News? How Does it Work?

2016 archive footage of CNN president Jeff Zucker every time the "Donald Trump Pandemonium Carnival" bumped CNN's ad rates up another percentage point.  

In Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead, there is a character named Gail Wynand -- a sleazy tabloid mogul who has spent a lifetime becoming wealthy and powerful by pandering the the lowest instincts of the mod.  Towards the end of the book, Wynand suddenly discovers his conscience and promises to mold the opinion of the mob to a high purpose:

"All right, it was contemptible-the whole career of the Banner. But this will vindicate everything. Dominique, I know you've never been able to understand why I've felt no shame in my past. Why I love the Banner. Now you'll see the answer. Power. I hold a power I've never tested. Now you'll see the test. They'll think what I want them to think. They'll do as I say. Because it is my city and I do run things around here. Howard, by the time you come to trial, I'll have them all twisted in such a way there won't be a jury who'll dare convict you." 

It does not end well, because Wynand finds out too late that he was never in control of the mob at all.  His only talent was getting rich from skillfully feeding the mob the tainted red meat that it wanted: pornography, scandal, violence and homilies to the wisdom of the mob.  But the minute he tried to put them in harness to a cause greater than themselves it all went to shit.  They abandoned him and turned on him as just the sort of snooty, know-it-all elitist that his own newspaper had taught them to despise.

Which brings us to this little parable about how NBC pissed away $69M on Megyn Kelly.

NBC's big bet on Megyn Kelly isn't paying off the way the network hoped. https://t.co/B5F5stQN39

— Joe Flint (@JBFlint) April 25, 2018

It never fails to crack me up me that the eight-figure-salary brain wizards who run America's news networks clearly do not have the first clue about the country in which they live and the people the purport to serve.  Because if they had come 'round these parts in the Fall of 2015 and asked any Conservative about Megyn Kelly, they'd have found out what we on the Left learned long ago from bitter experience: the most deeply held beliefs of the wingnut mob can flicked on and off like a light switch.  Which means that as long as Megyn Kelly was doing the job that Fox News hired her to do -- dressing like a soft-core porn star and looking deeply into the cow-dumb eyes of the Fox News horde while reassuring them that they're all patriotic geniuses -- her future at Fox News was golden.

But the minute she wheeled on Trump -- the minute she disrupted the smoothly integrated flow of flattering racist propaganda between Fox News and the imbeciles who watch Fox News -- the mob could be expected to treat her exactly as they had been trained to treat any other heretic: immediate discommendation.

The Fox News idiots were never going to follow her anywhere, and Megyn Kelly frankly sucks at anything other than what she has been trained to do:  whisper sweet wingnut nothings into the ears of lecherous old bigots.

Coulda saved these idiots nearly $70M, if they had just bothered to ask.

Behold, a Tip Jar!