In my post about Kelly Ripa last week, I wrote that they set her up to fail. Click here for a refresher. “They” would be the network executives, who thought it would be a good idea to not tell her that they were making a profound change to her show – you know, the one WITH HER NAME ON IT – without telling her. She was only informed about it less than an hour before the rest of the world found out.
Kelly Ripa returned to work today. She and Michael Strahan entered the studio holding hands before the camera found her on a one shot just off the side of their desk where she directly addressed the situation, beginning and ending with humour but, at no point, did she apologise. Here’s the video:
Those who oppose Kelly will say that she threw a tantrum and acted spoiled and should have just kept working. Well, as she just told us in her statement, she’s been working, like a good girl, a nice girl, for 26 years. For which she’s been compensated handsomely, financially. But all that good behaviour and that big paycheque still didn’t earn her the right to be part of a conversation that directly impacts a show with her name on it – and remember, this is the second time it’s happened because when Regis was on his way she wasn’t given the courtesy of a heads-up either. Are we saying that as long as the money is there it means that we shouldn’t be heard? Here, take your paycheque and shut the f-ck up.
So she sits out a few days and they offer her an apology and an assurance that Live! is a network priority, and she talks about how much her work family means to her, that it’s a second home to her, and, well, the implication there is that her behaviour has not only secured her job but the jobs of the crew and producers for the foreseeable future. And, as she notes, she’s become part of a conversation about “communication, consideration, and respect” in the workplace.
What, though, did it cost her? This is what’s eating at me. And that’s probably what’s been eating at her. That SHE had to demand the respect that she already should have earned by being a “nice” and “good” working girl. That SHE had to risk her reputation while an anonymous group of men in suits behind glass walls arbitrarily made decisions about her, for her, without telling her. That they only said sorry to her after she pointed out to them why they were wrong in the first place.
She’s just trucking along, showing up for her job bringing in the audience, making the sponsors happy, and then one day, they decide for her that they’ve taken away her work husband, like her actual work husband, and she has to be the one to take on the extra work to tell them that they f-cked up?
If you look at it that way, I’m not sure that Kelly Ripa goes home today feeling like she won.
Here's Kelly leaving her home in New York this morning with her husband.
