No, I just don’t like giving her any justification or rational for why her nastiness isn’t completely her own intentional choice. She’s far from ignorant; she graduated from Albany Law School, which while not being held as the top tier of law schools is one of the oldest in the nation and has a disproportionate number of people in both the federal judiciary and in government; she was an associated at Bickel & Brewer which was one of the first ‘boutique’ firms that specialized in finance and accounting, emerging technology, and public relations, and later at Jones Day which was at the time one of the largest law firms running high profile cases international cases. Kelly is well aware that Jill Biden has an EdD and may be credibly be titled as “Dr. Biden”, but she’s also aware of how that gets her conservative base frothing at the supposed fabulism. A lot of people tried to give Kelly some kind of credit or assumption that she’d behave better after Donald Trump verbally insulted her in the most crude manner possible, but in fact she’s just as nasty and disingenuous of a media personality now as when she was mouthing Fox-y platitudes and dog whistles in 2016.
Gorka is a Fox favorite and a proto-fascist growing into full bloom. Also, a cosplay Bond villain of the Hugo Drax mold:
The nasty part of the comment isn’t saying that “Dr.” is only appropriate for those with a medical degree. That’s just ignorant. It’s the use of the ignorance to attack Dr. Biden that is nasty.
Jill Biden was at a football game and the announcer noticed. The First Lady wasn’t insisting on a title when the announcer used the title. I don’t know why Megyn Kelly thought she needed to make a comment at all.
Megyn Kelly could have just kept her ugly thought to her damn self.
Thanks! I just sent a tweet directly asking her how those two individuals’ doctorates are not fake, especially seeing how she used the honorific face-to-face with one of them. And, of course, I had to add a fun dig: “Ms.” Kelly is how I began the tweet.
I saw her snarking on Hilaria Baldwin’s Spanish accent, but first she had launched into a lengthy preamble where she says she understands how the paps are intrusive and annoying and bewildering to children and that the Baldwins have a lot going on right now yada. But drops all pretense of concern and tries to engage her sidekick in bashing Hilaria accent. It was a pitiful display.
I will confess that when I first heard “Dr Jill Biden”, I assumed she was a MD, since outside of professional contexts most people using the title are MDs. That said, at this point no one in the US should be confused anymore, and the Seb Gorka usage is I think right on point (or counterpoint, as it were).
I saw an interview withy Louis CK a number of years ago where he talks about the first time he ever told a really dark, risky joke. He told the joke, and the interviewer gasped. He then said “exactly. That was the reaction I was going for.” He then explained that when he first started doing comedy, his jokes got polite laughter, but nothing that people really remembered or cared out. When he started getting REACTIONS he knew he had something and that people would pay to see him perform.
What GOP trolls like Rush Limbaugh figured out a long time ago is that in entertainment it doesn’t matter how many people hate you, what matters is how many people love you. (For that matter, non-political types like Howard Stern figured this out as well.) It’s not accounting, it doesn’t matter if you have a negative balance. If 10 million people love you and 50 million hate you, 10 million people will watch your show and buy your cheap-ass book. The 50 million who hate you don’t UN-buy your book. Conversely, if you’re inoffensive, 0 people love you and 0 people hate you; it’s a better balance but how does that make you money?
If she doesn’t offend people, Kelly is nothing. If she does, Trumpists will pay attention to her; that everyone here thinks she’s a troll isn’t relevant to her income.
She’s a performer doing a performance of performative hate for money. Lots & lots of money. The fact she cares not at all about the harm she’s doing to the world is all on her, not on the character she plays.
By this point in her life, kinda like we discussed about Jeremy Clarkson, it’s unclear how much she has actually turned into the character she started playing.
One thing’s for sure: if she lets the mask slip now, she loses most of her audience. So we’ll never know if there’s any humanity left inside the shallow hatemonger.
Kelly’s take isn’t even original. A Wall St. Journal op-ed writer earlier took heat for mocking Jill Biden on this issue.
While an eye-roll may be justified when advanced degree-holders are called “Doctor” in social settings, especially if they insist on it (M.D.s included), remarks like Kelly’s just make the sneering individual look bad.
I wonder if Megyn (if that’s her real name) has a degree at all. If so, we should start refereeing her to her as bachelorette #3. Gives her something to strive for.
It’s even worse than this, because as far as social media algorithms are concerned the 10 million people that love you and the 50 million people that hate you are the same. All Twitter sees is 60 million people that feel passionately about you, and that’s enough to get you shown to even more people.
