Author: Richard

Media Freakout, Arrests made, after daycare workers found to have given toddlers melatonin gummy bears

3 women at an Illinois day care were arrested for giving melatonin gummies to 2-year-olds in their care before naptime.

The story sounds mostly funny to me as melatonin is a natural antioxidant your body makes when its dark as a signal to the brain to start shutting down into sleep mode. It’s not a sleeping pill chemical or anything you can overdose on or hurt yourself with – it’s a natural calming aid that aids rest. It’s not a drug, not a prescription, not something that causes psychoactive hallucinations or liver damage or any kind of organ failure or distress. Of course, whether its harmless or not, I wouldn’t be okay with a childcare provider giving a supplement to my kid without asking, so that part is a problem – but something to be arrested over?… Why? What crime could this possibly fall under? The charges reported so far just say “two counts of battery and two counts of endangering the life of a child”, and this dramatacism is where I got to a “wtf?” enough level to where I had to find a way where this made sense.

This photo of the daycare taken from Google Maps’ Street View appears in a lot of the reports covering this story, along with the mug shots of the 3 women (which I’ve chosen not to include in my own reportage here because it seems unfair that they are being vilified as child abusers when they’re really only guilty of being poor-judgement chuckleheads), which are both stylistically things you include in serious crimes – not a story that amounts to “daycare helps kids take naps”.


The scene of the crime

The only side effects of melatonin I could find were the effects it is meant to have on the body (drowsiness, dizziness, tiredness) and perhaps a head or stomach ache. It’s allegedly possible to be allergic to melatonin and develop swelling or skin rashes, so that part makes more sense, but with no instances of any such damage (which I think would be extremely rare given the nature of the supplement), idk what the freakout over is exactly. And yes, there was a freaking of outs. In addition to the arresting of the workers (aged 32, 19, and 25), the story of the arrest was on dozens of national outlets all reporting the case as if it were an actual case of battery and child-life endangerment when it clearly isn’t.

That makes the story worth logging as its the ignorance of the supplement fueling the sensationalism of an alleged danger, when at best it was just an inappropriate move that was worth somewhere between a strongly worded reprimand and a firing. A criminal record, not so much.

PS: You can buy melatonin gummies @ Amazon here

Keurig is buying Dr Pepper Snapple Company

Home coffee pod device maker Keurig Green Mountain has announced it has agreed to buy the soda company Dr Pepper, whose official corporate name is Dr Pepper Snapple Group, in an $18.7 billion deal.

This is of interest to me because I’m a stock holder in DrPepperSnapple and saw my shares jump 20something percent this morning – 42% from when I first bought them.

Only problem is I only own 2 shares… lol. I bought them for that-one-girl-who-fans-know-about-and-everyone-else-doesn’t-need-to cuz it’s her favorite drug so I figured we might as well own a piece of it (for the record, my “don’t get high off your own supply” plan did not work).

Keurig stated today that Dr Pepper Snapple shareholders will receive $103.75 per share in a special cash dividend and keep 13 percent of the combined company. Dr Pepper Snapple shareholders like me still must approve the deal, so maybe I’ll go against it and ruin it for everyone with my 2 votes.

Keurig Dr Pepper will trade publicly after the deal closes, which is expected to happen in the second quarter. A new ticker symbol hasn’t been announced yet, the company said. Keurig will stay in its Waterbury, Vermont, headquarters, and Dr Pepper Snapple will remain in Plano, Texas.

Back when I bought the shares, I didn’t know Dr Pepper was its own company. I’d have guessed it’s a Pepsi property but no.
-It’s big brands besides Dr Pepper and Snapple are Motts, Shweppes, & Bai teas.
-Smaller brands like Squirt, Calamato (ew), Cactus Cooler, RealLemon, & Crush…
-But also big name 2nd tier companies like A&W, Yoo-hoo, Hawaiian Punch.
– and then has weird distribution rights I don’t fully understand where it owns 7Up in the united states (but Pepsi owns it in Europe) and it owns the Canada Dry drinks in North America only and the Coca Cola company owns it in the UK.

This is my 2nd win for my 2 measly shares, as right after I bought them in November 2016, Dr Pepper Snapple announced they would make a cash purchase of Bai Brands for $1.7 billion, sending the stock rising. It had previously purchased a minority stake in the company for $15 million in 2015.

Keurig is owned by a European holding company that owns Krispy Kreme, they just bought Panera bread a few months ago, Peets coffee, and some tea store brand called Mighty Leaf. so they’re gonna synergize their products in each others brand storefronts.

Everyones merging these days because power companies are becoming titans that gobble up so much marketshare, a team-up and then combination is the only way to compete. Hulu for example is owned by “everyone who isn’t Netflix” (21st Century Fox, Disney, Comcast [parent owner of NBC], & TimeWarner) and still has half the subscribers as it. That might change as late last year The Walt Disney Company announced it would buy 21st Century Fox and thus it’s stake in Hulu, making Disney a majority owner of that brand. What it will do with it exactly hasn’t been announced but we do know that Disney is making it’s own Netflix competitor in some form. Disney owns ESPN, so whether there is a Disney streaming service, Hulu, & ESPN stream as 3 separate services or one or 2 is unknown at this time.

Viacom (cable company that owns brands like MTV, Nickelodeon, Comedy Central, Logo) and The CBS Corporation are going to probably merge in response to Disney and Fox’s marriage. The first 2 have always essentially been one company anyway since both corporations are majority owned by billionaire Sumner Redstone.

Merging is the future. Now who’s ready to buy some Dr Pepper single-serve soda pods?

Logan Paul did nothing wrong in that Japanese forest

His critics are just jealous jackals piling on, opportunistically taking their chance to take him down because he’s popular/more popular than them.

I barely know who Logan Paul is. I learned about him a few months ago from a brief course by my nephews. If you aren’t familiar with him: He’s a dude in his early 20s that makes silly videos on YouTube that get millions of views. I’ve watched a few clips and didn’t love them, but who cares? They weren’t poorly made and didn’t showcase a total lack of talent or entertainment value like I think a lot of other popular YouTubers with unearned popularity have. He’s high-energy and has a goofy-bro style delivery that is charming enough even if the content doesn’t land for you specifically as an audience member as it didn’t really for me. I don’t say any of this to be a hipster douche about the guy – I’m only setting the table with the disclosure that I’m not and haven’t been a fan, so my defense of him is not from an emotional place of personal defense – it’s just what is right.

Second disclosure: I haven’t actually watched the video… As I suspect 90% of the media and celebrities commenting on it likewise haven’t. I’m basing my defense on what those outlets say is so terrible about its content – none of which is actually terrible. I do have access to the video and intend to watch it at some point, at which point I will update this post below.

WHAT THE CONTROVERSY IS OVER:
There’s a forest in Japan where people go to kill themselves. Logan Paul did an episode of his web show where he goes into it thinking the video would be about the eerie possibly-haunted nature of a creepy death forest and unexpectedly comes across a real body hanging from a tree. People got mad because he included this in his video and that’s basically it.


The worst thing he did that day was wear those rings

In response to negative reactions, Paul deleted the video and issued this apology on Twitter:

Still not satisfied, the hate continued, so he followed up with a YouTube apology as well which is too pathetic to post. In it, a clearly emotionally rattled Paul apologizes for his alleged lapse in judgement, asks his fans not to defend him, and promises to be better in the future. Good thing I’m not a fan of his so I don’t have an obligation to heed that request: Logan Paul did nothing wrong, doesn’t deserve the hate he’s getting, and the ninny’s saying otherwise are piling on a witch hunt with no merit. Some counter-points I had reading the articles & comments, and listening to people on radio and podcasts comment on the subject:

Laughing?
There are allegations that he laughed and made a joke over it and without knowing much about Paul and not even having seen the video, I’m gonna call bullsh#t. I don’t mean to accuse him of being a puppet that isn’t in charge of his own content, but there is no way his handlers or corporate partners or other people involved in the producing and editing of his video allowed him to mock and make jokes over a real life dead body. He also just doesn’t seem like the type to make suicide jokes a focal point of his entertainment product. His less mature younger brother Jake Paul, maybe. Idk.

“Respect for the dead”
Virtue signaling nonsense. That person didn’t respect their body when they killed it in that forest. Yes, Suicide occurs as a result of pain, but it is not glamorous and shouldn’t be glorified like it’s a sacrament. Further – killing yourself in public by definition makes what is left of you a public spectacle. Sorry/NotSorry if that spectacle you make of yourself is spectacled by others, bro.
Granted, I will agree with this if the video contains Logan pointing and laughing at the corpse swinging in the breeze and makes a crass display about that weak loser on the end of that rope who was just too much of a cwy-baby to handle the relentless emotional pain of existence. Since I’m nearly positive that didn’t happen – these accusations are dumb. One of the attacks on Paul that appears in a lot of the critical reports and negative comments and commentaries is that he was wearing a stupid hat (a pretty dope alien-from-Toy-Story hate to be precise). This is stupidly unfair as the video was a trek through a haunted forest – not crashing a funeral, not invading a sacred area, not tromping through a synagogue/church/or mosque – it was a walk in the forest.

“He shouldn’t have posted the video”
Maybe. But why not? Something that crazy happens in your life and you’re supposed to keep it a secret? You’re supposed to just mention it off camera? Why? Viewers watch video blog personalities to see their personalities on video web logs… Cutting that part out makes no editorial sense. The face of the corpse was blurred and that’s appropriate. Paul claims that he posted the video to further suicide awareness and I see no reason to disbelieve that claim. If I did a video on the ghosts that allegedly haunt the Golden Gate Bridge (the American equivalent to a suicide forest – so much so to the point that the bridge now has suicide nets) and while making a creepy “walk through the San Fransisco fog” scene I happened upon the lifeless body of someone who had jumped and still died in the net – I can think of no possible way that wouldn’t be in the final cut, and not for the purpose of making fun of it. Christ, no. The natural next-step is to show your audience what you experienced and take the opportunity to say “suicide is nothing to friggin play around with. its a permanent solution to a temporary problem and if you’re experiencing pain you feel like you can’t cope with – for the love of hamburgers – call the suicide hotline/seek help at this-or-that source” and so on. By all accounts that is exactly what Logan did – so wtf is the problem?

“He exploited a suicide victim to get views”
As his also-mocked-and-attacked apology statement notes: he didn’t do it for the views cuz he gets those views regardless. That line was mocked because in an apology he included the line “I get views” – the implication being “Logan is such a self-interested douche that even when he’s supposedly admitting a mess-up he promotes himself”. This is stupid analysis. Any overview of his history with content posting shows that he will get millions of views eating a bowl of cereal or just making a goofy face. This is clearly the intent behind the line “I get views” as he is accurately noting that he doesn’t need publicity stunts to shock people into watching his videos – he already a major player, son. He had an interesting subject and something interesting happened while he executed that subject and he included those points of interest. That’s literally his job, my dudes.

Reality TV = Real Moments…
What’s the biggest knock on “reality tv”? It’s so ubiquitous, everyone knows the answer is some variation of “it has no REALITY” harr harr. Accusations of staged scenes and clearly scripted moments on shows that are supposed to be spontaneous have been the criticism of the medium since it has existed. Now, something unscripted and shocking and REAL happens, and every wannabe nanny rushes to wag their finger at that too? No ones making you think it’s awesome entertainment but your attacks are invalid.

Those are the main points I have based on what I’ve seen dummies say about it so far. Like I said – I’ll update the post after I’ve watched the video and either tear into myself for being so profusely wrong, or do a victory lap at how right I was, or maybe some of both (but I doubt it will be both. this seems like a cut and dry type of thing).

UPDATE 1/10/18: YouTube throws Logan Paul under the bus and removes him as a preferred ad partner and cancels his YouTube Red projects in response to this nonsense. Disgraceful.

Nootropic startup’s “brain hack” product less effective than a cup of coffee

This start-up raised millions to sell ‘brain hacking’ pills, but its own study found coffee works better

That’s the headline to this CNBC article, and the story that follows doesn’t betray that thesis. Unfortunately, its stories like these that give casual observers the wrong idea about the actual options available to people to be able to improve and maintain a healthy brain.

The report above is about a startup I’m not previously-familiar with called HVMN, which was originally called the much more descriptive Nootrobox, which they should have kept. Nootropics are brain enhancers and a box of those things is essentially what the company is making and selling so why tinker with the name when it succinctly nails your whole business?

Whatever.

Their product, SPRINT is labeled as a “cognitive enhancement” and was put in medical trials against caffeine and, as the headline states – coffee was more effective in those tests than the SPRINT supplement. As I buy and make and think about selling my own Nootropic blends, this perked my interest but I didn’t find anything very interesting under further scrutiny. When looking at the ingredients of SPRINT, I could have saved them the trouble of hiring a study they would later try to have the name of their product removed from by just telling them the result.

I already knew the findings of the study, not because I’m psychic or a good guesser – it’s just right here in the known capabilities of the ingredients. Nothing boosts concentration better than caffeine and nicotine – in other words – “drugs”. Everything else is long term health and improvement in ability over time. its like steroids vs protein and creatine. The former will jack you up (with downsides) while the former(s) will aid, sustain and facilitate your muscle growth.

It’s poor practice to make fanstasical claims on things that are “only” just “really good for you” because then when your magic is debunked, the legitimate goodness gets thrown out in the court of public opinion with it.

Plus, I read that former Yahoo! CEO Melissa Mayer invested in the company and that should have been a tip off because everything she is involved in is overhyped, underperforming, one-dimensional marketing fluff. When I said that in a message to someone, I was sarcastically retorted “you mean i can’t trust the judgment of this woman who sat behind a roped-off throne at the company Christmas party?” – which was a new tidbit for me. That eccentricity makes me like her more cuz I thought she was just a bland social-justice hire failure but she remains a figure lacking in the talent that the narrative built around her begged her to fulfill.

But the difference between healthy things that aid you over time and things that cause immediate measurable improvement are pretty big and providers of all-natural supplements often drink their own kool-aid marketing and go off the deep end on what their products can do.

Looking at the ingredients, Sprint is only “okay” and not a great supplement. It’s tyrosine, theanine, vinpocetine and B-vitamins with caffeine. That combo is the cheap stuff that’s available in any number of brain pills on Amazon plus vinpocetine (the only premium ingredient in that list). no neurotransmitters like GABA or plant stuff like bacopa, or oat straw or mucana pruriens (legume that helps dopamine production).

AlphaBrain has all of those things and more. I only know about most of these things from reverse engineering alpha brain years back and studying which things are study based proven to have an effect and it’s still the best product for brain health and performance I know of. I still take all its stuff separately though for not a whole lot more per alpha-pill at higher dosage.

Critics of James O’Keefe are prematurely dancing on his grave

Activist journalist James O’Keefe’s organization Project Veritas got one of their undercover personalities found out by the Washington Post and for some reason this is supposed to be a big deal. It isn’t, of course. O’Keefe’s projects are fishing expeditions that use undercover individuals to infiltrate organizations and report impropriety, illegal activity, or revelation of bias and internal conspiracy that contradicts and individual or organizations public presentation. Just like with actual-fishing, not every one of your lures gets a bite and that’s basically what happened here – as has happened dozens of times before with Veritas – but this time the spin is that the target (this time, The Washington Post) smelled the rat and exposed that they were targeted. Point for WashPo but that’s more of a side note than it is an actual story. Except it’s being treated as an actual-story in a transparent motivation to discredit and hopefully destroy O’Keefe – which is embarrassing because there’s just nothing there to make a big story out of. If these O’Keefe critics were smarter they would use this as a dismissive “lol – look at this cheap trick this guy tried. FAIL” type of short form “follies from Amateur Hour” commentary instead of the path his haters just can’t help themselves from taking by screaming “HA! SEE? BOOM! YOU SUCK!”. Oy vey you guys – chill…

If you think I’m exaggerating the goofy glee over a story that amounts to “a political journalist tried a sting and got stung” (I just made that up and am now disappointed in all the outlets who failed to use that turn of phrase themselves), take this piece on Mediate with the headline “Everyone Points and Laughs at James O’Keefe’s Incredibly Embarrassing Journalism Blunder”. It’s true that there is a great deal of pointing and laughing at O’Keefe over this, but there’s just no “blunder” here which is why there are no signs O’Keefe is embarrassed. Why would he be? In fact, he smartly leveraged the failure as a fundraising point and didn’t do so in a weasely “defeat means victory!” BS kind of way – he just straight up said that one of his operatives had their cover blown and the other reports that were successful in the same operation now need to be rushed to print to beat the Post from stealing the narrative.

That’s a frank and candid admission that doesn’t dodge anything and bluntly states the terms of the game he’s playing. So how is the media responding to that? With headlines like this:

But… it didn’t “blow up in his face” and he’s just claiming that he’s a Winner after Losing… he admitted a fail and put it in context of other items that are fair game for scrutiny just like any other reportage – so why this insistence on smearing him (complete with the unflattering stock photo trick of him mid-sentence so he’s making a derp face) with misleading innuendo?

Commentary Magazine gets the set-up right and the conclusion all wrong with a piece titled “Conservative Media Give Up“.

Over the course of two farcical hours, O’Keefe inadvertently established that the Washington Post’s reporters were pros, that the Post’s reporting on Moore was water-tight, and that his own organization—and Moore’s supporters, by extension—had little regard for the victims of sexual assault. After all, they had hired an activist to portray one toward a petty and political end, thus cheapening the experience of legitimate survivors.

All this is rather loathsome, and O’Keefe’s organization is due all the opprobrium it is receiving and more. But it also illustrates a condition that is rendering conservative activist media impotent: They have stopped caring about their audience.

Huh?… The first paragraph is legit but what is described right afterward is the exact opposite of what it says.

The thesis was that The Washington Post was so politically biased against Republicans that they were eager, in a politically activist (as opposed to traditional-journalistic) sense, to dive onto tabloid dirt about a Senate candidate in order to torpedo their election. O’Keefe tested this thesis. That’s his only “crime” he’s being pilloried for and that’s not a crime at all – it’s the accepted standard practice of thesis testing…

The same article even links to video O’Keefe released showing the Post’s national security reporter stating that his papers editorial board is being too hard on President Trump – mockingly adding “some bombshell”, as a way of bolstering the articles thesis that O’Keefe has “given up” on journalism and is “actively courting ignorance” in their audience. This makes no sense. O’Keefe had a thesis that the Post was unjustifiably harsh on Republicans and tested the thesis with undercover actors. He provided evidence for the thesis, got busted on one of his lures, and probably had a dozen others that just didn’t lead anywhere. So what? I too would call it a sarcastic “bombshell” (ie: not a bombshell) that the Washington Post has an anti-Republican bias, but you can’t take that position in the same article you praise what Pro’s at reporting that outlet is.

What this all amounts to is, ironically, that anti-Conservative-Media criticism has given up (even though to many degrees it never really tried). To do a take down of a figure, situation, or ideology, you have to actually take-it-down… Unfortunately however, ever since the G-Dubya years, Leftist criticism has sadly amounted to just mocking a misstep on on the other side in degrees far outside the parameters of what it merits as a mock-worthy or discrediting event. Whether it’s Bush getting a shoe thrown at him, or trying to open a locked door, or Trump tweeting something incendiary or goofy or an org like Project Veritas having a reporters cover blown amidst other successful finds – the focus is all wrong and it fails at what its attempting to do, which is tear down the individual involved.

Former supporters turn on Romney and embrace the “dog on the roof” meme

This one is a political-nerd thing that requires some back story to it, but:

In the wake of the news that former Massachusetts Governor and 2012 Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney will likely run for Senate in Utah in 2018, his detractors have resurfaced the old “dog on the roof” smear that still makes no sense to me. The attack is from the 2007 presidential primary Romney lost to John McCain (who went on to lose the election to Barack Obama in the 2008 election) in where a story the Romney’s told about their family trips including their family dog going with them in a dog carrier on the roof of their car being alleged as some kind of horrible thing – evidently by people who have never traveled with dogs in an automobile before (summary: they *don’t* like to be in the cab of a car and much prefer to stick their heads out the window, or, if possible – be in the open bed of a truck during the traveling. A roof dog carrier is like that, except safer).

This one from a reporter at the conservative Washington Free Beacon incomprehensibly depicts the tortured dog meme being a stand-in for “common sense conservatism” riding on Senator Romney’s car down a road of unchecked Trumpism… huh?
https://twitter.com/HashtagGriswold/status/923977076373426177

Romney was a Trump critic who opposed his nomination…but this is alleging that he will speed down the road to no longer check the president at the expense of what is known as “common sense conservatism”?

If you can explain this metaphor to me, please do…

Why you shouldn’t smoke weed or get old

President Trump (lol. I keep forgetting that’s a real thing) met with Henry Kissinger today  –  a news item I wouldn’t bother reporting if I didn’t have something funny to share over it. But first lets get the news part out of the way:

 President Donald Trump met with Henry Kissinger in the Oval Office on Tuesday, calling the former secretary of state a “man of immense, talent, experience and knowledge.”

Kissinger, who worked under former Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, has been advising Trump on foreign policy matters since his presidential campaign. The president conferred with Kissinger at the White House in May, the same day he met with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. Trump and Kissinger met twice in New York before he became president.

And now your dessert:

I don’t even know why I’m posting this, really. I go against the mainstream popular rejection of the anti-Drug PSA’s the meme is mocking (some of the claims about crime might have been overblown, but ones like this that note what a loser you can broadcast yourself as if you make getting high on tha weedz a major part of your life are just objectively true and humorously depicted in the visuals, sooooo… i’m going with “decent art” instead of “loathsome propaganda” on those) and poor Kissinger’s crimes are just “being Republican” and “being old” (and also maybe actual crimes) but whatever. It couldn’t be passed up.

Credit to this goes to this person on Twitter & Wyatt for finding it in the first place because he’s a Kissinger-phile and stitching the images together because I told him to.

Miller, Tiller, and Price: 3 old white guys walk into a bar

Breaking: comedian, Larry Miller, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, and as-of-now Former HHS Secretary Tom Price are apparently different people.

In related news: the first guy in the picture is Tom Price has resigned. I know you don’t care, and you have no reason to, so here are the quick hits:

HHS Secretary is the leader of the United States Department of Health and Human Services. Tom Price was the guy in charge. He was an advocate for doctors.

He got hassled in the press over flying in private jets at taxpayers expense even though he claimed he was reimbursing tax payers for those flights. So he resigned because of all the bad publicity – and yes, he reimbursed the United States Treasury for his private flights, like he said.

Here he is performing his famous “Five Levels of Drinking” bit on stage in the 90s:

*Addendum: it’s been brought to my attention that this might be Tillerson in the above comic routine. Standby for further research.

Update: Interesting observation – Every time the President focuses on policy, that Cabinet secretary disappears.

Pregnant local news anchor’s water breaks live on air and she finishes the segment

“Breaking News!” That’s the opening to the DailyMail’s report of this story and I couldn’t not-repeat it. I cringe at “you go girl!” style posts lauding someone for doing what they’re either supposed to or what someone of another gender or background would not be celebrated for if such were the case of the story – but this is legit. A human person growing inside another person pops the sack that begins the “get me TF outta here” process and the host-body continues the duties of her job – in this case talking about the new character limits on Twitter – and waits until they go to commercial to continue the birthing process? You go girl!


35 Year Old NBC News 4’s Natalie Pasquarella

The new Megyn Kelly and new Megyn Kelly show are both…confusing

Megyn Kelly was a Fox News contributor and sometimes-host for many years before getting her own primetime show on the network titled The Kelly File, which was very good. When she announced she would be leaving Fox News for a new hosting gig at NBC, it annoyed a lot of her fans because they felt abandoned and that Kelly had used Fox and it’s conservative viewer base to gain fame and fortune and then use that popularity as leverage to leave that network and that base and go to a rival mainstream source.

As a media observer, I thought there was definitely an element of “you’re supposed to dance with the one that brung you” to her departure, but also empathized with the move as she seemed to be increasingly out of place at Fox News in the era of Trump and while I personally saw that as an opportunity for her to take her show in more of a personal-story and investigative-reporting angle and less of the “news of the day” interviews and commentary – I could understand her wanting to take another opportunity with another network. While Fox was a good fit for her, I could imagine Kelly breaking big stories and see her bring her center-right feminist anti-Trumpism methodical interrogations to both a wider set of interview targets than would be willing to go on a Fox News show (cowards), and a wider audience than just the type that is willing to tune into the Fox News Channel for news and commentary. Especially of interest to me would be the mirror-image of her previous life she would be displaying at NBC – because at Fox News she was only regarded as conservative because that’s the general slant of the network at large, but Kelly in particular showed no reverence to conservative ideology, Republican party politics, or any such movement beliefs.

In other words: at Fox News, Megyn Kelly was an outsider voice providing the logic and prosecutorial deconstructions of things that don’t make any sense that the networks conservatives loved, while slipping in factual corrections, challenges to right-wing dogma, and a female-centric advocacy angle the networks viewers were open to but not necessarily clamoring for and thus got in their news diet stealth style like a dog eating its medicine wrapped in a slice of cheese.
At NBC, she would be an outsider voice providing the reverse: at a network with typically left-wing reporting choice and editorial coverage bias, Kelly would largely fit in in most thesis’ and tone, while slipping in factual corrections, challenges to those left-wing dogmas, and a female-centric voice for more reason based arguments than is present in the mostly emotionally driven Left. It would be interesting, I thought, to see Megyn deconstruct things like “no, it’s not okay to ‘punch Nazi’s” or gently remind viewers that Trump’s handling of recent hurricanes hasn’t been the neglectful “let them all drown” policy that many of his critics are opportunistically decrying.

Well, anyway – Never got to see any of that, because that’s not what either Megyn Kelly wanted or what NBC wanted for her.

Megyn debuted on NBC on Sunday nights with a show called Sunday Night with Megyn Kelly. It wasn’t very bad, but it wasn’t very good. Mostly it was just nothing. Nothing in the way of “nothing special” and “not a game changer” or even a dial mover in any way. She interviewed Putin. Which was nice for her I guess but the results weren’t anything big for news media consumers and didn’t get any love from news media critics. The observations in this article by John Ziegler were all much more interesting than the actual interview.

The only other interview I saw from this show was a Q&A with comedian Ricky Gervais which just kept had me thinking “why?…”. I like Ricky and I like Megyn and I don’t hate this interview, but… what’s the point? It was good for a podcast, but out-of-place as a Sunday Night news magazine item that appeared to be surrounded by other equally ho-hum items instead of being the moment of relief among other important or heavy toned topics.

Then Sunday Night with Megyn Kelly ended and Today with Megyn Kelly began. Today with Megyn Kelly took everything I expected from Kelly’s next chapter of life and was confused at not seeing in the Sunday Night and tripled down on it in this iteration…

“The truth is, I am kind of done with politics for now,” she declared in the inaugural episode of her Today show. and sure enough, the show was anything-related-to-news free.

I watched a couple clips and quickly thought “I miss the old Megyn Kelly“….

Rather than politics, she explained, her new show would focus on, well, emotions. “Have a laugh with us, a smile, sometimes a tear, and maybe a little hope to start your day,” she said. “Some fun! That’s what we want to be doing. Some fun.”

In one segment, she had a fashion expert convince women that they could, indeed, pull off high-waisted pants. In another, she made roast chicken. When the actor Russell Brand — who, in better days, might have been a worthy political adversary — confessed that he worries that he doesn’t look good enough and that his body isn’t good enough, she interrupted him. “You do. It is.”

It was the antithesis of the woman who was once willing to give up the support of her conservative audience to speak truth to power. The former Megyn Kelly came to slay, whether you liked it or not. The new Megyn Kelly is “so excited — so excited” and “also a little nervous; bear with me, please!” With every gesture, every word, every look, the new Megyn Kelly seems to be trying to convey one thing: Like me.

This was disappointing to me because the Megyn Kelly that was popular was not so because she was so “likeable” definitely not because she cared if you liked her – she was popular because she commanded respect through professional execution of prosecutorial talent. It is what made her goofier lighter moments on Fox so much more endearing and human – because they were coming from a professional. Ironically, this excited and emotion driven persona seems so…less human.

In another post, the previously cited John Ziegler voices the same reactions and concerns as I thought about the new show, although doing so under a harsher headline than I would choose myself that asks “So, Was the Old Megyn Kelly a Fraud, or is this New Version the Phony?“…

I get that humans can sometimes evolve and that as a media personality you have to remold yourself to fit the nature of the target audience. But what has happened with Megyn Kelly makes some of the transformations of Madonna or Lady Gaga’s seem rather tame by comparison.

The promotional lead up to Monday’s first show set a new standard for desperation. Each promo almost literally exuded estrogen in a frantic, obviously focused-grouped, attempt to show stay-at-home moms just how much Kelly is like them. The message seemed to be, “See, she’s rich, beautiful, famous, got attacked by our president, has kids and lady parts… just like you!”

The over-the-top efforts of the rest of the NBC Today Show staff to welcome her to their TV family have been so contrived as to make them appeared provoked by serious threats from the corporate suits who overpaid for Kelly’s services and are now very invested in trying to salvage this possibly doomed maneuver. However, it all feels like they are trying too hard to sell fancy cat food to a public which usually has an uncanny ability to smell inauthenticity, and may very well simply turn up its collective nose.

In fact, lack of genuineness seems to be biggest problem Kelly’s new show has. I doubt many of her old fans from Fox News will find her complete shedding of, and overt disdain for, her former persona and subject manner appealing. Nor will they find her attempt to be the combination of Oprah Winfrey and Ellen DeGeneres (wrapped in the package of a pretty, straight, white woman) appealing. I also doubt the new “MSM” viewers are likely to completely buy this new, super soft, version of her any more than MSNBC loyalists took to Trump supporter Greta Van Susteren (who lasted only a few months there).

Roger Ailes was right about Megyn Kelly, why was Megyn Kelly wrong about Megyn Kelly? From the NY Times piece I quoted earlier:

Even as he was commenting on her bra choices, Roger Ailes himself was giving Ms. Kelly savvy advice that was, in a way, progressive. As she notes in her book, Mr. Ailes told her at the beginning of her career “to not try so hard to be perfect” and to show “who I really am.” Who she really was turned out to be smart, aggressive and impossibly quick. A former lawyer, she developed an adversarial approach that made her something of an anomaly among talk show hosts: Whether she was sparring with Anthony Weiner over President Barack Obama’s tax policy or with Donna Brazile over the Democratic National Committee’s hacked emails, Megyn Kelly was not there to make friends.