There was a fascinating interview with Megyn Kelly published in The Washington Post Monday. Media critic Erik Wemple asked the kind of serious, informed questions of Kelly other interviewers could take a lesson from. To her credit, Kelly seems to have answered thoughtfully and honestly. Except when she talked about her prolonged, race-baiting attacks on then-Attorney General Eric Holder over an incident with a few members of the New Black Panther Party on Election Day 2008.
About halfway through the interview, which included a lot of discussion about Kelly's new book, there was this exchange about Kelly and the New Black Panthers (emphases added):
EWB: Obviously you know a lot about the whole New Black Panther issue, Philadelphia; you were famous for that. I didn’t see much mention in the book, but now, eight years later, a couple CNN pro-Trump commentators cited that incident sort of in the context of Trump talking about a rigged election. Do you think that’s a fair reading of the New Black Panther issue, sort of as grist for justifying Trump’s claims of the possibility of a rigged election?
KELLY: What do you mean, that guys like those New Black Panthers [inaudible] at the polls?
EWB: I believe Kayleigh McEnany said something to the effect that Trump “doesn’t want a scenario where there’s New Black Panthers outside with guns, essentially like intimidating people from coming into the polls.”
KELLY: That was not a widespread incident as far as we knew. That was a couple of rabble-rousers who showed up causing a bunch of nonsense at one Philadelphia polling station. I wouldn’t say you could extrapolate that to a general concern, especially because I don’t believe we saw it again in 2012. I believe it was these two guys trying to make a point in 2008; their point was made and I assume they understood the ramifications of it after the Department of Justice got involved.
EWB: Do you think that your pushing that incident is where people draw their memory from?
KELLY: Come on, Erik, next question.
EWB: No? I just wondered. I mean, you did scores of segments on it.
KELLY: You should take those scores of segments numbers with a huge grain of salt because that was some tabulation done by Media Matters that included teases. Teases!
Kelly’s comments about a matter that she previously treated as a major exposé - until it came crashing down around her - were disingenuous at best and more likely deliberately misleading.
If you don’t recall Kelly’s “bombshell,” here’s how I summed it up in 2014 when Kelly reunited with “whistleblower” J. Christian Adams to launch new attacks on Holder:
In 2010, Kelly used Adams as a source for an orchestrated series of accusations – over at least 45 segments - that Holder had refused to prosecute some members of the New Black Panther Party for voter intimidation because they’re black. Even though no voter intimidation had occurred.
[…]
Kelly abruptly dropped her attacks once she was confronted on the air for her race baiting a phony story. The story was later discredited but Kelly - who advocates “personal responsibility” for others - didn’t seem to think she owed her viewers much of an explanation.
Whether or not Media Matters accurately tabulated how much time she spent on this ginned-up controversy that she is now trying to downplay, there is no question that Kelly gave the matter lots of attention. She also told Bill O’Reilly she was passionate about the case.
Kelly’s claim now that the matter was “not a widespread incident” that one could “extrapolate to a general concern” but “a couple of rabble-rousers who showed up causing a bunch of nonsense at one Philadelphia polling station,” directly contradicts how she presented the matter then.
On July 1, 2010, Kelly blatantly fear mongered that black thugs might be arriving at polling places around the country, thanks to the Obama administration’s partiality to the NBPP black defendants. Here’s how Kelly responded to a suggestion by Laura Ingraham, guest hosting The O’Reilly Factor, that Holder’s (black) racial perspective was “bleeding into this decision-making.”
KELLY: The evidence was pretty clear… But the bottom line was, according to [Adams], this whistleblower, the Department of Justice under Eric Holder now has a policy that it’s not going to pursue these cases where it’s a black defendant and a white victim. And that’s really the headline out of this interview.”
[…]
Well, think about that. Think about that… Now you’re going to have instances like this where Black Panthers and others can go to the polling stations and do this if they so choose. And they just basically are gonna get a pass because while it’s not an official thing, it’s been made very clear to all the rank and file voting rights attorneys in the DOJ those cases are not to be pursued.
I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that I think Kelly has since become a better person than this, especially after Donald Trump put her on the receiving end of the kind of conservative anger she has directed at others. Also, now that she’s a big star, she doesn’t need to curry favor with higher ups which, I’ll also venture, was a driving force behind the “passion” that made her blind to the facts of the NBPP case. But until she has the decency to apologize for having racially smeared our first black president and attorney general for the sake of getting ahead, I’m not going to allow her to shrug off this shameful incident as some minor incident in the past.
By the way, Wemple also seemed to catch Kelly off guard when he noted that her entire staff is white.
I heartily recommend the entire interview. Despite my criticism, there’s much to like about Kelly in it. Like the rest of us, she’s a mixed bag.
Watch Kelly talk about her passion for the New Black Panther Party case below, from the July 1, 2010 The O’Reilly Factor. Below that, make sure to watch her epic confrontation with Kirsten Powers (via Crooks and Liars) after which Kelly’s passion for the case evaporated.
But I don’t think she would do it again today. Besides the fact that she no longer needs to prove herself, I believe the incident with Trump made her re-consider the partisan attack-politics that Fox engages in. She has said recently she doesn’t like it. And while she can still be awful, blatantly biased and partisan, she’s much more faithful to facts. Almost as disgusting as the blatant racism behind her crusade against Holder was how she distorted and ignored the truth to do it.
But I don’t think she’d have the stomach to systematically go after someone the way she did to Holder.
I hope that one day she owns up to it.
She does not get to pretend to be an “impartial journalist” when her record shows her clearly for what she is – an angry Hard Right partisan who reinforces the stereotypes Fox News followers already have before they turn on the TV. She does not get to pretend to be an advocate for women’s rights when the only times she has espoused anything there has been for herself and not others. She does not get to play a victim card regarding Trump when she has worked overtime to effectively support his campaign and to support the mayhem he has brought us with the incoming Pence Administration.
I recognize that she will wind up as the new O’Reilly, and that she may well wind up as the highest paid anchor on cable television within the next couple of years. I recognize that this will cause many people (not necessarily here but definitely where I live and work) to try to normalize her behavior and to think she should be given some respect for being able to pull this off (ie make a lot of money while catering to the Hard Right). My response is the same one that Larry Bensky gave to an NPR interviewer 30 years ago when he was asked what he thought of people showing some respect to Oliver North for his years of service, etc: “So? I don’t.”
Hey, Erik — you wanna see Meg get REALLY unhinged?
Ask her about Santa Claus.
EWB: Do you think that your pushing that incident is where people draw their memory from?
KELLY: Come on, Erik, next question.
Fixed/fake news means never having to say you’re sorry.
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