Megyn Kelly Essentially
Part of a series on Megyn Kelly. [View Related Entries]
About
Megyn Kelly Essentially, also known as "Euphemism Megyn Kelly", is an advice animal image macro series featuring a photo of Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly captioned with dismissive statements trivializing acts of violent crime and human rights violations.
Origin
On November 21st, 2011, Megyn Kelly appeared on Bill O’Reilly’s Fox News talk show The O’Reilly Factor to discuss the pepper spray incident that unfolded during an Occupy protest at the University of California Davis. In discussing the medical effects of pepper spray, Kelly described the volatile substance as a “food product.” Shortly after it aired, a YouTube version of the interview was shared on Gawker.[2]
Bill O’Reilly: “First of all, pepper spray -- that just burns your eyes, right?”
Megyn Kelly: “It’s like a derivative of actual pepper. It’s a food product, essentially.”
Bill O’Reilly went on to defend the officer saying, “I don’t think we have the right to Monday-morning quarterback the police. Particularly at a place like UC Davis, which is a fairly liberal campus.”
The first image macro created from Kelly's appearance was posted to Reddit[7] on November 22nd, 2011 and was captioned with "Pepper spray? / it's a food product, essentially."
Spread
On November 22nd, 2011, the original video was reshared on BuzzFeed[1], The Daily What[3] and The Examiner.[4] The same day, a petition for Kelly to “drink a full dose of pepper spray on national televsion” was submitted to Change.org[14] by Slacktory editor Nick Douglas. Also on November 22nd, Redditor Gigged submitted a post titled "Why I'm Not Upvoting Every Megyn Kelly Meme Today"[17], which included a photograph of Kelly wearing a black dress with the caption "Essentially, I just want to see her tits / and they are using the wrong goddamn picture" (shown below).
On the following day, compilations of Megyn Kelly image macros were shared on the Internet humor sites Geekosystem,[10] Uproxx[11] and BuzzFeed.[9] The series was also covered by New York radio station WNYC[15] and the Bigster.[16] Additional instances have been posted to Tumblr[8] and the /r/AdviceAnimals[13] subreddit. As of September 18th, 2012, a Quickmeme[6] page for "Megyn Kelly" has accumulated over 1600 submissions and a Facebook[12] page for "If Megyn Kelly thinks pepperspray is food she should eat it" has over 110 likes.
Notable Examples
Many of the image macros featured captions dismissing dangerous and violent circumstances as being benign.
Search Interest
Search query volume for "megyn kelly essentially" increased significally in November of 2011, the same month the first image macros were created.
External References
[1] BuzzFeed – Fox News On Pepper Spray
[2] Gawker – Fox News Starts Spinning Pepper Spray Cops
[3] The Daily What – Say What Now of the Day
[4] The Examiner – Megyn Kelly calls pepper spray a food product
[5] Reddit – Megyn Kelly
[6] Quickmeme – Megyn Kelly
[7] Reddit – Megyn Kelly on Pepper Spray
[8] Tumblr – megyn kelly
[9] BuzzFeed – The Best Of Megyn Kelly, Essentially
[10] Geekosystem – The 21 Best Megyn Kelly Memes, Essentially
[11] UpRoxx – Megyn Kelly Is A Pretty Little Hate Meme, Essentially
[12] Facebook – If Megyn Kelly thinks pepperspray is food she should eat it
[13] Reddit – megyn kelly
[14] Change.org – Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly- Eat or drink a full dose of pepper spray on national television
[15] WYNC – Opinion: Meme Patrol "Megyn Kelly, Essentially"
[16] The Bigster – The Best of the Megyn Kelly Meme
[17] Reddit – Why I'm NOT Upvoting Every Megyn Kelly Meme Today
Top Comments
ProjectENDO
Nov 23, 2011 at 09:40PM EST
Bastard1
Nov 23, 2011 at 04:25PM EST