Megyn Kelly offered a surprisingly poignant commentary about Jon Stewart's departure from The Daily Show and being on the receiving end of Stewart's jokes.

I would have expected Kelly to dismiss Stewart as a liberal comedian who hates Fox. But she didn’t.

KELLY: I’ve been attacked by Jon Stewart many times over the years… I mean, it’s been a regular thing for several years now and I know you think that most journalists secretly enjoy it. I can tell you I have not enjoyed it at all.

Kelly argued that Stewart is not the “force for good” he has been lauded as “because I think especially in his later years, he got a little nasty.”

Kelly complained that “A lot of the attacks that were levied on me, had no foothold on the facts” and that Stewart selectively edited clips of her that did not accurately reflect the work she does. Then she continued:

KELLY: I’m not trying to be defensive about Jon Stewart, this is ancient history now. But I think that gets forgotten because they just think he’s funny and they think he was a force for good and everybody wants to celebrate him. And I am here to tell you that he reduced some people to tears.

Kelly did note, more than once, that she thinks Stewart is “very funny when he’s going after other people.” She concluded the segment with an “homage” of “the few clips we could find where he was hitting me but it wasn’t too hard. I didn’t feel like I’d been punched in the face.”

Frankly, I was astounded that Kelly took Stewart’s ribbing so hard. Kelly is not a mean-spirited bully like some on Fox. It’s hard not to feel compassion for her here.

But while a Daily Show clip here or there may not have been a fair portrayal of her, Kelly is very much a cog in Fox’s propaganda machine of hate mongering and divisiveness. A star, even. And she has done plenty of unfair attacking on the job. How does she think Eric Holder felt after she spent weeks making bogus,  race-baiting accusations that he had refused to prosecute members of the New Black Panther Party for voter intimidation (even though none had occurred) because they’re black?

Or how her contemptuous treatment of an Arab guest made him feel when he went on her show hoping to get Clint Eastwood or Bradley Cooper to speak out against the threats his Arab group felt had been stirred up by the success of American Sniper? Or how General Wesley Clark may have felt when, during her shockingly rude and disrespectful interview, she began shouting at him because she didn’t like his answer?

The fact is that Stewart has brilliantly spotlighted the perniciousness of Fox News. It’s certainly possible Kelly has been unfairly pilloried for some of her colleagues’ evils but Kelly has chosen to be a part of that perniciousness. She also gets paid handsomely for it, I’m sure.

I found Kelly’s comments quite moving. But as sympathetic as I feel toward her in this regard, the bigger picture is that she’s crying all the way to the bank.

Watch it below, from last night’s The Kelly File.