Sometimes it doesn’t pay to be nice.

That’s another thing the mainstream media is clueless about. Now that everybody gets an opinion, now that we’re contemptuous of those with riches and fame, when you’re nice to those with status, when you suck up and play like you’re one big family, we puke.

Of course Megyn Kelly is attractive. More than that. Not the toppermost, but way damn up there, even if she was aided by plastic surgery. But that does not mean she has talent, that does not mean she deserves accolades, that does not mean her coronation sits well with so many of us. But that’s another feature of the industrial hype machine, they’ve got to build ’em way up, until the ratings go down and the star is plowed under and someone else is anointed. Today you don’t earn your stripes, your publicist maneuvers to have your story told over and over again in the press, creating a veritable turntable hit, something that appears important but the public has rejected.

Furthermore, in an every day news cycle, we had to hear about this interview forever. It was akin to the Bobby Riggs/Billie Jean King tennis match. The battle of the sexes. But despite Riggs playing Trump, being nice to King at the beginning of the contest, Billie Jean was fierce and roasted him. If only Megyn had done the same to the Donald. If only instead of softballs she’d zeroed in, nailed him. Of course he would have whined, trashed her on Twitter thereafter, but that was what we were rooting for. Especially after the advance hype. Some zingers. And we at home are the ones who are scoring, not the scribes in the newspapers who all got it wrong re Trump.

And we scored this interview a zero. Maybe a two on an absolute scale.

Don’t give Roger Ailes that much credit. He blew the Trump opportunity to begin with, furthermore, despite trashing his cable news competitors his audience is tiny and aged, Fox News is equivalent to Oldchella, get the geezers to overpay and rattle their jewelry one more time before they drop dead. Give Ailes credit for going with a young ‘un, but he squandered the opportunity.

Then again, does Kelly deserve the opportunity?

Overseas they call them “news readers.” Because that’s what the anchors do, read what the writers have written. There’s no pretense that the person on screen is a genius. But in America, we laud the one on camera, those out of sight are out of mind. But even so, over the decades we’ve descended from Walter Cronkite and John Chancellor to a bunch of average intellects propelled by their looks. This works for no one.

And to have Kelly selling a book at the end…

Who cares?

I hoped that paradigm died with the fifteen minutes that turned into the better part of a decade of fame for Sarah Palin before she became a laughable joke that even the right wing resented. That’s right, Ms. Palin resigned her governorship and then the whole damn family sold out to the highest bidder, doing reality TV, having the last laugh on an American public that reveres money. She won, no doubt. But Kelly is no Palin, and I mean this in a good way, Megyn’s not a nitwit. So why is she playing nitwit games?

Have a backbone. Stand up for what’s right…truth, justice and the American way.

But Fox News is biased and she’s just a pawn in their game. And the American way is the true believer rugged individual, who goes off into the wilderness to make something of themselves, not beholden to usual strictures, an inspiration for the rest of us. And Megyn pulled herself up by her bootstraps, throwing overboard a legal career, but ending up a middle manager.

We want people to believe in.

And we believe in those who push the envelope, who have insight, who do it their own way. They’re a beacon in the wilderness, and believe me we need the light, it hasn’t been morning in America for a very long time, unless you’re rich it’s perpetual darkness. We want to believe someone is on our side. That’s what got Bernie and Trump there to begin with.

But despite Paul Krugman, the liberal economist in the “New York Times,” excoriating Sanders’ economic policies, we’ve got no real scrutiny of Trump on the right, because they’ve been selling falsehoods forever and they don’t want the truth revealed, that their policies benefit the fat cats and no one else. And now this special benefited Kelly and no one else. In that it made so many aware she had a book. It was her Kanye moment.

Although Kanye would have done it totally differently. That’s what we love about him, he doesn’t seem to care whether we like him or not. He’s Trump on steroids with a modicum of talent to boot. Charlie Sheen may be in the rearview mirror, but Kanye’s winning all the while.

Does everything have to be smoke and mirrors? Does everything have to be about the sell? In a coarse society riven with online hate do we have to watch elite club members pay lip service to each other?

Megyn Kelly’s credibility took a huge hit last night.

And at the end of the day, that’s all you’ve got, your credibility, your word, your identity. Your money won’t keep you from cancer and it might get you in the door but it won’t buy you real friends.

I wanted sparks. I wanted news. I wanted Megyn to get up on her high heels and pierce the Trump veil.

But she can’t. It’s not in her character. Her boss told her not to. And it’s only techies who don’t listen to their boss.

But Steve Jobs was a hero who changed the world.

And Mark Zuckerberg owns it. Hell, the right wing has its knickers in a twist believing Facebook news is biased. Imagine that, a guy in a hoodie wagging the dog.

That’s what rock stars used to do.

And we counted on the press to interpret it all for us.

But those days are in the rearview mirror.

Just gimme some truth.

It’s lonely out here, I want to belong.

But not to a club of phonies kissing ass believing commerce is everything.