Tag Archives: Megyn Kelly

'Quack like a duck'?

Megyn Kelly was right to be aghast at what Melissa Harris-Perry asked of the outgoing U.S. attorney general, Eric Holder.

The Fox News host was astonished — as she should have been — that Perry would ask the AG to “quack like a duck” on her nationally televised talk show the other day.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/02/10/megyn-kelly-melissa-perry-duck-eric-holder-interview_n_6652134.html

I didn’t see the interview live. I’ve watched a recording of it. I’m wondering as well: What on God’s green Earth is Perry thinking?

Holder has served as the nation’s top law enforcement official since Barack Obama became president in 2009. Yes, he’s made some mistakes along the way and he’s incurred the wrath of many Americans — notably congressional Republicans — over the way he’s run his office.

But I do believe he deserves a lot more respect than what he seemed to be getting from Perry, who is as friendly to the attorney general as any of the talking heads working on cable news networks.

Kelly couldn’t stand the sight and sound of Perry’s bizarre question exchange with Holder.

Neither can I, truth be told.

 

Let’s be self-aware, Dr. Krauthammer

Charles Krauthammer was a psychiatrist before he became a political pundit.

As such, he surely had some training in medical school about self-awareness, and how to counsel patients who perhaps lack that important emotional quality.

I was struck, therefore, by Dr. Krauthammer’s own lack of self-awareness as he lambasted President Obama for what he called the president’s “repulsive” lack of respect for those on the other side of any given political debate.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2014/01/23/krauthammer_obamas_self-righteousness_and_refusal_to_give_respect_to_the_other_side_is_repulsive.html

Krauthammer told Fox News Channel’s Megyn Kelly that the president thinks he’s always right and that his foes are always wrong and that he shows his arrogance regularly when he puts down his adversaries for their so-called “lack of patriotism.”

Isn’t the good doctor listening to the other side? Has he not heard Republicans step way beyond the bounds of decency when they criticize things such as, say, the Affordable Care Act. For that matter, he ought to listen to himself when he levels such criticism at Barack Obama or those allied with the president. All that talk about arrogance and self-assuredness can be directed right back at the individual who makes such a claim in the first place.

I’ve lost count of the number of ACA foes who have proclaimed it to be the “worst legislation” in U.S. history, or those who contend it is the moral equivalent of a terrorist attack on the U.S. health care system. Gosh, I would rate any of the many laws enacted that sanctioned slavery to be quite a bit worse than the ACA.

Does the doctor forget about all the times former Republican U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich proclaimed Democrats to be the “enemy of ‘normal Americans'”? How about the ridiculous assertions that many tea party Republicans have made regarding Obama’s citizenship, allegiance to the country or whether he’s “American” enough to hold the office to which he’s been elected twice?

The other side — Dr. Krauthammer’s side — has plenty of examples of precisely the kind of repulsiveness he lays at Barack Obama’s feet.

Christmas is time to suspend barbs

Let’s agree to suspend the barbs until after Christmas.

However, allow me this brief observation — sans criticism — regarding the ethnicity of Jesus Christ and Santa Claus.

The issue surfaced when Fox News talking head Megyn Kelly posited the notion that both Santa Claus and Jesus were white. My first thought: Who cares? My second thought: Why is Kelly even going there?

I have no answer to Thought No. 1. I frankly don’t care about Santa’s ethnicity, other than to remind Kelly and others who do care that the jolly old man — don’t let your kids read this — is a fictional character based vaguely on an actual man. Santa Claus is whatever we want him to be in our household. That’s the beauty of Santa. As Francis Pharcellus Church wrote in that wonderful editorial to Virginia O’Hanlon in the late 19th century, he exists in our hearts.

The stuff about Jesus, though, is a bit more substantial. Anthropologists looking for clues to Jesus’s appearance generally have concluded he was a dark-skinned man who looked very much the way men do in the Middle East. Having spent some time in Israel — five weeks in May-June 2009 — I can say without a doubt that the vast majority of Palestinians and others of Arabic descent have roughly the same look.

Israelis who descended from European immigrants are another matter. Some are blue-eyed blondes, some have dark hair and eyes, others have features in the middle.

And why did Kelly venture this notion — from which she retreated a little — that Santa Claus and Jesus are white men?

One word: ratings.