When NBC anchor and “serious’ journalist Megyn Kelly was asked to describe herself in three words on Wednesday, she replied: “Tough but cute.”
Seriously.
The embattled NBC anchor whose Sunday newsmagazine show’s initial run was pulled at least two episodes sooner than planned because of her disastrous ratings is visiting various NBC affiliates this week presumably so she can minimize the damage she can potentially do to the Today franchise, which was forced to hitch its star to Kelly’s wagon. Kelly made her remarks during a question-and-answer session with Chicago news anchor Zoraida Sambolin.
Megyn Kelly Today will debut in September. So for now, NBC must feel compelled to spend millions more promoting Kelly’s show so Kelly just does no harm to the network’s crown-jewel franchise.
While Kelly was courting Alex Jones to land an interview, Kelly told Jones that she thought of herself as a combination of “Mike Wallace, Oprah Winfrey, and Larry the Cable Guy.”
Her newsmagazine show quickly revealed that she did not have Wallace’s intellect and sense, Winfrey’s warmth and empathy, and Larry the Cable Guy’s humor.
Perhaps that is why she has resorted back to describing herself as “cute” because “tough” is also certainly not a word that comes to mind after her interview with Russian President Vladmiir Putin in which she was resoundingly mocked even before journalist Yashar Ali obtained an unedited version of Kelly’s interview with Putin for the HuffPost that somehow made her look even worse. The unedited video revealed a “nervous” Kelly lobbing softballs to Putin and failing to hold him accountable on many key topics.
NBC News chief Andy Lack has tried to convince the industry that Kelly is a “serious” journalist. But Kelly has been ripped as a “non-serious quasi-journalist” since hosting her NBC Sunday night show that has highlighted her vapidness in addition to many other stylistic and substantive shortcomings.
Kelly’s segment with Sambolin also raises serious questions about how successful Kelly will be with her daily morning show. If Kelly spontaneously made her remarks, it shows how dangerous it may be for NBC to give her opportunities to freelance because she may reveal, for instance, that she doesn’t even know that one of the most influential politicians and second-most followed politician on Twitter like India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi is on Twitter. And if Kelly’s answer was a planned one, it reveals how clueless she and her production team still are.