Shane, come back! Come back! Shane!
–Brandon de Wilde calling to heroic Alan Ladd in “Shane”
Can it, already. I’m back.
And plenty steamed. Give me a break here. I’m away only a few measly weeks with blogger’s block, and everything falls apart.
Where to begin…
How about here? Oh, please!
That’s my response to Megyn Kelly’s defense of her scheduled NBC sit-down with that creep Alex Jones, a raging, fringe-right conspiracy theorist who famously has questioned whether the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre actually happened. No wonder Sandy Hook families and others are outraged, even threatening to sue NBC should the interview run.
This is Kelly’s second go in her new prime time series opposite “60 Minutes” on CBS. Not quite ready for her close-up, her recent marquee debut with Vladimir Putin didn’t even register on the Richter Scale. Kelly now gets Jones, who is the worst kind of raging provocateur: one with a radio show (on which, by the way, our yutz in the Oval Office was a guest in 2015).
Her goal with Jones, Kelly insists, is to “shine a light—as journalists are supposed to do—on this influential figure, and yes—discuss the considerable falsehoods he has promoted with near impunity.”
My goal is to shine a light on her BS.
Her true agenda is a bit less lofty than advertised. It’s to dangle Jones’ notoriety as a bright shiny object to lure viewers and demonstrate she is a doyenne of daring who can kick ass. Never mind that in the process she will grant Jones his widest platform yet, without legitimate justification. There is a cynical financial hook—ratings—but no news hook.
What, she’s going to expose him as a dangerous crackpot? The thinking world already knows.
This has familiar resonance. There was a time when Los Angeles newscasters and some national programs regularly granted Charles Manson camera access from prison during ratings sweeps periods, and then promoted his inevitable rantings to inflate their ratings. Stations would send a news anchor north for a tough-guy image reboot, and the camera-loving Manson, knowing his lines, was pleased to star in the role of murderous lunatic. In those days, you made your bones in local news by “boldly going one on one with Charlie.”
Inmates are now off limits to media in California, but the imagery endures, and Kelly hopes to make her bones going one on one in the same tradition.
Putin was Kelly’s bright shiny object in her opening show, and NBC’s promotion of it was thunderous, as if she would bring this shrewd guy to his knees. Oh, sure. Instead, she asked, he answered, sort of like this:
–Do you? Nyet.
–Have you? Nyet.
–Will you? Nyet.
— Would you ever, ever? Nyet.
What, you really thought Putin would turn patsy and confess because his interrogator was Megan Bombshell? Yes, I screwed up your presidential election. Yes, all of Trumpdom is palsy walsy with me.
The interview produced blotto, no news other than the news that Putin agreed to do it, a heavily hyped celebration of process over content, a growing media strategy of recent decades. He said nothing, but what counts, it was to our very own Megyn Kelly he said nothing.
And why did Putin agree to this, as he did to filmmaker Oliver Stone’s strangely chatty and unthreatening multi-part interview now creeping along on Showtime? Because he wants to present soften U.S. public opinion toward him and present himself as good old accessible Vlad. Will questioners like Kelly shake that image?
Nyet.
Rosenbeast 