Laura Ingraham thinks the fact that her mother waitressed until age 73 to pay off her children’s college loans means everyone else should, too. Never mind that her own children probably won’t have to.
Ingraham is believed to earn $15 million a year from her Fox gig. But like so many Fox multi-millionaires, she likes to pretend she’s a regular gal. It comes in handy for demonizing proposals that would really help middle- and working-class folks (which most Fox viewers are) – like, for example, eliminating college debt.
Here's Ingraham boasting about her mother working past retirement age, just to pay off her children's student debt, as if that’s something everyone should do:
My mom worked as a waitress until she was 73 to help pay for our college, even helped with loan repayment. Loan forgiveness just another insult to those who play by the rules.
— Laura Ingraham (@IngrahamAngle) April 28, 2022
In an article about the blowback Ingraham's tweet received, The Wrap pointed out that Ingraham was working as a lawyer in 1994, at the white-shoe Manhattan law firm of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, during her mother’s last year working as a waitress. Even if that was Ingraham’s first year out of law school, she was earning at least $85,000 a year. She reportedly graduated from Dartmouth in 1985 (or mid-80s), when tuition, room and board were under $15,000 a year. She graduated from University of Virginia Law school in 1991. The earliest tuition figures I could find were for 1994. Assuming Ingraham paid out-of-state tuition in 1994, her cost would have been at most $17,426 a year. Before working at the law firm, she was a Reagan speechwriter and a clerk for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.
In other words, she could have well afforded to repay her own student debt.
But all that’s really beside the point. The real point is that just because Ingraham’s mother suffered (assuming Ingraham is telling the truth), that’s really no reason to make others suffer. My grandmother grew up without the polio vaccine. Does that mean I shouldn’t be able to prevent getting the disease?
But even more importantly, from my perspective, you can bet your bottom dollar Ingraham will not make her own kids go into debt to pay for school. Why? Because she feels they deserve the privileges she doesn’t think other kids deserve.
That’s the real bottom line and it has nothing to do with her mother.
(Ingraham image via screen grab)