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By Andrea Peyser
April 8, 2016
Megyn Kelly is no different than Kim Kardashian
Man up, woman!
Rising to the A-list from the middle of the pack requires extreme cunning, good hair and laser-focused determination.
Or, if you’re Megyn Kelly, all you need to fixate the world’s attention on your brains or your boobs and butt — the kind of fame-whoredom practiced by dames from Hillary Clinton to Kim Kardashian — is to metaphorically crush the naughty bits of Donald Trump.
At the first Republican candidates’ debate in August, Kelly staged a microaggression, driving The Donald to seek a safe space. The Fox News Channel blonde, a debate co-moderator, unloaded on the GOP front-runner with a “question’’ that amounted to an oral spanking.
“You’ve called women you don’t like fat pigs, dogs, slobs and disgusting animals,” Kelly charged in her now-infamous assault.
Trump tried to laugh it off by interjecting, “Only Rosie O’Donnell.” But Kelly was relentless.
“Does that sound to you like the temperament of a man we should elect as president?’’
Later, the candidate proclaimed on CNN, “There was blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her wherever,” which Kelly’s fans interpreted as a reference to menstruation. (Trump, 69, insisted that “only a deviant’’ would take his words that way.)
I’m no Trump apologist. But I detest tough women who dissolve into shrinking victims, as Kelly has done, when it suits them. Kelly’s attack was as unfair as it was sexist.
It was also . . . wildly effective.
A funny thing happened on the way to the feminist consciousness-raising session. Megyn Kelly became a star!
With a sporty new short haircut that clashes with Trump’s gnarly corn-colored ’do, Kelly began bragging publicly about riding Trump’s coattails into the stratosphere.
“Yes. I mean, listen, I would be lying if I said it wasn’t cool to see myself on the cover of Vanity Fair, right?’’ she crowed to Charlie Rose on “CBS Sunday Morning.’’ She continued boasting about her good fortune in a chick-forum chat with Katie Couric Wednesday night.
The newly minted pop-culture icon actually told Rose, “One of our baby sitters is from Peru. And she came home one day and told us that she saw my name in the Peruvian papers. I don’t think that ever happened before this particular dustup. So I’m gonna have to give him [Trump] that point!” Yikes.
I’ll assume that Kelly’s household helpers, at least one of them an immigrant, are in this country legally. But Kelly, 45, a married mother of three and a former lawyer, raises a burning question about her ability to connect with the average woman who can’t afford to hire multiple servants.
The kind of woman who, she said condescendingly, watches her show, “The Kelly File,’’ after a long day spent minding kids, working or both.
“She sits down, she gets her glass of Chardonnay, she wants to consume the news effortlessly, enjoy it, and not have to work too hard for it,” Kelly told Rose.
I guess women who work at thinking for themselves (and reject white wine) are not her target audience.
She told Rose, “I perceived it as a veiled threat’’ when Trump said during the debate that he might stop being nice to her after her ill treatment of him.
It seemed no accident that she cynically selected a phrase evoking images of physical or psychological violence at a time when Trump’s campaign manager is facing a misdemeanor charge of battery after allegedly roughly grabbing the arm of a female reporter. Kelly also whined that her Fox colleague Bill O’Reilly, whose “The O’Reilly Factor’’ draws higher ratings than her show does, has not defended her sufficiently.
Is Megyn Kelly taking audiences on a public search for a new job? (She teased during an interview blitz this week that she hasn’t decided if she’ll stay at Fox after her contract expires next year.)
I think that a lady who wants the public to see her as being as capable as the guys has to stop the bubblehead act and grow a pair.
After all the drama, Kelly said she’d be delighted to welcome back Trump as her TV guest! I guess he’s not that threatening after all. The man can give a real boost to a gal’s career.