The viewpoints of survivors of horrific tragedies are not infallible. You can disagree and challenge their opinions. While nearly every survivor of the Parkland school shooting is in favor of gun control and a ban on assault-style weapons, Kyle Kashuv, another student from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, disagrees with his classmates and thinks there shouldn’t be any bans. You can’t agree with Kashuv and David Hogg both.
I disagree with Kashuv, yet I don’t feel the need to call him a Nazi or a “crisis actor” manipulated and tutored by adults. I’m not going to doctor photos of him tearing the Constitution in half. I’m not going to vilify him by questioning his citizenship or by calling him a lesbian, even if that would work in this situation. I’m also not going to tell him to shut up because he’s too young to have an opinion.
Conservatives don’t work that way. Much has been said about the way they have vilified the Parkland students over the past month. This tactic isn’t new. It’s how they treat political opposition. Obama was born in Kenya, remember? Conservative commentator Laura Ingraham, who has a show on Fox News called “The Ingraham Angle,” bullied David Hogg this week. The problem for Ingraham is, Hogg fights back. He does it better and much more eloquently.
Ingraham is an old school bully. She started her journalism career by outing homosexual students when she was editor of the Dartmouth Review in 1985. She apologized for her homophobia in 1997. Her apology for attacking Hogg came a lot sooner.
While doing interviews advocating for gun control, Hogg has talked about the normal details of a high school student’s life he still has to deal with, like rejections from colleges. Getting rejections from schools you apply to is a rite of passage for high school seniors. Hogg wasn’t whining about it. He was just mentioning it, as has several of his other classmates. Ingraham used it to belittle the student.
Ingraham tweeted, “David Hogg @davidhogg111 Rejected By Four Colleges To Which He Applied and whines about it. (Dinged by UCLA with a 4.1 GPA…totally predictable given acceptance rates.)” For the record, he’s been accepted by three other colleges.
Hogg replied with a tweet of his own, “Soooo @IngrahamAngle what are your biggest advertisers … Asking for a friend.” Shortly after that, he listed twelve of her sponsors and told his over 690,000 followers to pick a number and contact them.
Ingraham backed down after many of her show’s advertisers started pulling out. Again, she tweeted, “On reflection, in the spirit of Holy Week, I apologize for any upset or hurt my tweet caused him or any of the brave victims of Parkland.” Laura will also be taking a vacation next week, which I’m sure is a coincidence. I hope her substitute hosts understand why the only sponsors are the Catheter Cowboy and the My Pillow guy.
Hogg has not accepted her apology because he realizes it’s not an apology. She apologized for offending, not for her statement. Words, Laura. Use your words. She only issued that after her sponsors started dropping out. And, what if it wasn’t Holy Week? Eat crap and I hope you end up at Fountainhead Tech? Shouldn’t Ingraham have reflected before she bullied a student who had watched his classmates gunned down?
When Jimmy Kimmel criticized Republicans for trying to destroy Obamacare, Ingraham felt he wasn’t qualified to talk about policy and said, “leave it to the pros, Jimmy.” Well, Miss Pro, you just got taken to school on policy and politics by a high school student.
Companies and organizations that don’t want to be embarrassed by being associated with horrible and reprehensible people should stop associating with horrible and reprehensible people. The bullying b.s. that comes from Ingraham’s mouth is not a new development. When NBA players criticized Trump, she told them to “shut up and dribble.” Where was your boycott then?
I understand corporations don’t want to play politics and only see green money, not blue and red. But, maybe you should have a conscience before a Fox News troglodyte attacks students who survived a school shooting. It’s not like you couldn’t predict it. If you end your association with Fox News, this will happen less and less.
Laura Ingraham shouldn’t just lose sponsors. She should lose her show. The only drawback to that justice will that it would probably land her a job in Trump’s White House.
Email Clay Jones at [email protected]