Laura Ingraham proved herself totally on board with Fox’s pro-death agenda as she worried about Americans not being able to spread and catch COVID-19 in church and elsewhere and showed almost no concern about stopping the outbreak.
During her extended chat with Attorney General William Barr, Ingraham groused so much about restrictions on church attendance, she seemed to think that was a bigger loss than the thousands more Americans who could die without them. It reminded me of Fox host Ainsley Earhardt’s reaction to a mass shooting in a Texas church a few years ago: “There’ no other place” she'd rather be killed. Oh, and did I mention that Ingraham claims to be staunchly pro-life?
Ingraham’s very first question for Barr was an obvious suggestion to get him to limit shelter-in-place rules.
INGRAHAM: Right now, we have no freedom of worship, public worship to go, to gather. We have no real freedom of assembly, not even freedom of movement, given what some of the states are doing. What can you tell our viewers tonight about what the Justice Department will do after this limited period to ensure that our civil liberties are balanced properly against the need to protect the public?
BARR: Well, you know, generally speaking there are occasions where liberties have to be restricted during certain emergencies such as war or, in this case, a potentially devastating pandemic but they have to be balanced. Whatever steps you take have to be balanced against the civil liberties of the American people and it cannot be used as an excuse for broad deprivations of liberty. So as things proceed, you know we're going to be interested in both what the federalgovernment is imposing and also making sure that that's justified but also what the states do. The states have very broad well as you know what we call policepowers they have very broad powers that the federal government doesn't have to regulate the lives of their citizens as long as they don't violate the Constitution. So we'll be keeping a careful, a careful eye on that.
That was not enough for Ingraham. Never mind that New York’s Orthodox Jewish community has both ignored social distancing and experienced high rates of infection. Ingraham sounded like a woman demanding a Constitutional right to scream fire (or, more to the point, the right to urge people to start one) in a crowded movie theater.
INGRAHAM: Governor Cuomo spoke out this week very forcefully this holy week for Christians, obviously Passover as well for Jewish Americans, about the importance of not gathering together to celebrate and I want you to listen.
VIDEO CLIP OF ANDREW CUOMO: Now is not the time for large religious gatherings. I mean, we've paid this price already. We've learned this lesson. You do no one a service by making this worse and infecting more people.
INGRAHAM: At what point in time do Americans feel like they're going to be able to have that right back and that the federal government will stand up if local officials continue this all-out prohibition going forward?
Barr assured her that he is “very, very concerned” about such restrictions but he also acknowledged that government has the power to impose them during a time of public emergency, such as this one.
Then, he played the role of public health expert on TV:
BARR: When this 30-day period ends I think we have to consider alternative ways of protecting people.
Still not good enough for Ingraham.
INGRAHAM: I guess that [Cuomo's] focused on a lot of the funerals that the Hasidic Jews are having in New York where people do gather, they gather and, you know, tightly together, to mourn and to pray and so that's the concern.
Actually, that’s more than a concern, that has been an apparent source of contagion. Funny how such a devout person as Ingraham said not a word about that. Instead, she continued her crusade for more death in the name of liberty.
INGRAHAM: I tweeted out something earlier today, just how, you know, these are inalienable rights. It means - and there's a lot of Americans today who are mourning those who've lost their lives in this horrible virus who also say the government doesn't have this right, to take this right, to take our rights away. even when the experts are saying this is a horrible time for us health wise.
But hey, maybe Ingraham believes that if she could just dole out enough hydroxychloroquine, all those churchgoers could just rise like Lazarus.
You can watch Ingraham’s pro-death agenda below, from the April 8, 2020 The Ingraham Angle.
Laura whines “Right now, we have no freedom of worship, public worship to go, to gather. We have no real freedom of assembly, not even freedom of movement, given what some of the states are doing.”
3 points.
1. Christians are not oppressed or persecuted in America. I’m Episcopalian. My bishop ordered no gathering in churches so my pastor streams all services. At noon today we’ll stream our Holy Saturday service. She’s welcome to participate. We Zoom Bible studies and other events.
2. Governors aren’t some 3rd world dictators oppressing us. We’re staying at home out of a sense of compassion for others and to support our community. The more responsible we behave the more temporary this will be.
3. I don’t want to hear any conservative whine about State’s Rights after them shoving that down our throats for decades to suppress voting rights, promote racism, force women to have unwanted children, etc.
I don’t know how far back this insatiable hunger to be ‘famous for 15 minutes’ stretches, but it has definitely gone to new levels over the last 20-25 years. The awful thing is that if people can’t get the attention they crave for positive reasons, they’ll settle for looking like villains or fools – ANYTHING to be noticed. Gutfeld and Harris Faulkner come immediately to mind.
A related, or at least similar phenomenon seems to be the increasing desperation of once-prominent older men (mainly) to be seen as still relevant, still influential, even if they know full well they are hitching themselves to a pretty rickety bandwagon. I give you Barr, Hume and O’Reilly as examples 1, 2 and 3.