel is back on the air in a victory of the First Amendment over Donald Trump. Even with some MAGA scofflaws abstaining, Kimmel’s ratings for his first show back were three times the normal average. If it’s true that everything Trump touches dies, then sometimes whatever he threatens prospers.
That rare latter group briefly included Megyn Kelly. The Fox News host hit the big time when she hosted the first Republican presidential debate in 2015 and pressed Trump on his repulsive comments about women. Trump responded to the grilling with repulsive comments about Kelly, who he described as having “blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her wherever.” This feud lasted for months and Kelly received death threats from Trump’s supporters, who apparently you should not call “deplorable.”
Kelly was considered a serious journalist, despite her history as a white Santa Claus originalist. Weeks before Trump took office in 2017, NBC hired Kelly, who seemed set on a path to true TV stardom. It didn’t work out.
Prior to Kimmel’s triumphant return last Tuesday, Kelly whined on social media, “Must be nice to be a leftist. ‘Cancellation’ lasts 5 nights and you’re right back under klieg lights. On the right you’re underground.”
I wouldn’t exactly call Kimmel a “leftist,” but Kelly does indeed host her current show in the underground, far away from her former glories on NBC daytime or even Fox News primetime. Megyn Kelly’s supervillain origin story is probably most accurately November 18, 1970 — the day she was born. However, a more generous reading would trace her current unhinged state back to October 26, 2018 when NBC fired Kelly from her low-rated morning show after comments she’d made about inappropriate Halloween costumes. Reality TV star Luann de Lesseps had attended a Halloween party dressed as Diana Ross with darkened skin, a 70s-inspired white halter-top jumpsuit and oversized black afro. (I still contend de Lesseps had confused Diana Ross with Donna Summer.) Kelly, a whiteface Santa Claus purist, couldn’t understand why this was a problem.
“But what is racist?” Kelly asked on her show like a racist Pontius Pilate. “Truly, you do get in trouble if you are a white person who puts on blackface at Halloween or a black person who puts on whiteface for Halloween. Back when I was a kid, that was OK, as long as you were dressing up as, like, a character.”
The backlash was considerable, and Kelly was soon forced to apologize. “I was wrong and I am sorry,” she said before NBC called a time of death on her ill-fated transition to mainstream media. (Watch below.)
NBC paid the blackface arts historian $69 million to just go away — the cash equivalent of a Powerball prize. I’d cry on TV for $69 million, but Kelly still holds a grudge against everyone who’s actually relevant. The day after Kimmel’s return broke viewership records, Kelly whined some more:
“Remember when I was cancelled & held back tears on the air & Kimmel stood up for me saying ‘All she did was ask a Q about blackface Halloween costumes, whereas I, Jimmy, have actually worn blackface many times & still have a show! This is wrong!’
Me neither. F him & his self pity.”
Kelly is apparently deeply wounded that Kimmel never defended her when she lost her job, which paid more than his. She considered Kimmel a fellow traveler in blackface because he’d darkened his skin when impersonating Karl Malone and Oprah Winfrey on Comedy Central’s The Man Show decades ago. Kimmel apologized for this in 2020. He said in a statement, “There is nothing more important to me than your respect, and I apologize to those who were genuinely hurt or offended by the makeup I wore or the words I spoke.”
Many humorless scolds online won’t shut up about Kimmel’s Man Show past, either. They don’t seem to think people can grow and change, which is a depressing way to live. I still hold out hope that even humorless scolds online might eventually grow and change.
I personally don’t think Kimmel’s impersonations qualified as “blackface.” I didn’t have an issue with Billy Crystal as Muhammad Ali, either. It was a respectful impersonation that didn’t play on insulting racial stereotypes. (Watch below.)
Luann de Lesseps’s costume was stupid but not truly as terrible as blackface actually was. It’s not as if she received an Academy Award nomination like Laurence Olivier for his shoe polish Othello performance.
Unlike Kelly, Kimmel is seemingly an emotionally healthy person so his apology was probably sincere. Kelly wasn’t truly remorseful. She was just desperate. “The history of blackface in our culture is abhorrent; the wounds too deep,” she said. “I’ve never been a ‘pc’ kind of person — but I understand that we do need to be more sensitive in this day and age. Particularly on race and ethnicity issues which, far from being healed, have been exacerbated in our politics over the past years.”
“PC” is often defined as “easily offended,” which Kelly definitely is, but if we just mean “sensitive of other people’s feelings,” she definitely isn’t. Her apology seems especially scripted and phony in light of her recent rants blaming Barack Obama for the nation’s racial divisions. No, Kelly just went through the motions to keep her job and when that didn’t work, she felt cheated. She feigned compassion on national television and all she got was a lousy t-shirt and $69 million.
Kimmel has become a Resistance hero because the sitting U.S. president and his mobbed-up FCC chair tried to pressure ABC to fire him for MAGA heresies. NBC fired Kelly not only because she made racially insensitive remarks … again, but because she’d alienated her colleagues, annoyed her celebrity guests, and driven away viewers. There was no grassroots uprising demanding her return. Indeed, ratings actually increased after she was canned.
When Megyn Kelly Today launched in September 2017, Kelly jokingly told her audience that she wouldn’t waste time “dissecting the latest tweet from President Trump.” This was a whole new Megyn Kelly. Just call her Bud Frump. She was doing it the company way.
“The truth is I am kinda done with politics for now,” Kelly said, and I actually believed her. I think she wanted to expand her profile with relatively apolitical content. The first episode of her show featured the cast and creators of Will & Grace, who all represent everything she openly loathes right now, but for a brief shining moment, she thought she could make herself comfortable amongst the Hollywood/New York “elite.” And like JD Vance, she seethes with resentment that the “elite” (and most normal people) rejected her and that MAGA is her only refuge.
Bless her heart!
It’s astounding to me how so many public figures have such a complete inability to deliver a genuine apology. But it’s usually because they truly are not sorry. They’re just sorry they got called out. This I attribute to being so insulated from real life, living in a bubble of cushy comfort.
She’s always been a horrible person and her jealousy is evident through the screen.