MEGYN IS OUT
NBC yanks show after ‘blackface’ defense
“Megyn Kelly Today” is out of tomorrows.
The embattled NBC show reportedly got canceled in the aftermath of Kelly’s offensive comments defending ‘blackface,’ People magazine reported Thursday.
“They’re contacting the staff and reassigning everyone today. Everyone’s being told that they still have a home here, but it won’t be on Megyn’s show,” one insider told People. “The show is clearly over.”
Kelly, who jumped to NBC from Fox News last year, suggested on the air Tuesday that “blackface” could be acceptable as part of a Halloween costume.
During a panel discussion, she defended reality TV star Luann de Lesseps for applying dark makeup to dress up as Diana Ross last year.
“People said that that was racist,” Kelly said, “and I thought, ‘Who doesn’t love Diana Ross?’ She wants to look like Diana Ross for one day. I don’t know how, like, that got racist on Halloween.”
Kelly’s comments drew immediate online outrage and reminders that blackface is a deeply racist practice used to create caricatures of black people. Its use in minstrel shows dating back to the 1800s helped cement racist attitudes lasting generations.
Kelly tried to apologize to her viewers and colleagues, but her attempts fell flat.
“I defended the idea (of blackface), saying as long as it was respectful and part of a Halloween costume, it seemed OK. Well, I was wrong, and I am sorry,” Kelly told her viewers Wednesday.
“I learned that given the history of blackface being used in awful ways by racists in this country, it is not OK for that to be part of any costume, Halloween or otherwise.”
Critics said it was too little, too late, as they highlighted other instances of perceived insensitivity from Kelly.
Some pointed to her 2013 Fox News segment in which she called out to “kids watching at home” and said, “Santa just is white.”
One friend of relatives who lost a teacher in the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting said Kelly should have been fired after her 2017 interview with Alex Jones, the InfoWars host who claims that shooting in Newtown, Conn., was a hoax.
“I hope she’s off the airwaves for good,” Ryan Graney, who works closely with the Vicki Soto Memorial Fund to combat Sandy Hook conspiracy theories, told the Daily News.
“She says she’s never been a ‘PC’ kind of person. Well, someone who isn’t PC should not have access to the public via TV or radio,” Graney said.
It’s been widely reported that NBC paid Kelly $69 million over three years to leave Fox — where she hosted a highly rated evening program — and join the peacock network last year.
“If she’s truly sorry, she would donate a large chunk of her $69 million to the people she has exploited for ratings,” Graney said Thursday. “She should give some to Sandy Hook families and some to charities that deal with racial injustice.”
But Sandy Hook dad Lenny Pozner defended Kelly on Thursday after first saying he didn’t know much about her “blackface” comments.
He called Kelly’s sit-down with Jones as a “bold step.”
“Her exposé on Jones and InfoWars helped to expose him as a snake-oil salesman who was capitalizing on the murder of my son, Sandy Hook and other mass violence events for ratings and his significant financial gain," Pozner said in an email to The News.