Kelly apologizes for blackface comments after condemnation from NBC colleagues
“The fact is while she apologized to the staff she owes a bigger apology to folks of color around the country.”
– AL ROKER
Megyn Kelly has been fearless in using her daily NBC morning program to call out her employer over its handling of sexual harassment allegations of fired “Today” co-anchor Matt Lauer.
But on Wednesday, it was Kelly who was getting a grilling from her own colleagues the day after major social media backlash over her Tuesday comments on “Megyn Kelly Today,” in which she questioned why the use of blackface on Halloween was inappropriate.
Kelly issued an email apology to colleagues later on Tuesday, saying she was wrong about the issue, adding that it was “a time for more understanding and love.”
NBC covered the flap on “NBC Nightly News” on Tuesday and again Wednesday on “Today” in a segment that was followed up with some harsh condemnation from two of the program’s African American co-hosts. Both of the taped segments contained clips of past racially insensitive remarks Kelly made when she was at Fox News, such as her insistence that Jesus Christ and Santa Claus are white.
But her comments on blackface, in which she said she failed to see what was racist about using it for a Halloween costume, has drawn the fiercest criticism yet. (“Back when I was a kid, that was OK as long as you were dressing up as like a character,” she said).
“The fact is while she apologized to the staff she owes a bigger apology to folks of color around the country,” longtime “Today” personality Al Roker said on the program. “This is a history, going back to the 1830s, minstrel shows to demean and denigrate a race, wasn’t right. I’m old enough to have lived through ‘Amos ‘n’ Andy’ where you had white people in blackface playing two black characters and it would just [be] magnifying the worst stereotypes about black people and that’s what the big problem is.”
“Today” news anchor Craig Melvin described Kelly as “a friend who said something stupid, who said something indefensible.” He also was skeptical that discussion about her remarks was a teachable moment, a notion that Kelly tried to convey in her email apology.
“I guess it was an opportunity for us to learn a little bit more about blackface but I think a lot of people knew about blackface before yesterday,” Melvin said.
Kelly read much of the text of her email apology at the top of her program on Wednesday, adding that she understood that the history of blackface made it unacceptable. She received a standing ovation from her studio audience and did a follow-up discussion with black commentators Roland Martin and Amy Holmes.
But it’s unlikely her attempt to quell the controversy will reverse a perception within NBC News that the days of “Megyn Kelly Today” are numbered, according to several executives inside the network who were not authorized to comment publicly on the situation.
She was hired away from Fox News in 2017 with great fanfare and a salary reportedly as high as $25 million a year. Since she arrived as morning host in September 2017, she has lost about 30 percent of the audience who had been watching the 9 a.m. hour of “Today.”
Kelly’s prime-time magazine show, “Sunday Night With Megyn Kelly,” was a ratings failure and was quietly canceled by the network after eight episodes that aired in the summer of 2017.