“Megyn Kelly Today,” the illustrious third hour of the “Today Show” on NBC has officially been cancelled (in more ways than one). In addition to having the stupidest spelling of the name “Megan,” Kelly now has no job because of her ineptitude.
On Oct. 23, Kelly, a former Fox News anchor, defended using blackface for Halloween while talking to an all-white roundtable. Kelly said, “because you do get in trouble if you are a white person who puts on blackface on Halloween, or a black person that puts on whiteface for Halloween, and back when I was a kid, that was O.K., as long as you were dressing up as, like, a character.”
Let’s take a second here to do some math. Kelly is 47 years old meaning that she was living her best Halloween life from 1976-1984. In short, blackface wasn’t “O.K.” back then, and it sure as hell isn’t now.
Kelly quickly saw the error of her ways and apologized to her staff via internal memo, because actually having a face-to-face conversation about race with your servants (I mean highly esteemed colleagues) is exceedingly difficult in this day and age. She started off her world-tour apology by saying that she’d never been a “PC” 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 year.”
But her apology was not enough to quell the swirling criticism, even from those at her own network. Her show was no longer producing new episodes, and her future at NBC was up in the air. Al Roker responded to her comments by saying, “the fact is, while she apologized to the staff, she owes a bigger apology to folks of color around the country, this is a history going back to the 1830s—minstrel shows to demean and denigrate a race wasn’t right…just magnifying the worst stereotypes about black people—and that’s what the problem is. That’s what the issue is.”
After drawing ire from almost everyone that knows blackface is never an O.K. idea, Kelly was in talks about her imminent departure from the network. She was bought out of her three-year $63 million contract.
If anyone is having a serious case of déjà vu, you’re not alone. This isn’t the first time Kelly has said something racist or racially motivated. In 2013 she said that “for all you kids at home, Santa just is white” when commenting on a segment about a black Santa. This fiasco happened when Kelly was still in her prime at Fox News.
But now Megyn Kelly is jobless with little hope to venture back on TV. You know your outlook is bleak when even Fox News rejects your unwanted advances.