I resent having to have an opinion about this latest stupid chattering-class outrage du jour. But I gotta pay the rent.

And so does Megyn Kelly, which likely explains the effusiveness of the apology.

Here’s the crime, caught on tape:

Megyn Kelly wonders what the big deal is about blackface pic.twitter.com/07yvYDuAYe — Tommy Christopher (@tommyxtopher) October 23, 2018

The most interesting thing about the fallout was how many people at her own network, even her own show, leaped to stomp her over it. Given the troubled history of the NBC-Kelly marriage, you’re left to wonder if that was a routine matter of media types scrambling at an opportunity to show off their own wokeness or people seizing a chance to grind a disliked colleague’s face in a high-profile pile of sh*t.

Two years of pent-up bitterness and backbiting about Megyn Kelly have finally come to a head at NBC News… Kelly has many critics and rivals within the famed news division — people who say she never should have been hired from Fox News, certainly not for such a huge salary, and certainly not for a morning show like “Megyn Kelly Today.” These NBC staffers routinely call Kelly’s show a “disaster” and another disparaging terms.

As for Kelly’s apology, I don’t know how seriously to take it. It’s impossible to believe she didn’t know that blackface, particularly when worn by adults, is offensive to blacks. Has Kelly never seen old clips of minstrel shows, with the white stars in black make-up clowning like halfwit imbeciles? The five-inch-thick fake lips they used to create with greasepaint were not a sign of their abiding respect for the dignity of the black community, shall we say. But Kelly knows that; she’s well educated, obviously very smart. My read on the clip above is that she was trying to make a simple point about intent. If your Halloween costume is clearly meant as a sincere tribute to someone black whom you admire, doesn’t your intent in celebrating that person count for something? If you’re the world’s biggest LeBron fan, can’t you throw on a Lakers jersey and a yellow headband and a ton of bronzer and go trick-or-treating?

As an adult? No, you cannot. As a kid? Not so much then either, although it’s your parents who’ll get the funny looks, not you. All blackface is discouraged in order to maintain an absolute taboo against the minstrel-style form that’s designed to demean. If Kelly thinks that’s silly, she should have had the courage of her convictions. But that’s easy to say when you’re not being knifed on all sides, as she is: NBCers don’t like her because of her disproportionate salary-to-viewership ratio, liberals don’t like her because of her Fox pedigree, conservatives don’t like her because of her history with Trump. And if she had doubled down, even on the narrow point that it’s not fair to assume that everyone who wants to dress up as someone black had bad intentions, she would have endured endless days of lectures about how she “still doesn’t get it” or whatever. The smart thing to do when you’re the subject of a “sensitivity” feeding frenzy is simply to admit error and cut the hostage video, as mawkishly as possible. That’s what she did.

Exit question: The 30-second standing ovation of this particular hostage video is a bit much, don’t you think?