Instead of owning up to why advertisers are boycotting her Fox News show and making a righteous apology to Parkland shooting survivor David Hogg for mocking his college rejections, Laura Ingraham is playing the victim – and whining about meanies on the left.
Ingraham never mentioned the boycott last night, nor the Twitter feud that led to it. She did, however, devote multiple segments to conservative victimhood. There was her opening monologue about “bullies on the left aim[ing] to silence conservatives.” She said not a word about her bullying of Hogg. We also got 7:28 of victimhood from the “Diamond and Steel” ignoramuses over their having been labeled as “unsafe” by Facebook (Facebook now calls the label "inaccurate"); a segment about a “suspended Marquette professor fight[ing] for academic freedom” and, at the end of the show, a preview of more conservative victimhood to come via a regular feature called, “Defending the First.” Amendment, that is.
Fox described the upcoming series by saying, “Ingraham promises to expose the enemies of the First Amendment, free expression and free thought, while showcasing those brave voices making a difference.”
Rather ironic, don’t you think, considering that it was the brave voices of Parkland students trying to make a difference about gun violence that Ingraham attacked. In fact, she quacked an awful lot like someone trying to silence free speech when she tweeted about Hogg, "Your 15 Minutes is Up."
Your 15 Minutes is Up: Perhaps if one stayed in school, one would know to use the plural.... “Parkland Student David Hogg in New Ad: 'What If Our Politicians Weren’t the Bitch of the NRA?'” https://t.co/sD58Z86exM
— Laura Ingraham (@IngrahamAngle) March 17, 2018
Unfortunately for Ingraham, advertisers are not viewing her as the martyr she fashions herself. According to Think Progress, more than a dozen advertisers have stopped advertising on her show. One more seems to have dropped it today.
I'm not a fan of advertiser boycotts. But let’s get something clear here: Nobody is threatening Ingraham’s First Amendment rights. It’s her show that is being targeted and nobody has a right to one hour of prime time every weeknight.
And it’s not as though advertisers are fleeing Ingraham because of her political views. It’s because of the abhorrent way she inflicted them on a traumatized teenager.
And one other thing: Ingraham's whine about being silenced is a classic case of projection. Not only did she signal her demand that Hogg shut up with her "15 minutes" comment, a few weeks before that, she announced that she thought LeBron James and Kevin Durant should "shut up and dribble." She played the victim after that resulting outcry, too.
Memo to Ingraham: Maybe you should try some of that personal responsibility you conservatives are always advocating for everybody else.
You can watch Ingraham act as though personal responsibility is for other people below, from the April 9, 2018 The Ingraham Angle.
And if there is one thing christians love to do apart from being sanctimonious, it’s to feign persecution. Advertisers should be running from this grade-C conservative media personality and her tired middle age high school mean girl routine not for her disgusting comments about Hogg but because their products should not be associated with someone so stupid.
She clearly has selected outrage on when censorship should apply.
This pseudo Catholic tart has a hothead and can’t handle her emotions very well. All the disgruntled Fox “News” employees are very familiar with her volcanic blow-ups. Weak woman.
NOTE TO MS. LAURA
A teenage kid schooled you on the national stage, and you can’t handle it. You are a weak woman and a disgrace to your children. Weak, weak woman.
“As someone who lived through the 70s and the 80s, I can attest that this is another Right Wing attempt to rewrite history. The actual history is a bit less rosy. In truth, the Reagan years was a bitter and vicious time, where Nixon-era Right Wingers tried to bully the rest of the country, and where military contractors made out like bandits on everyone else’s dime.”
How right you are Kevin. I too lived through the 1970s and 1980s and I want to say this much: contrary to what FoKKKs Spews Channel and their goose-stepping reich-wing followers WANT you to believe, the high inflation of the Carter years was NOT triggered by “out of control government spending” — it was triggered by OUT OF CONTROL OIL PRICES which were sparked by the U.S.-backed Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi of Iran getting overthrown in January 1979. This type of inflation is usually called “cost-push inflation” by most reputable economists. Mark my words: the ONE AND ONLY reason inflation was finally tamed in Reagan’s first term was because Reagan was simply VERY, VERY LUCKY to move into the White House just as the OPEC cartel was losing its stranglehold on the world oil market. Finally, remember the Iran-contra scandal? Remember when Reagan tried to be a tough guy by bellowing these words at Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed terrorist organization that held the “forgotten American hostages” in Beirut, Lebanon during his presidency? :
“YOU CAN RUN, BUT YOU CAN’T HIDE!”
Reagan DID turn out to be right about that in this sense: if Hezbollah was hiding, how could he pay them off with arms shipments in order to get the American hostages freed?
To start with, her argument about the Reagan years is based on a false premise. Today’s Right Wingers would have you believe that the 1980s were all about patriotism and “happy warrior” conservative values after the “cultural malaise” of the Carter years. As someone who lived through the 70s and the 80s, I can attest that this is another Right Wing attempt to rewrite history. The actual history is a bit less rosy. In truth, the Reagan years was a bitter and vicious time, where Nixon-era Right Wingers tried to bully the rest of the country, and where military contractors made out like bandits on everyone else’s dime. The 1980s was a time when most of the USA was justifiably worried that Ronald Reagan would bumble us into a nuclear war, something that was decidedly not helped by Reagan’s radio gaffe where he told the not-so-funny joke about dropping bombs on Russia “in five minutes!” In addition to the massive nuclear threat of the time, there was also the spectre of the thousands upon thousands of Central Americans who were dying every year while we poured money at the death squads who were killing them. And at home, we saw a resurgence of nativism and greed that generated millions for the lucky few at the top before triggering a stock market crash in 1987 and a Savings and Loan debacle that devastated millions of people.
Ingraham has also blatantly lied about Reagan’s conduct in the 1960s in California, when he angrily sent the National Guard after Berkeley protesters and actually talked in public about getting the “bloodbath” over with if that was what it was going to take to restore Right Wing law and order on the UC Berkeley campus after years of Free Speech protests. Reagan wasn’t showing leadership when he tried to brutalize the protesters. He was showing his hatred of the protesters and of their values. The result of Reagan’s viciousness wasn’t that the protests were ended by any means. Instead, Reagan’s troops made life a misery for tens of thousands of students and residents in Berkeley, including the tear-gassing of the campus and the neighborhoods, and the shooting of Berkeley students, including the killing of James Rector. And Reagan wasn’t looking to “lead” California by attacking Berkeley – he was looking to enhance his credibility with the Right Wing in California and the whole country. (Reagan’s actual legacy both as a governor and as a president was unfortunate, as history records. He was popular at the time because the economy appeared to be doing a little better for a few years before the inevitable crash, and because he was a skilled public speaker who knew how to present himself as “folksy”. But by the end of his presidency, with the economy and the country’s world standing in ruins, his popularity had actually plunged. His VP, George HW Bush, only squeaked into the White House due to the blandness of the Democratic candidate, and due to a vicious smear campaign inflicted by Lee Atwater in 1988 regarding a paroled inmate in Massachusetts.)
Ingraham’s attempt to dig up Right Wing smears from 2016 and 2017 is nonsensical. First she tries to play up a riot that happened around a Trump Convention of Hatred in Santa Clara. Then she tries to ignore the reality of the Right Wing-generated disturbances in Berkeley in 2017. (For the record, Milo Yiannopoulous was not just setting up a genteel speaking event a year ago – he was knowingly trying to generate a riot by announcing he was about to publicly read a list of names and then say those were illegal aliens who should all be deported. In other words, Milo was openly declaring he intended to shout “Fire!” in a crowded theater. If anything, we should be relieved that Milo’s threats didn’t generate even more of an extreme response. And then we had the nonsense spectacle of Ann Coulter being fraudulently promised a speaking date by the Berkeley Campus Republicans when in fact no venue was available for her. And that’s not to even get into the Right Wing hate-a-thon that was inflicted in April 2017 in a Berkeley park, which predictably led to Right-Left clashes when the locals made clear that they would not tolerate Nazi propaganda in their neighborhoods.)
As for Laura Ingraham’s situation today, it has nothing to do with her free speech rights being infringed or “silenced.” This is about the fact that she picked a fight with a high school student and tried to bully him over his college admission situation. And then the student was able to reach her audience and advertisers and had an impact. Of course, she and Fox News will find new advertisers. But the point has been made, and one hopes that Ingraham will learn her lesson. Gloating with Sean Hannity upon her return to the airwaves is not the way to handle that situation.
If Laura Ingraham is so concerned about bullying, then perhaps she should not be engaging in it.