Just a few days after stirring up a bit of controversy with a fairly homophobic joke in the middle of a big Will And Grace segment that convinced Debra Messing to announce that she regretted appearing on the show, Megyn Kelly has once again done a dumb thing that makes her look bad. It all went down yesterday, while Kelly was speaking to a panel of newspeople on her Megyn Kelly Today NBC show about the recent mass shooting in Las Vegas. One member of the panel was esteemed newsperson Tom Brokaw, and after an audience member asked if wall-to-wall news coverage of shootings like this is more harmful than it is informative, Brokaw launched into a speech about the NRA, noting that it’s been more harmful to the nation than the psychological trauma of news coverage.
Unfortunately, just as Brokaw was spitting some hot fire about America’s favorite terror organization, Kelly interrupted him with a dismissive-seeming “Yep, got it.” It’s the sort of response that should be reserved for someone who thinks the Las Vegas shooting was “scripted” or an acceptable amount of blood loss for the great joy that is gun ownership, but Kelly apparently had a “hard break” and couldn’t stretch the segment any longer. Her show must therefore be timed as tightly as the Oscars, because otherwise her “Yep, got it” just makes her look like one of the NRA stooges in the government who can’t do anything but tweet about their thoughts and prayers.
It’s like they always say: You can take the anchor out of Fox News, but you can’t take the Fox News out of the anchor.
Update: Brokaw has released a statement about what happened on Kelly’s show, explaining that he couldn’t actually hear her trying to end the segment:
The acoustics in the studio were terrible. I didn’t have an IFB [earpiece], and I am writing as I return from my hearing-aid mechanic. My hearing aid this morning went bad as the show started. Chick Hearn, the late, great L.A. Lakers play-by-play announcer had a phrase: no harm, no foul. Exactly the case this a.m. No harm, no foul. Not worth any fuss. I’m a Kelly fan.