Like some sort of massive, expensive, occasionally racist sofa, NBC just can’t seem to figure out where to put Megyn Kelly. They tried placing the former Fox News host into her own night-time interview show, but all she did there was talk to Alex Jones, while America did its level best to drown her out. Then, having identified some hypothetical “fun” aspect to her icy “Can I talk to your manager?” persona, they dropped Kelly into the world of morning chat, where she had some fun morning chats about feuding with Jane Fonda and the perceived merits of blackface.
Now, the network is reportedly re-evaluating Kelly’s role in its organization, but not in the euphemistic way you might expect when an employee starts waxing nostalgic for the (possibly imaginary) days when it was totally cool for white kids to go as black people for Halloween. No, it sounds like the network really is looking for a new place to put her, possibly in a more serious position within the halls of NBC News.
Of course, Kelly’s already been on NBC Nightly News this week, albeit not in the way she might have been hoping when she started raising complaints about being stuck in the world of breezy morning talk; the program covered her latest comments about blackface (and earlier statements about how Santa Claus is “a white man”) on last night’s broadcast. Still, an unnamed source has told Variety that Kelly has been potentially pushing for a move back into whatever “serious journalism” means for her, asking a hypothetical, “Where do you think Megyn Kelly would be happier, as part of big breaking news or forced to cover light-hearted stories that traditionally work at 9 a.m.?” (“Maybe on a nice farm somewhere, away from TV cameras?” doesn’t appear to have been on the list.)
But those conversations reportedly pre-dated yesterday’s latest debacle, which NBC News Chairman Andy Lack commented on during a townhall meeting today. “There is no other way to put this but I condemn those remarks, there is no place on our air or in this workplace for them,” Lack said when questioned about Kelly’s comments, which she publicly apologized for yesterday afternoon. “Very unfortunate,” he added, while praising NBC News’ coverage of Kelly’s comments.
It’s not clear how yesterday’s events will impact the host’s efforts to fail up in the NBC News organization; plans are still supposedly in place to bring her morning show to an end, but the latest controversy is going to make it a lot harder to bring the network’s one-time “big get” into its journalistic fold.