Laura Ingraham doesn’t understand all the fuss about Confederate statues because, up until a couple of years ago, folks were just fine with this “history” (and "art") which, thanks to “outside agitators” is being erased from America.
On Thursday night’s “The Ingraham Angle,” Ingraham hosted a discussion about the removal of Confederate monuments, with attention focused on New Orleans, Louisiana. It was classic Ingraham. Rather than address the reasons why the memorials are so offensive, particularly to African-Americans, she used her trademark snark to insult those who are offended.
In framing her message for the piece – removing the statues is removing “history” – she immediately insulted both the mayor and people (read: black) of New Orleans:
“New Orleans has the worst murder rate, even worse than Chicago today, and more shootings per capita than Baltimore, if you can believe it. And Mayor Mitch Landrieu is on a crusade, not necessarily to stop crime, but to hide history.”
After showing video of part of Landrieu’s impassioned speech about removing the statues, in which he referenced the brutal legacy of slavery, she opined that the removal was done without a vote of New Orleans residents.
In introducing one of her two guests, Malcom Suber of Take 'Em Down NOLA, a group opposed to the statues, she immediately threw some shade: “So you must be pretty happy that you took down four statues. You got Jeff Davis down, Robert E. Lee is down. You got that liberty monument down, and General Beauregard, you got him down. So you got four statues down, markers down. What next for you?”
Suber explained that his group wants to take down all the statues as well as rename public places that have the names of Confederates and white supremacists.
Ingraham launched into the argument used by Confederate statue defenders; i.e. the slippery slope that starts with removing Confederates and then on to the Founding Fathers. Suber agreed that they all have to go and recommended that the people of Washington, D.C. take a vote on renaming the city.
Ingraham was much more congenial with her other guest, Thomas Bruno of the Robert E. Lee Monumental Association.
Bruno used Suber’s comment about a Washington, D.C. vote to complain that residents of New Orleans didn’t have a say in the removal of the statues. He said the statues can have many different interpretation and, for him, they represent “art.” He added, “I have been around these pieces of art all of my life, and it never occurred to me for one second that they were symbols of white supremacy.” This was followed by a comment that Landrieu didn’t believe that the statues represented white supremacy. In fact, Landrieu specifically cited it in his speech about the statue removal.
Suber attempted to speak about the feelings of the black community but Ingraham overtalked him with the old slippery slope:
“I’ve come to New Orleans on and off for the last 20 years. Until the last, about two years, I hadn't heard anyone talk about the statues in Charlottesville, in New Orleans, in New York, and I hadn't heard anyone until mostly outside agitators came in and said, guess what, history has to be eradicated. We have to rename every federal building, we have to completely change history and context, and we have to get rid of it all. I, until the last couple of years, had never heard it.”
She “agreed” with Suber that the people should decide what to do with the statues and “not ram it through at night and remove the statues” to unknown places. Her final thoughts: “We are all against the white supremacy but we’re all for history as well.”
So it never occurred to Bruno that these things weren’t connected with white supremacy? Well, it turns out that that white supremacy is part of New Orleans’ history – history that Laura Ingraham seems to have erased!
Addendum: Ingraham's blog, "Lifezette," has an article that seems to support Bruno's argument! Coincidence?
Watch Confederate statues become "art" below, from the February 8, 2018 The Ingraham Angle.
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And tolerance have views that may not be
Socially or politically correct! How dare they not
Think as the collective!
It seems like in the good ole USA that if your blue
Collar proletarian, most of the time you are able
To voice views of dissension that may be socially
or politically incorrect.
That is unless you go to a freedom of speech rally,
Then you will be attacked by the Trotskyist
ANTIFA!
But in America,be you of the proletarian class
Like a news paper reporter, politician, police
officer, etc and the " THE IRON HEAL " ( As Jack London called it ) of suppression will be upon you from many directions!