Megyn Kelly's Career Implodes

You probably don’t watch the Today show at 9:00 a.m. so you probably missed an amazing career implosion. You see, Megyn Kelly, formerly of Fox News, an up-and-coming star in the network, walked away from Fox and into the arms of NBC. In place of her 9:00 p.m. Fox show, NBC offered her a 9:00 a.m. morning show.

It was a mismatch. Kelly does not have a morning show temperament or personality. She is clever and witty and acerbic. She had real presence on a news channel. But, she was never going to be a lifestyle reporter, testing new recipes and offering decorating tips.

Kelly had been offered a gargantuan salary increase at Fox. Yet, she had burned so many bridges at the network that she had little choice but to depart. On the most obvious level, she had denounced head honcho Roger Ailes for sexual harassment. On the less obvious level, she was negotiating her new contract in public, through orchestrated leaks.

Considering that Ailes had made her who she was, her attack on him seemed to manifest disloyalty and ingratitude. Negotiating in public made it look as though she was disloyal to the network, even that she was working to damage it.

When she left Fox, Kelly had no friends at Fox. Some have recently suggested, that what with her mediocre morning show being canceled, she would return to Fox, the answer from the network was, in so many words: You can’t go home again.

Several other angles deserve mention. Kelly was a friend of Sheryl Sandberg, the high priestess of social media. Thus, she was leaning in. Few women have ever found a better way to blow up their careers, than by leaning in. Whatever else it is supposed to do, leaning in, as a strategy, is self-assertive, a form of macho posturing, the sort you would learn at a hippy retreat.

But leaning in is all about Me. It is a Me first effort to extract concessions and to extort salary raises by accusing one’s employer of being a bigoted sexist.

Recall that New York Times Executive Editor, Jill Abramson, another Sandberg pal, decided one day to lean in to her boss, Pinch Sulzberger. Having discovered that her male predecessor has been paid more than she was, she leaned in and asked for a raise. Sulzberger fired her on the spot.

The Kelly implosion is more complex. I suspected at the time and still suspect that NBC lured Kelly because it wanted to hurt Fox News. Given that Kelly was a star, the anchor of the evening hour broadcasts, the central figure in Fox-sponsored presidential debates, the important point was not filling a gap at 9:00 a.m.-- where there was no real gap to fill-- but damaging Fox News political reporting.

Thus, Kelly fell into a trap. She was a dupe, a tool, used by NBC and by her friends in social media to hurt Fox. Now that she served that purpose, they will happily toss her out.

By allowing people who had an ideologically driven agenda to influence her, Megyn Kelly blew up a very promising career. Hers is a tale of hybris, of overwhelming arrogance that was played by people who understood the game better than she did. When she left Fox Kelly said that she wanted to have more time to bring up her children. Right now, it looks as though she is going to get her wish.