I’ve heard the usual critique of Mitt Romney—stiff, reserved, out of touch—so many times I assume that it’s a pretty solid consensus. Even Romney’s top strategists concede he isn’t comfortable talking about himself.
But Megyn Kelly thinks that assessment is way overplayed.
The idea “that Romney has difficulty coming off as a real person,” trumpeted by the mainstream media, “there’s a little bias in that,” the Fox News anchor tells me in a video interview. “Really? Says who?...I don’t think that should be a headline in a straight newspaper: ‘Romney needs to prove he’s an actual man!’”
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As for the coverage of Barack Obama, Kelly says, “Much of the press is still hoping that they were right the first time around. That’s the danger of planting an ideological flag as a reporter.” But while convinced that the press “leans left,” she says, “I think they’re giving him a little bit of a harder time now.”
Kelly also spoke about her Newsweek piece on “My Favorite Mistake,” in which she talked about how her response to teenage bullying was to refuse to show a hint of vulnerability. After a conversation with her boss Roger Ailes, “it was the first time it dawned on me that this isn’t selling, that not everyone is buying the package.”
Finally, Kelly doubled down on her insistence that she doesn’t look good in the morning, before the Fox hair and makeup people have performed their magic. She says she told a producer, “Keep perpetuating that lie that I am some sort of natural beauty. But it’s not true, trust me.” She even talked about having the “Fox bells and whistles,” including false eyelashes.
