I don’t know what Megyn Kelly is doing, but it’s not funny. I’ve been a Kelly fan since the early 2000’s when she joined Bill Hemmer on America’s Newsroom. I remember her talking about her surprise wedding shower when she was married to author, Douglas Brunt.
I remember each one of her three pregnancies because I cheered her on through it all. Kelly has truly been a delight and someone to watch as she rose through the ranks of Fox News.
But since her move to NBC late last year — a move I defended as being better than staying on with FNC — at the end of her contract, she’s been a disappointment. With her first special interviewing Russia’s Vladimir Putin, seemingly no one could care less. In the ratings. her interview finished behind an NBA game and a re-run of 60 Minutes.
This week, Kelly interviewed sportscaster Erin Andrews, who was recorded on video in her hotel room in various states of undress and won a court battle over it. A worthy topic to cover in the age of revenge porn and privacy becoming increasingly scarce.
But Kelly found the next appropriate interviewee — on Father’s Day, no less — to be conspiracy theorist extraordinaire, Alex Jones.
I just have to ask: What is Megyn Kelly thinking?
I’m a news and politics-engaged individual, but I don’t care to watch interviews with liars of either Putin’s or Jones’s ilk. These interviews aren’t interesting even in the abstract. Kelly is falling abysmally short of where one would hope; Oprah Winfrey or Barbara Walters being the standard.
However, while Walters and Winfrey both interviewed unsavory characters, it wasn’t at their jumping off point. Putin and Jones are thankfully anathemas to the majority of Americans, but legitimizing characters like Jones is not helpful in the wake of 2016.
One could argue that Kelly is simply covering a compelling personality that rose to prominence during 2016. But she lends her credibility to Jones’s political ideology with one tweet.
Actually, in our sit-down @RealAlexJones describes self as a libertarian who "likes what republicans stand for" but has issues w/them 2. https://t.co/TWa6iDaiyi
— Megyn Kelly (@megynkelly) June 12, 2017
Alex Jones can describe himself however he wants, that doesn’t make it true.
Let me be very clear, I’ve known who Alex Jones was a decade before most Americans. My dad was an early InfoWars follower. Before that, I can remember him getting the controversial Ron Paul newsletters in the 1990’s. When I introduced him to my first boyfriend, a “colored” guy from South Africa, he explicitly told me he thought maybe he should’ve taught my sisters and me to be more racist. I’m not naive of the Alex Jones ilk. I am very well acquainted with them.
As mentioned previously, Jones is a conspiracy theorist, and of the worst sort.
One of the many conspiracy theories Jones believes is that the massacre of 28 people, including young children and their primary school teachers, in Sandy Hook, Connecticut was a hoax, or at the very least, a pro-gun control lie.
A truly offensive postulation for the parents and loved ones of anyone who lost someone at the hands of a psychopath that day.
Catherine Hubbard loved animals. Every year she'd ask Santa for some type of animal.
She died at age 6. #SandyHook pic.twitter.com/s7TKgCndLu
— Reagan Battalion (@ReaganBattalion) June 12, 2017
Avielle Richman’s Dad Documented Her Life In A Special Blog, she was only 6 when she died https://t.co/OhviCuRn0P #SandyHook pic.twitter.com/ytJ2PJDeTp
— Reagan Battalion (@ReaganBattalion) June 12, 2017
There are dozens more whose deaths Jones denies, but NBC and Megyn Kelly have decided this bottom-dweller deserves the attention and mainstream coverage.
My fellow Americans and I who push back against friends and family support of Jones’s garbage say, “Thanks a lot.”
Jones, by any rational measure, has shown himself top be unstable and at best, a habitual liar. Megyn Kelly isn’t doing society or America any favors by lending legitimacy to him via defending his opinion with her “actualizing.”
Megyn Kelly and NBC need to actualize themselves and realize the side of America they’re promoting doesn’t deserve the limelight.
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