Photos: Nathan Congleton via Getty (left), Barbara Nitke via Showtime (right)
Yesterday the prominent conservative, former Fox News employee, and journalist Megyn Kelly used her platform of 2.4 million Twitter followers to conduct her signature brand of speaking truth to power. Kelly shared a three-page letter written by Spence alumni Gabriela Baron, whose child attended the prestigious $57,385/year private all-girls school on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. In the letter, Baron expresses extreme dissatisfaction that her child, on her last day of school, was subjected to the first episode of Showtime’s Ziwe, which “discusses the phenomenon of white women” and features an interview with famous white woman author and New Yorker, Fran Leibowitz. Baron describes the satirical comedy show as an exemplification of “hate speech against white women.” In her amplifying tweet, Kelly said her own family also recently left Spence due to “growing far-left indoctrination.”
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The drama, which is funny because it involves a comedy show, Megyn Kelly, and a ridiculously expensive private school, is part of a larger and less funny mantle taken by conservatives, who aim to smear any type of perceived threat to their beliefs as proof that their children are being exposed to “Critical Race Theory,” a pervasive, vague boogeyman that Kelly has called “racist and abusive” in the past. But the funniest part? Baron’s screed reads like PR email copy, with a bit of added zhuzh to break through the clutter of an overwhelmed inbox: “[Y]ou should take the time to see what was deemed worthy of our children’s time and attention in a Spence classroom. It is available on ShowTime [sic] (you can search for Ziwe and it is Episode 1: “55%“) or online at https://sho.com/ziwe/season/1.”Kelly, a clearly media-savvy personality, must understand that she is introducing her aggrieved conservative audience to Ziwe by signal-boosting such a letter. But if she is angling for a guest spot on the show, she couldn’t have done better. And it’s not a bad idea. Megyn Kelly as an interviewee—specifically on Ziwe—has the inverse appeal of Megyn Kelly as an interviewer just about anywhere else in that it has the potential to be interesting and entertaining. In considering such an appearance, Kelly might look to a recent segment from Ziwe, which hilariously imagines if the host (and Oprah) were cast as white people—the media representation Kelly is clearly pining for.
With the backing of a major network like Showtime, Ziwe could afford to present Kelly with an array of bearded dolls of various races, and ask Kelly to pick the one true Santa. Or she could ask Kelly how much blackface is appropriate for Halloween, in today’s politically correct environment. And maybe, for the price of Spence tuition, Megyn Kelly could finally answer the question: “What is Critical Race Theory?” Representatives for ‘Ziwe’ at Showtime did not respond to a request for comment at the time of publishing.