film / tv / politics / social media / lists celeb / pajiba love / misc / about / cbr
film / tv / politics / web / celeb

megyn-kelly.jpg

Megyn Kelly Wants To Go Back To Fox News

By Mike Redmond | TV | October 26, 2018 |

By Mike Redmond | TV | October 26, 2018 |


megyn-kelly.jpg

Megyn Kelly’s time at NBC has been a $69 million case study on how you can take the white lady out of Fox News, but you can’t take the Fox News out of the white lady. As Kristy detailed in yesterday’s report (which will bring you quickly up to speed, if you’re not already), Megyn Kelly Today has been hemorrhaging viewers, so Kelly practically served up an excuse to can the show on a silver platter when she launched into an entirely on-brand defense of blackface on Tuesday morning. By Thursday afternoon, NBC cancelled Megyn Kelly Today, and the status of Kelly’s employment at the network is a giant question mark that doesn’t understand why it’s okay for black people to use the N-word, but white people can’t. It’s just saying!

Naturally, it didn’t take long to wonder if Kelly would go running back to Fox News, and according to Vanity Fair, she’s been telling friends for a while that she misses her old den of vipers. She’ll discredit however many rape victims it takes to make that happen. Line ‘em up.

Over the past month, according to two sources with knowledge of Kelly’s programming decisions, she made comments on air that would burnish her right-wing credentials for a prospective Fox homecoming. For instance, she vigorously defended Brett Kavanaugh on multiple occasions, calling Dr. Christine Blasey Ford a “Democrat donor” who was represented by a “well-known Democratic activist.”

There’s just one small problem. Fox doesn’t want her back.

Fox sources say the Murdochs, and Lachlan in particular, are still angry that Kelly rejected a $25 million a year offer before decamping to NBC. Among Fox anchors and producers, Kelly also remains a polarizing figure. Fox staffers resented how she leveraged her feud with Donald Trump during the 2016 election for mainstream-media celebrity. Fox staffers also complain that she capitalized on Gretchen Carlson’s lawsuit to position herself as a #MeToo crusader only after it was clear that Roger Ailes was going down.

Kelly also ran afoul of Fox with her criticism of Trump along with her weird interviews with Vladimir Putin and Alex Jones — that apparently weren’t glowing enough? — which is why the network has already shot down talk of Kelly returning by telling CNN that “we are extremely happy with our entire lineup.” But if they need more racism, they’ll totally call.

With Fox seemingly shutting the door in her face, you’d just assume that Kelly would be trying to work things out with NBC. Except, nope, it turns out that bizarre report about Kelly requesting Ronan Farrow as a witness to her meeting with network execs was actually true, but only in the sense that the request was made. As for telling Farrow about it, not so much. Page Six reports that he has no clue about any of this, and not surprisingly, NBC isn’t exactly thrilled with whatever the hell Kelly is trying to pull.

Given her last-ditch theatrics, Kelly seems determined to continue causing real damage to the network, one NBC insider complained.

“Megyn’s pattern of racial insensitivity has bitten her badly here,” the insider said. “And this transparent attempt to distract from the pain she has caused with her comments is really unseemly.”

For those of you keeping score at home, that’s two networks who are in no rush to keep Megyn Kelly on the air despite one of those networks painstakingly forging her in its racist fire. But, hey, she can always do a podcast from her walk-in closet like Bill O’Reilly does. Remember Bill O’Reilly? Yelled a lot? Did gross stuff with a loofah? Eh, it’s not important.