Megyn Kelly jury duty tweet doesn't court laughs

Megyn Kelly, whose namesake NBC "Today" hour was canceled in October after she defended the concept of dressing in blackface for Halloween, joked in a tweet Thursday about her current employment.

"About to begin jury duty this morning," wrote the former Fox News anchor, 48. "Slightly concerned about the effectiveness of the 'I'm far too busy' excuse this time."

Kelly, who practiced as an attorney before shifting to broadcast journalism, reached a settlement last Friday with NBC News formalizing her firing. She will receive the remaining $30 million of her three-year, $69 million contract, reported Variety.

Kelly's joke did not appear to sit well with social-media commenters, some of whom noted that there are 800,000 federal employees furloughed or working without pay during the current government shutdown.

"People aren't getting paid for work they are doing protecting this country," tweeted one person on her feed. "Active duty military are at food banks right now trying to feed their families and you are on Twitter complaining about JD." Another wrote, "Musing about how to get out of your civic duty after getting a multi million dollar payout to stop doing your job when many other people legitimately encounter financial and work-related hardships in order to serve on juries is so funny."

Kelly in October had apologized for a segment on "Megyn Kelly Today” in which she mused, in reference to blackface, "But what is racist? Because truly you do get in trouble if you are a white person who puts on blackface on Halloween or a black person who puts on whiteface for Halloween." She added, triggering denials from her upstate New York community, that "Back when I was a kid, that was OK as long as you were dressing up as, like, a character."

On Monday, NBCUniversal CEO Steve Burke told Variety that Kelly "was a huge talent" but that her program was on "at the wrong time of day. In hindsight we shouldn't have done it." He said the decision to hire her was his. "I went over and told [Kelly] she should come here."