Laura Ingraham
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March 8, 2023: Vanity Fair: “WE’RE ALL EMBARRASSED”: INSIDE FOX NEWS AS DOMINION REVELATIONS RATTLE THE NETWORK
From a corporate HR standpoint, some of the most destabilizing texts show Fox’s most powerful opinion hosts—Carlson, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham—dumping on their colleagues on the “news” side. New court filings show the opinion hosts derided numerous Fox reporters by name. “We thought they hated us,” one correspondent said, “but now we know it in their own words.” Mar 8, 2023: NPR: How a civil war erupted at Fox News after the 2020 election
In private notes to one another, Fox's top stars spat fire at their reporting colleagues who debunked Trump's claims of election fraud, even as they gave those allegations no credence. "We are officially working for an organization that hates us," said prime-time host Laura Ingraham. Feb 3, 2023: Philadelphia Inquirer: Sorry, not sorry: Some 1/6 rioters change tune after apology
Morgan-Lloyd's attorney has said that she believes her client was genuinely remorseful, was “played" by Ingraham and sent the judge a letter after her TV interview. When contacted by The Associated Press, Morgan-Lloyd's attorney said the woman would not comment. |
Laura Anne Ingraham (born June 19, 1964) is an American radio host, best-selling author, and conservative political commentator. Her nationally syndicated talk show, The Laura Ingraham Show, will air throughout the United States on Courtside Entertainment (beginning on January 2, 2013), and she is the official guest host for Fox News Channel’s The O’Reilly Factor. Ingraham launched The Laura Ingraham Show in April 2001, which is heard on 306 stations and on XM Satellite Radio. The show was originally syndicated by the now-defunct Westwood One, but moved to Talk Radio Network in 2004. Ingraham is also the official guest host of The O'Reilly Factor on Fox News Channel and a weekly contributor with her segment, "The Ingraham Angle." In 2012, Laura Ingraham was rated as the No. 5 radio show in America, by Talkers Magazine. |
Jan 26, 2023: MediaIte: Cable News Ratings Wednesday January 25: Lawrence O’Donnell Leads MSNBC in Total Viewers, Ties Joy Reid to Top the Demo
In terms of total viewers, O’Donnell topped MSNBC with 1.427 million viewers — just beating Chris Hayes’s 1.416 million average viewers. But, while O’Donnell far outpaced his CNN competition, he lost the 10 p.m. hour to Fox News’s Laura Ingraham..
In terms of total viewers, O’Donnell topped MSNBC with 1.427 million viewers — just beating Chris Hayes’s 1.416 million average viewers. But, while O’Donnell far outpaced his CNN competition, he lost the 10 p.m. hour to Fox News’s Laura Ingraham..
Jan 6, 2023: USA Today: Laura Ingraham abruptly ends interview on football safety after guest criticizes Fox News
Fox News' Laura Ingraham abruptly ended an interview on her show with activist and author Steve Almond after he called out the station for fear mongering and other controversial issues.
Almond, who wrote "Against Football: One Fan's Reluctant Manifesto," appeared on Ingraham's show Wednesday to discuss Buffalo Bills player Damar Hamlin’s cardiac arrest during a game earlier this week.
Fox News' Laura Ingraham abruptly ended an interview on her show with activist and author Steve Almond after he called out the station for fear mongering and other controversial issues.
Almond, who wrote "Against Football: One Fan's Reluctant Manifesto," appeared on Ingraham's show Wednesday to discuss Buffalo Bills player Damar Hamlin’s cardiac arrest during a game earlier this week.
Dec 15, 2021: Salon: Text-gate fallout: Hannity, Ingraham and Don Jr. unveiled as whiny MAGA wimps!
As we have learned this week, even purported true believers like the Fox News hosts Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham, and even the not-yet-defrocked president's feckless eldest son, Donald Jr., were at least temporarily swayed by the prospect of a return to the realm of previously-existing political reality.
As we have learned this week, even purported true believers like the Fox News hosts Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham, and even the not-yet-defrocked president's feckless eldest son, Donald Jr., were at least temporarily swayed by the prospect of a return to the realm of previously-existing political reality.
Aug 23, 2021: Shepherd Express: The Exit Wounds of War
But can humanitarian decency among Republicans survive a full-time campaign by Fox News most popular white supremacists including Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham to inflame fears of an imaginary Democratic plot to racially replace white voters?
But can humanitarian decency among Republicans survive a full-time campaign by Fox News most popular white supremacists including Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham to inflame fears of an imaginary Democratic plot to racially replace white voters?
On The Record: Feb 5, 2014: Ellie Sandmeyer (Media Matters) posted an article stating that "Laura Ingraham's Attacks On Sonia Sotomayor Miss Her All-American Heritage." In Sandmeyer's mind Ingraham had the audacity to suggest Supreme Court Justice Sotomayor "has to choose between her "immigrant family background" or the Constitution." Sandmeyer says that "Ingraham's smear is both rooted in the premise that immigrants are separate from mainstream American culture and is completely off the mark given the fact that Sotomayor is an American citizen and the daughter of American citizens." The article is only about five paragraphs but Sandmeyer bases her whole diatribe on that what she is claiming is the "Ingraham premise." The fact of the matter is, though, that she is making an assumption about Ingraham based on a few words in one sentence out of long speech. And clearly the premise of the Media Matters article is based on an opinion by Sandmeyer. Not a very critical analysis news which I assume is a goal Media Matters is striving for. (I am, of course, assuming that by their name and media matters to Media Matters). I have to wonder, though, on this one if Media Matters has an established quota which writers have to submit, so, in desperation they have to create an issue out of no issue.
MSNBC: Sonia Sotomayor’s ‘allegiance’
Wonkette:
Laura Ingraham Performs Difficult Stupidity Hat-Trick About Immigrants, Puerto Rico, And Sonia Sotomayor
MSNBC: Sonia Sotomayor’s ‘allegiance’
Wonkette:
Laura Ingraham Performs Difficult Stupidity Hat-Trick About Immigrants, Puerto Rico, And Sonia Sotomayor
Feb 4, 2014: Media Matters: Laura Ingraham's Attacks On Sonia Sotomayor Miss Her All-American Heritage
Fox News contributor Laura Ingraham launched an ignorant smear against Supreme Court Justice Sotomayor, suggesting that she has to choose between her "immigrant family background" or the Constitution.
Fox News contributor Laura Ingraham launched an ignorant smear against Supreme Court Justice Sotomayor, suggesting that she has to choose between her "immigrant family background" or the Constitution.
ON THE RECORD: Jan 27, 2014: Rachel Alexander (Intellectual Conservative) says "Obama Criminalizes Dissent, Goes After Dinesh D’Souza " She says of the charges against D'Souza: "There is an old saying that a good prosecutor can get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich, and as a former prosecutor, I agree" and contrasted it with Democrat John Edwards who "received numerous $2,000 donations from support staff and paralegals at large law firms, many all on the same day, nothing happened to him. Overlawyered reported." She notes several critics of the action including Laura Ingraham and Matt Drudge: "Conservative commentator Laura Ingraham calls it an act of political retribution. “This indictment is the kind of thing that we’re kind of accustomed to seeing come out of a place like China,” she said. “They jail dissidents, they put them in reeducation camps. This is a country run by people who act more thuggish than fair when it comes to conservatives.”Matt Drudge, founder of the Drudge Report, tweeted on January 23, “They are going after the Obama critics with indictments. VA Gov. Now Dinesh D’souza. Holder unleashing the dogs…”
Jan 22, 2014: News Busters: Politico's Dylan Byers Jumped on Maine GOP Governor for 'Inventing Stories,' But Skipped Wendy Davis
Politico media reporter Dylan Byers jumped on the story of Maine Gov. Paul LePage and his claim on the Laura Ingraham Show that Portland (Maine) Press Herald reporter Colin Woodward chased after his ex-wife and children in Canada for a Politico article. "He does have a tendency to invent stories," Woodard said. "I'm surprised that he can maintain his status as a public figure and say these things and think it won't catch up with him."
Dec 27, 2013: Cato Institute: Michael F. Cannon discusses Obamacare cost controls on TRN’s The Laura Ingraham Show
Dec 17, 2013: Politico: Laura Ingraham: Jay Carney has ‘awful job’
“I almost at this point feel sorry for Jay Carney. He has to go out there every day and deny facts. That’s an awful job,” Ingraham said Tuesday on Fox News’s “Fox & Friends.”
Dec 13, 2013: Twitchy: ‘He loved America’: Laura Ingraham announces father’s passing, shares photos
Laura Ingraham announced this morning that her father, James F. Ingraham III, passed away yesterday at the age of 88:
Dec 3, 2013: Politico: Laura Ingraham, Female Force
Laura Ingraham -- the conservative radio host, Fox News contributor and former Reagan administration speechwriter -- gets the comic book treatment.
Nov 15, 2013: Z-News Notes: "Laura Ingraham Sucks" Author Tries To Score Political Points at the Expense of a Dog's Death
Sept 6, 2013: The Blaze: Bill O’Reilly and Laura Ingraham Clash Over Syria: ‘American Has Grown Weaker in the Last 11 Years’
On Thursday night, television host Bill O’Reilly and radio personality Laura Ingraham clashed over Syria and whether the U.S. should take military action against the government there.
Aug 27, 2013: Salon: The despicable Laura Ingraham outdoes herself
Cutting off John Lewis’ speech with a gunshot recalls how assassination has silenced so many civil rights leaders
July 12, 2013: Laura Ingraham, while filling in for Bill O'Reilly tonight on Fox News, began after a commercial break, "And now more on the Zimmerman trial which has captured the nations attention..." BUT, I must interrupt and say "Whoa!". The Zimmerman trial did NOT capture Americas attention. It was rammed upon America by a pretty much all of the media out lets. People like Obama and Sharpton vetted it initially like a racial case that needed attention. There are, however, similar and even more disturbing cases going on nationwide all the time. HLN needed to air something after boring us with the Arias trial. Al Sharpton at MSNBC needed someone to carry is "race card" banner. CNN fell in rank and file probably because they are all about being entertaining now (via Zucker). And Fox News ended up carrying the banner more and more each day until it was pretty much the only news they reported (with some exceptions). Clearly this shows the power the media has in "capturing" peoples attention. Like lemmings to a cliff.......
June 12, 2013: Laura Ingraham Sucks: Ingraham Makes Ridiculous Claim About The Morning After Pill.
Shock pundit Laura Ingraham is at it again.
June 11, 2013: Huffington Post: Laura Ingraham: Plan B Contraceptive Ruling 'A Good Deal' For Pedophiles, Statutory Rapists (VIDEO)
On "Fox & Friends" Tuesday, the conservative pundit -- who has made no secret of her anti-birth control positions in the past -- argued that the Obama administration's decision to drop age restrictions on the sale of morning-after contraceptive Plan B One Step was "a good deal" for pedophiles and statutory rapists.
June 10, 2013: Daily Caller: Laura Ingraham wants Rand Paul to choose between immigration reform and the ‘middle class folks in Kentucky’
She flatters and then tempts Paul to come out against immigration reform, framing it as a choice between middle-class Kentuckians or illegal immigrants.
June 7, 2013: Commentary: Contentions Laura Ingraham and Me (Round Two)
Laura asked me to appear on her program, which I did this morning. You can listen to our conversation here.
June 3, 2013: Commentary: Responding to Laura Ingraham
In a post on her website, Ingraham is livid that I criticized longtime conservative activist Phillis Schlafly for her remarks related to immigration.
May 31, 2013: New Civil Rights Movement: Laura Ingraham Attacks Parents, Schools Supportive Of Transgender Youth
May 28, 2013: Democratic Underground: Laura Ingram Cautions Tea Party About 'Resting On Victim Status.' SRSLY?
She then goes on to caution dogs about licking up their own vomit. Good luck with that.
May 28, 2013: Mofo Politics: Laura Ingraham accurately describes Marco Rubio as Chuck Schumer’s “poodle”
“They don’t like it when I call him a ‘poodle’, but…”
May 20, 2013: Vdare: Laura Ingraham Reads Byron York On Air: "Bringing Up 1986 Is Something Republicans Who Oppose Comprehensive Reform Do A Lot; Democrats, Not So Much"
L.I.: "Mass immigration has completely swamped British culture." ... "Elites in the Republican Party are more dangerous to us than the elites in the Democrat Party."
May 10, 2013; Media Matters: Laura Ingraham Claims Immigration From Mexico Would Create U.S. "Hellhole"
From the May 10 edition of Courtside Entertainment Group's The Laura Ingraham Show:
Apr 24, 2013: Independent Journal Review: Laura Ingraham: 'Other Cable Channels' More Concerned About Islamophobia Than Preventing Attacks
Anyone flipping channels between Fox News and CNN (let’s not joke about MSNBC) knows Chicken Noodle News was hesitant to call the suspects jihadists, while droning on about Islamophobia.
Apr 22, 2013; WND: Laura Ingraham: End all Muslim immigration
Radio host Laura Ingraham announced on her program Monday that she’s long believed the United States should shut down all immigration from central Asia and any nation with a majority Muslim population.
Apr 16, 2013: News Corpse: On Boston: Fox News Gun Control Opponent Laura Ingraham Proposes ‘Immigrant Control’
Ingraham took to her radio pulpit this morning to advance her racist theory that America is in danger as a result of what she considers lax border security.
Feb 26, 2013: Huffington Post: Laura Ingraham: Obama Treats Press Like 'Battered' Women, Prostitutes
Ingraham made the comments on "Fox and Friends," claiming that "you can see the Obama machine begin to crumble" if the press does not believe that Republicans are to blame for the sequester deal.
May 25, 2011: Fire Andrea Mitchell: Misogynist special Ed Schultz calls Laura Ingraham a right-wing slut
Of course, being that Schultz is a Democrat, he gets away with things like calling Laura Ingraham a right-wing “slut.” Not a peep from NOW, or other so called women’s groups because Schultz is a Democrat, far left nut and a progressive.
Politico media reporter Dylan Byers jumped on the story of Maine Gov. Paul LePage and his claim on the Laura Ingraham Show that Portland (Maine) Press Herald reporter Colin Woodward chased after his ex-wife and children in Canada for a Politico article. "He does have a tendency to invent stories," Woodard said. "I'm surprised that he can maintain his status as a public figure and say these things and think it won't catch up with him."
Dec 27, 2013: Cato Institute: Michael F. Cannon discusses Obamacare cost controls on TRN’s The Laura Ingraham Show
Dec 17, 2013: Politico: Laura Ingraham: Jay Carney has ‘awful job’
“I almost at this point feel sorry for Jay Carney. He has to go out there every day and deny facts. That’s an awful job,” Ingraham said Tuesday on Fox News’s “Fox & Friends.”
Dec 13, 2013: Twitchy: ‘He loved America’: Laura Ingraham announces father’s passing, shares photos
Laura Ingraham announced this morning that her father, James F. Ingraham III, passed away yesterday at the age of 88:
Dec 3, 2013: Politico: Laura Ingraham, Female Force
Laura Ingraham -- the conservative radio host, Fox News contributor and former Reagan administration speechwriter -- gets the comic book treatment.
Nov 15, 2013: Z-News Notes: "Laura Ingraham Sucks" Author Tries To Score Political Points at the Expense of a Dog's Death
Sept 6, 2013: The Blaze: Bill O’Reilly and Laura Ingraham Clash Over Syria: ‘American Has Grown Weaker in the Last 11 Years’
On Thursday night, television host Bill O’Reilly and radio personality Laura Ingraham clashed over Syria and whether the U.S. should take military action against the government there.
Aug 27, 2013: Salon: The despicable Laura Ingraham outdoes herself
Cutting off John Lewis’ speech with a gunshot recalls how assassination has silenced so many civil rights leaders
July 12, 2013: Laura Ingraham, while filling in for Bill O'Reilly tonight on Fox News, began after a commercial break, "And now more on the Zimmerman trial which has captured the nations attention..." BUT, I must interrupt and say "Whoa!". The Zimmerman trial did NOT capture Americas attention. It was rammed upon America by a pretty much all of the media out lets. People like Obama and Sharpton vetted it initially like a racial case that needed attention. There are, however, similar and even more disturbing cases going on nationwide all the time. HLN needed to air something after boring us with the Arias trial. Al Sharpton at MSNBC needed someone to carry is "race card" banner. CNN fell in rank and file probably because they are all about being entertaining now (via Zucker). And Fox News ended up carrying the banner more and more each day until it was pretty much the only news they reported (with some exceptions). Clearly this shows the power the media has in "capturing" peoples attention. Like lemmings to a cliff.......
June 12, 2013: Laura Ingraham Sucks: Ingraham Makes Ridiculous Claim About The Morning After Pill.
Shock pundit Laura Ingraham is at it again.
June 11, 2013: Huffington Post: Laura Ingraham: Plan B Contraceptive Ruling 'A Good Deal' For Pedophiles, Statutory Rapists (VIDEO)
On "Fox & Friends" Tuesday, the conservative pundit -- who has made no secret of her anti-birth control positions in the past -- argued that the Obama administration's decision to drop age restrictions on the sale of morning-after contraceptive Plan B One Step was "a good deal" for pedophiles and statutory rapists.
June 10, 2013: Daily Caller: Laura Ingraham wants Rand Paul to choose between immigration reform and the ‘middle class folks in Kentucky’
She flatters and then tempts Paul to come out against immigration reform, framing it as a choice between middle-class Kentuckians or illegal immigrants.
June 7, 2013: Commentary: Contentions Laura Ingraham and Me (Round Two)
Laura asked me to appear on her program, which I did this morning. You can listen to our conversation here.
June 3, 2013: Commentary: Responding to Laura Ingraham
In a post on her website, Ingraham is livid that I criticized longtime conservative activist Phillis Schlafly for her remarks related to immigration.
May 31, 2013: New Civil Rights Movement: Laura Ingraham Attacks Parents, Schools Supportive Of Transgender Youth
May 28, 2013: Democratic Underground: Laura Ingram Cautions Tea Party About 'Resting On Victim Status.' SRSLY?
She then goes on to caution dogs about licking up their own vomit. Good luck with that.
May 28, 2013: Mofo Politics: Laura Ingraham accurately describes Marco Rubio as Chuck Schumer’s “poodle”
“They don’t like it when I call him a ‘poodle’, but…”
May 20, 2013: Vdare: Laura Ingraham Reads Byron York On Air: "Bringing Up 1986 Is Something Republicans Who Oppose Comprehensive Reform Do A Lot; Democrats, Not So Much"
L.I.: "Mass immigration has completely swamped British culture." ... "Elites in the Republican Party are more dangerous to us than the elites in the Democrat Party."
May 10, 2013; Media Matters: Laura Ingraham Claims Immigration From Mexico Would Create U.S. "Hellhole"
From the May 10 edition of Courtside Entertainment Group's The Laura Ingraham Show:
Apr 24, 2013: Independent Journal Review: Laura Ingraham: 'Other Cable Channels' More Concerned About Islamophobia Than Preventing Attacks
Anyone flipping channels between Fox News and CNN (let’s not joke about MSNBC) knows Chicken Noodle News was hesitant to call the suspects jihadists, while droning on about Islamophobia.
Apr 22, 2013; WND: Laura Ingraham: End all Muslim immigration
Radio host Laura Ingraham announced on her program Monday that she’s long believed the United States should shut down all immigration from central Asia and any nation with a majority Muslim population.
Apr 16, 2013: News Corpse: On Boston: Fox News Gun Control Opponent Laura Ingraham Proposes ‘Immigrant Control’
Ingraham took to her radio pulpit this morning to advance her racist theory that America is in danger as a result of what she considers lax border security.
Feb 26, 2013: Huffington Post: Laura Ingraham: Obama Treats Press Like 'Battered' Women, Prostitutes
Ingraham made the comments on "Fox and Friends," claiming that "you can see the Obama machine begin to crumble" if the press does not believe that Republicans are to blame for the sequester deal.
May 25, 2011: Fire Andrea Mitchell: Misogynist special Ed Schultz calls Laura Ingraham a right-wing slut
Of course, being that Schultz is a Democrat, he gets away with things like calling Laura Ingraham a right-wing “slut.” Not a peep from NOW, or other so called women’s groups because Schultz is a Democrat, far left nut and a progressive.
January 4, 2023
Ingraham: Football is not about politics. It's not about politics. You're making it about politics.
— Acyn (@Acyn) January 5, 2023
Almond: That's your entire economic model. That's to scare your viewers. That's your whole gig. pic.twitter.com/NepRZUjV3q
November 27, 2012: Ingraham announced her departure from Talk Radio Network and will be off the air after more than nine years, declining to renew her contract with TRN. She said, in jest, that she decided to "pursue my first loves – modern dance and the xylophone". Ingraham was the second major host from TRN's lineup to leave the network that year: TRN's other major program, The Savage Nation, left TRN two months earlier. Her new program, syndicated
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Aug 25, 2010: Crooks & Liars: Alan Colmes calls out Laura Ingraham for her hypocrisy on NYC mosque's backers
Filling in for Bill O'Reilly last night on Fox, Laura Ingraham led off with a "Talking Points Memo" segment castigating Daisy Khan and the backers of the "Ground Zero Mosque" for having the temerity to point out how the whole debate has served to stir up a real wave of anti-Islamic hatred. |
COLMES: This is worth seeing who the intolerant people are in this country. It's interesting that the word "tolerance" was used with you and the love fest you had with Liz Cheney. But the real intolerance we're seeing are from those people who don't seem to believe in religious freedom in this country. And I'm interested that you were very much for this when you interviewed Daisy Khan or spoke with her. INGRAHAM: Actually, you're not reading the transcript correctly, Alan. COLMES: I did read the transcript. INGRAHAM: I never said I was for building the mosque-- COLMES: You actually did. INGRAHAM: --600 feet from Ground Zero. COLMES: You actually said I don't have a problem-- INGRAHAM: I said I like what you're doing. No, I said-- COLMES: I like what you're doing, which is-- INGRAHAM: No, I said I can't find a lot of people who have a problem with it. I like what she said-- COLMES: Yes. INGRAHAM: --about bringing Muslims into the American experience. COLMES: Right and that-- INGRAHAM: And I repeated that last night. Absolutely. COLMES: And that hasn't changed. That hasn't changed. INGRAHAM: When she goes on television and calls people who question the positioning of the mosque, where it is, not the right to build it-- COLMES: Right. INGRAHAM: --but the place of building as people who hate Muslims-- COLMES: You know-- INGRAHAM: --I reject that. That's intolerant. 8.25.10 |
The following is an excerpt from Shock Jocks: Hate Speech and Talk Radio, by Rory O'Connor with Aaron Cutler (AlterNet Books, 2008).
Laura Ingraham is … different. Not only is Ingraham younger than many other conservative radio personalities (at 45, she's more than a decade from Limbaugh's cohort), and the only female among them, but she also brings to the airwaves a snarky brand of aggressive humor fused with an attack-dog sensibility that she expresses with a chalk-on-gravel voice.
Her goal is not to assert her own glory, but to rip apart her enemies, which include everyone from liberals and "elites" to, from time to time, even President George W. Bush and presidential hopeful John McCain. Her style of argumentation is bare-bones simple; in a 1997 piece for Salon.com, Eric Alterman wrote that Ingraham just laughed in response to a position he took on television during the 1996 election. How could he counter that?
Ingraham often uses laughter as a weapon. One of her show's most popular parodies, "But … Monkey," interposes the sound of a screeching monkey over a sound bite from a political figure. Victims have included Democratic senators Harry Reid and Barbara Boxer as well as conservative gurus like columnist Charles Krauthammer. Other regular segments include "Deep Thought of the Day" and "Lie of the Day." Ingraham also makes great use of pop culture clips (she plays the theme song from the television show "Flipper" when discussing John Kerry), and her production values are generally superb. Like many other successful hosts, she is often very funny, and her rapid-fire pacing and easy banter with her younger male producers (all three are in their early 20s) has more in common with the liberal "Stephanie Miller Show" than the hard-line commentary sometimes heard on conservative talk shows. At a deeper level, however, despite the comedy, Ingraham takes what she does quite seriously.
The rabid nature of her assault against immigration reform is a good example. Ingraham has perhaps been more strongly anti-immigration than any other talk personality except Michael Savage. Her show even features a regular segment called "The Illegal Immigration Sob Story" alert, in which she reads news pieces she feels are biased toward illegal immigrants. When she had White House spokesman Tony Snow on her program, she began by asking him why the Bush administration was dragging its heels on immigration reform. After sarcastically apologizing for interrupting his talking points, she said, "69 percent of Americans, 85 percent of the GOP, 55 percent of the Democrats want the border enforced. Does that affect you guys, or do you guys just blow it off?"
In the two-for-one combination that all too often serves conservative radio well, Ingraham once claimed that the immigration bill was an attempt by the mainstream media to make more people liberals. Anyone who still wonders whether talk radio had an influence on the bill's defeat should look at Ingraham's numbers; with more than 5 million weekly listeners, she is tied with Glenn Beck as the fourth most listened to radio talk show host in America. Alterman wrote that Ingraham's popularity is due to her having "something more important than knowledge or experience. … She has star quality." She is also fearless: She once confronted CNN host John Roberts for calling her "outspoken," saying, "Do you guys introduce liberal commentators that way?"
She's more aggressive than Limbaugh, more blatant than Hannity, and more rational than Beck or Savage, and although she often supports many of them (erroneously stating, for example, that Limbaugh never claimed the Clintons murdered Vince Foster), she is equally willing to call them out. She walked out of a "Hannity & Colmes" installment after the Don Imus "nappy-headed ho's" controversy was twisted into a discussion of Democratic vices, and once asked on her radio program after an appearance on "The O'Reilly Factor," "Why is Bill O'Reilly afraid of George Soros?" (In the same broadcast, Ingraham accused columnist Helen Thomas of working for Hezbollah, which has been identified by the U.S. government as a terrorist group.)
Ingraham was born and raised among the wealthy in Glastonbury, Conn., one of the state's richest suburbs, although her mother worked as a maid to support the family. She went to Dartmouth University and became the first female editor of the conservative Dartmouth Review, where conservative author Dinesh D'Souza, a former boyfriend, also worked. While there, she secretly sent a reporter with a tape recorder to a campus gay students association meeting; she then outed the students in print and sent tapes of the meetings to the students' parents. In the magazine she called association members "cheerleaders for latent campus sodomites." (In 1997, more than a decade later, she wrote an article in the Washington Post detailing how she had changed her views in light of her brother Curtis' coming out as gay.)
After graduating from Dartmouth, she went to work for the White House as a speechwriter; like her peers, conservative radio talkers Mark Levin and Hugh Hewitt, Ingraham began her professional career as a Reagan employee. She also obtained a law degree from the University of Virginia and clerked for Justice Clarence Thomas. In 1995 she appeared on the cover of the New York Times Magazine — wearing a friend's hip, leopard-print miniskirt — to illustrate an article about rising young conservatives. She then became both a regular MSNBC pundit and a commentator on the "CBS Evening News," where she once asked Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres if the United States should bomb Libya or Syria in retaliation for a TWA flight explosion whose cause was unknown. Ingraham argues politics the way lawyers argue cases, as if there can be no possible interpretation other than her own. She is a class-A schmoozer who understands and exploits her verbal gifts to the fullest. Her skill for networking, along with her willingness to go for the jugular, has allowed her to break into the boys' club of conservative radio.
In the late 1990s, she briefly hosted her own MSNBC cable television show, "Watch It!" (17 months and three time slots later, she joked that it should have been called "Watch It Get Canceled!"), and then, in 2001, launched "The Laura Ingraham Show" on radio. Ingraham's particular blend of humor and argument apparently translated more effectively on radio than on television, and the Talk Radio Network now syndicates her show on nearly 325 terrestrial stations (it's also available on Sirius and XM satellite radio). She has survived both a breast cancer scare and a broken wedding engagement, and continues to mock the establishment sardonically for three hours daily.
Ingraham has made more than her share of controversial comments, with frequent guest appearances on television affording her as much prominence as her radio work (for someone whose own television show was relatively short-lived, she spends a tremendous amount of time on other people's programs). She's no Neal Boortz, but she's certainly more outrageous than, say, Hugh Hewitt. In one of her most famous incidents, on Election Day 2006 Ingraham encouraged listeners to jam the phone line of a toll-free Democratic Party service for reporting voting problems. No tangible consequences came of it (the Democrats won anyway), but it did put Democratic Senator Patr ick Leahy up in arms.
Perhaps the greatest controversy of Ingraham's career, however, came from comments she made about the Iraq War. In March of 2006, Ingraham went on a six-day tour of Iraq, visiting hospitals, orphanages and Iraqi villages. Upon returning to the United States, she appeared on NBC's "Today Show" to criticize the mainstream American media for its unwillingness to report "the truth" of the Iraq situation. She said that NBC had focused on programming "Where in the World is Matt Lauer?" and that "to do a show from Iraq means to talk to the Iraqi military, to go out with the Iraqi military, to actually have a conversation with the people instead of reporting from hotel balconies about the latest IEDs going off."
Washington Post writer Jonathan Finer later reported that Ingraham "rarely, if ever, spent a moment outside the protection of U.S. forces or a night outside a military base." Finer compared her experience with that of the Iraq-stationed journalists she criticized, "almost all of whom operate without military protection." While the National Review's Tim Graham applauded Ingraham for bringing out the "facts the media self-defense teams ignore," MSNBC host Keith Olbermann said on his show "Countdown" that Ingraham had dishonored the memory of the 80 American journalists killed and others kidnapped in Iraq, and that her comment "was not only unforgivable of her, it was desperate and it was stupid."
Ingraham's stance on women's issues is divided at best; around the time of Clarence Thomas' Supreme Court appointment, she joined with a conservative group called Independent Women's Forum that formed a committee to attack and discredit Anita Hill's sexual harassment testimony against Thomas. (Independent Women's Forum's other activities included testifying in Congress for defunding the Violence Against Women Act and against affirmative action.) While she has criticized Fox for gratuitous, sexually explicit programming and helped lead a media campaign against the misogynistic rapper Akon, she also co-hosted a three-part PBS special on "the gender wars," which explored "whether the advancement of women in virtually all areas of society can be achieved without a retreat, in some way, on the part of men." One need not guess where Ingraham, a convert to Roman Catholicism, stands on a woman's right to choose.
Among prominent female political figures, Hillary Clinton in particular provokes Ingraham's ire. Her first book, The Hillary Trap, tried hard to make the case that Clinton was actually setting women's rights back by arguing for special status for them. "The complaints of Western feminists look like petty self-absorption when you line them up against human rights abuses in Third World military dictatorships," Ingraham wrote.
Ingraham also argues that a vocal minority — the "elites" — is threatening American values, and they should pipe down for the majority's sake. Elites include anti-war demonstrators and university professors ("It's well known that in the 1960s, leftists conquered the academies"). There is also no love lost between Ingraham and Europeans, who she believes fail to understand and appreciate America's love for "God, guns and the death penalty."
Ingraham's third book, Power to the People, was released on Sept. 11, 2007. The patriotic timing was deliberate; the book is partly memoir but is mostly devoted to annihilating what she calls the "pornification" of America, an increasing cultural tendency toward flaunted sexuality and the loss of traditional values. She calls the book "a rallying cry for common sense and good old-fashioned American ideals of patriotism, family, faith and country," one that encourages people to take matters into their own hands. In its first week, the book ranked third on the Amazon.com best-seller list.
"We are the government," Ingraham said in an interview promoting the book. Controlling people by telling them how to think for themselves is a nice piece of demagogic trickery, though hardly original among the conservative bloc that crowds talk radio today. Ingraham has proved to be a master at such trickery — and like her or not, she's every bit as funny, as appealing and as dangerous as each of her male peers and friends.
Laura Ingraham is … different. Not only is Ingraham younger than many other conservative radio personalities (at 45, she's more than a decade from Limbaugh's cohort), and the only female among them, but she also brings to the airwaves a snarky brand of aggressive humor fused with an attack-dog sensibility that she expresses with a chalk-on-gravel voice.
Her goal is not to assert her own glory, but to rip apart her enemies, which include everyone from liberals and "elites" to, from time to time, even President George W. Bush and presidential hopeful John McCain. Her style of argumentation is bare-bones simple; in a 1997 piece for Salon.com, Eric Alterman wrote that Ingraham just laughed in response to a position he took on television during the 1996 election. How could he counter that?
Ingraham often uses laughter as a weapon. One of her show's most popular parodies, "But … Monkey," interposes the sound of a screeching monkey over a sound bite from a political figure. Victims have included Democratic senators Harry Reid and Barbara Boxer as well as conservative gurus like columnist Charles Krauthammer. Other regular segments include "Deep Thought of the Day" and "Lie of the Day." Ingraham also makes great use of pop culture clips (she plays the theme song from the television show "Flipper" when discussing John Kerry), and her production values are generally superb. Like many other successful hosts, she is often very funny, and her rapid-fire pacing and easy banter with her younger male producers (all three are in their early 20s) has more in common with the liberal "Stephanie Miller Show" than the hard-line commentary sometimes heard on conservative talk shows. At a deeper level, however, despite the comedy, Ingraham takes what she does quite seriously.
The rabid nature of her assault against immigration reform is a good example. Ingraham has perhaps been more strongly anti-immigration than any other talk personality except Michael Savage. Her show even features a regular segment called "The Illegal Immigration Sob Story" alert, in which she reads news pieces she feels are biased toward illegal immigrants. When she had White House spokesman Tony Snow on her program, she began by asking him why the Bush administration was dragging its heels on immigration reform. After sarcastically apologizing for interrupting his talking points, she said, "69 percent of Americans, 85 percent of the GOP, 55 percent of the Democrats want the border enforced. Does that affect you guys, or do you guys just blow it off?"
In the two-for-one combination that all too often serves conservative radio well, Ingraham once claimed that the immigration bill was an attempt by the mainstream media to make more people liberals. Anyone who still wonders whether talk radio had an influence on the bill's defeat should look at Ingraham's numbers; with more than 5 million weekly listeners, she is tied with Glenn Beck as the fourth most listened to radio talk show host in America. Alterman wrote that Ingraham's popularity is due to her having "something more important than knowledge or experience. … She has star quality." She is also fearless: She once confronted CNN host John Roberts for calling her "outspoken," saying, "Do you guys introduce liberal commentators that way?"
She's more aggressive than Limbaugh, more blatant than Hannity, and more rational than Beck or Savage, and although she often supports many of them (erroneously stating, for example, that Limbaugh never claimed the Clintons murdered Vince Foster), she is equally willing to call them out. She walked out of a "Hannity & Colmes" installment after the Don Imus "nappy-headed ho's" controversy was twisted into a discussion of Democratic vices, and once asked on her radio program after an appearance on "The O'Reilly Factor," "Why is Bill O'Reilly afraid of George Soros?" (In the same broadcast, Ingraham accused columnist Helen Thomas of working for Hezbollah, which has been identified by the U.S. government as a terrorist group.)
Ingraham was born and raised among the wealthy in Glastonbury, Conn., one of the state's richest suburbs, although her mother worked as a maid to support the family. She went to Dartmouth University and became the first female editor of the conservative Dartmouth Review, where conservative author Dinesh D'Souza, a former boyfriend, also worked. While there, she secretly sent a reporter with a tape recorder to a campus gay students association meeting; she then outed the students in print and sent tapes of the meetings to the students' parents. In the magazine she called association members "cheerleaders for latent campus sodomites." (In 1997, more than a decade later, she wrote an article in the Washington Post detailing how she had changed her views in light of her brother Curtis' coming out as gay.)
After graduating from Dartmouth, she went to work for the White House as a speechwriter; like her peers, conservative radio talkers Mark Levin and Hugh Hewitt, Ingraham began her professional career as a Reagan employee. She also obtained a law degree from the University of Virginia and clerked for Justice Clarence Thomas. In 1995 she appeared on the cover of the New York Times Magazine — wearing a friend's hip, leopard-print miniskirt — to illustrate an article about rising young conservatives. She then became both a regular MSNBC pundit and a commentator on the "CBS Evening News," where she once asked Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres if the United States should bomb Libya or Syria in retaliation for a TWA flight explosion whose cause was unknown. Ingraham argues politics the way lawyers argue cases, as if there can be no possible interpretation other than her own. She is a class-A schmoozer who understands and exploits her verbal gifts to the fullest. Her skill for networking, along with her willingness to go for the jugular, has allowed her to break into the boys' club of conservative radio.
In the late 1990s, she briefly hosted her own MSNBC cable television show, "Watch It!" (17 months and three time slots later, she joked that it should have been called "Watch It Get Canceled!"), and then, in 2001, launched "The Laura Ingraham Show" on radio. Ingraham's particular blend of humor and argument apparently translated more effectively on radio than on television, and the Talk Radio Network now syndicates her show on nearly 325 terrestrial stations (it's also available on Sirius and XM satellite radio). She has survived both a breast cancer scare and a broken wedding engagement, and continues to mock the establishment sardonically for three hours daily.
Ingraham has made more than her share of controversial comments, with frequent guest appearances on television affording her as much prominence as her radio work (for someone whose own television show was relatively short-lived, she spends a tremendous amount of time on other people's programs). She's no Neal Boortz, but she's certainly more outrageous than, say, Hugh Hewitt. In one of her most famous incidents, on Election Day 2006 Ingraham encouraged listeners to jam the phone line of a toll-free Democratic Party service for reporting voting problems. No tangible consequences came of it (the Democrats won anyway), but it did put Democratic Senator Patr ick Leahy up in arms.
Perhaps the greatest controversy of Ingraham's career, however, came from comments she made about the Iraq War. In March of 2006, Ingraham went on a six-day tour of Iraq, visiting hospitals, orphanages and Iraqi villages. Upon returning to the United States, she appeared on NBC's "Today Show" to criticize the mainstream American media for its unwillingness to report "the truth" of the Iraq situation. She said that NBC had focused on programming "Where in the World is Matt Lauer?" and that "to do a show from Iraq means to talk to the Iraqi military, to go out with the Iraqi military, to actually have a conversation with the people instead of reporting from hotel balconies about the latest IEDs going off."
Washington Post writer Jonathan Finer later reported that Ingraham "rarely, if ever, spent a moment outside the protection of U.S. forces or a night outside a military base." Finer compared her experience with that of the Iraq-stationed journalists she criticized, "almost all of whom operate without military protection." While the National Review's Tim Graham applauded Ingraham for bringing out the "facts the media self-defense teams ignore," MSNBC host Keith Olbermann said on his show "Countdown" that Ingraham had dishonored the memory of the 80 American journalists killed and others kidnapped in Iraq, and that her comment "was not only unforgivable of her, it was desperate and it was stupid."
Ingraham's stance on women's issues is divided at best; around the time of Clarence Thomas' Supreme Court appointment, she joined with a conservative group called Independent Women's Forum that formed a committee to attack and discredit Anita Hill's sexual harassment testimony against Thomas. (Independent Women's Forum's other activities included testifying in Congress for defunding the Violence Against Women Act and against affirmative action.) While she has criticized Fox for gratuitous, sexually explicit programming and helped lead a media campaign against the misogynistic rapper Akon, she also co-hosted a three-part PBS special on "the gender wars," which explored "whether the advancement of women in virtually all areas of society can be achieved without a retreat, in some way, on the part of men." One need not guess where Ingraham, a convert to Roman Catholicism, stands on a woman's right to choose.
Among prominent female political figures, Hillary Clinton in particular provokes Ingraham's ire. Her first book, The Hillary Trap, tried hard to make the case that Clinton was actually setting women's rights back by arguing for special status for them. "The complaints of Western feminists look like petty self-absorption when you line them up against human rights abuses in Third World military dictatorships," Ingraham wrote.
Ingraham also argues that a vocal minority — the "elites" — is threatening American values, and they should pipe down for the majority's sake. Elites include anti-war demonstrators and university professors ("It's well known that in the 1960s, leftists conquered the academies"). There is also no love lost between Ingraham and Europeans, who she believes fail to understand and appreciate America's love for "God, guns and the death penalty."
Ingraham's third book, Power to the People, was released on Sept. 11, 2007. The patriotic timing was deliberate; the book is partly memoir but is mostly devoted to annihilating what she calls the "pornification" of America, an increasing cultural tendency toward flaunted sexuality and the loss of traditional values. She calls the book "a rallying cry for common sense and good old-fashioned American ideals of patriotism, family, faith and country," one that encourages people to take matters into their own hands. In its first week, the book ranked third on the Amazon.com best-seller list.
"We are the government," Ingraham said in an interview promoting the book. Controlling people by telling them how to think for themselves is a nice piece of demagogic trickery, though hardly original among the conservative bloc that crowds talk radio today. Ingraham has proved to be a master at such trickery — and like her or not, she's every bit as funny, as appealing and as dangerous as each of her male peers and friends.
