Tag Archives: Laura Ingraham

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Laura shows her crassness

Laura Ingraham long has been considered part of the right-wing, nut-job cabal of talking heads who rose to infamy during the Donald Trump administration. Still, I didn’t actually realize she was capable of the kind of crassness she exhibited the other day when revealing that the nation’s top military leader had contracted the COVID-19 virus.

But she did.

Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mark Milley has tested positive for the virus. The highly decorated, battle-tested Army general is exhibiting mild symptoms. He’ll be OK. Ingraham, though, applauded while telling her Fox News viewers of Gen. Milley’s condition.

Can you comprehend why someone such as Ingraham would do such a thing? When in the name of non-partisan defense policy did the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff become a political punching bag?

Oh, I guess it’s because Milley expressed regret for taking part in that hideous photo op with Donald Trump the day Trump traipsed in front of the church to hold up a Bible. Or perhaps it was when Milley questioned Trump’s response to the 1/6 riot.

There was Ingraham, a COVID-19 denier and blowhard right-winger, cheering the notion that the Joint Chiefs chair is now afflicted with a disease that has the potential of inflicting some serious harm to the man’s heath.

Disgraceful. Then again, this is what I have learned to expect from the right-wing media corps of Trumpkins.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

Rep. Schiff does not deserve to have his name denigrated

I have tried seemingly forever to avoid criticizing public figures on at least two levels. That is, two aspects are off limits.

I avoid making fun of their physical appearance and also their name.

Donald Trump has managed during his meteoric political career to do precisely both of those things. He has poked fun/mocked a New York Times reporter’s physical disability; he has made snarky — and unfounded — remarks about the physical appearances of former Republican presidential primary foes Carly Fiorina and Rand Paul; he’s denigrated the appearances of women who have accused him of sexual assault.

Now he has bastardized U.S. Rep. Adam Schiff’s name with that vulgar tweet in which he refers to the incoming House Intelligence Committee chairman as “Little Adam Schitt.” The California Democrat has taken the hideous insult with a good bit of humor, but hasn’t dwelled on it. Those of us on the sidelines are making the big deal of it. As we should, in my humble view.

Even a few conservative voices are speaking out against Trump’s insult against Schiff. This came from radio talker Laura Ingraham:

“Being tough is great, we all love it. Tough, strong president. You don’t have to ridicule Adam Schiff’s name. It’s an unforced error. There’s no reason to do that.”

No, Laura: You all love it. I don’t.

Ingraham is giving the president the benefit of several doubts. She’s far more tepid in her criticism than I would be. Still, at least she has said something about it.

Trump’s use of Twitter to insult foes at this level reveals a serious flaw in his own emotional, intellectual and perhaps even psychological makeup.

Good grief, the president is free to criticize people’s policies, their public statements, their actions in front of their constituents.

But their appearance? Their family name?

Disgraceful.

national news

Demographic changes ‘foisted on us’?

Lauran Ingraham is a conservative radio talker and TV commentator of some note who purports to speak for millions of Americans.

She said this: “In some parts of the country, it does seem like the America that we know and love doesn’t exist anymore,” she complained.

“Massive demographic changes have been foisted upon the American people, and they are changes that none of us ever voted for, and most of us don’t like. From Virginia to California, we see stark examples of how radically, in some ways, the country has changed.”
Yes, the country has been changing since, oh, the moment the first colonialists walked ashore and began setting up camp in the New World.
I wonder how Native Americans then — or those today — might feel about the changes that have been “foisted” on them.
media news, national news

Ingraham vs. Hogg: A foolish fight

David Hogg is one of those teenagers who has risen to the top of the public’s awareness in the wake of the Parkland, Fla., school massacre.

He is an articulate young man who’s become a leading spokesman for the survivors of the shooting that killed 17 students and staff members on Valentine’s Day. He has spoken eloquently about the need to end gun violence. The media have glommed onto Hogg and a few other of the leading student spokesmen and women who have emerged from this horrific tragedy.

He also has gotten involved in a silly dispute with a noted conservative columnist and commentator who had the bad taste to tweet something disparaging about Hogg.

Ingraham has since apologized “in the spirit of the Holy Week.” Hogg isn’t accepting here apology and is now mounting a boycott against her show, encouraging more advertisers to drop their sponsorship of her radio show.

Let’s hold on for a second.

This tears at my sensibilities. For starters, Hogg didn’t deserve to be called a “whiner” in Ingraham’s tweet, which was in response to something Hogg had said about being rejected by several universities despite his stellar 4.2 GPA at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. He also has been accused falsely of being a “crisis actor,” someone hired to play the part of someone involved in a school massacre.

Then again, Ingraham’s apology was full-blown. She said she is sorry for any hurt she has caused among the “Parkland victims.”

If it had been me, I would have accepted her apology and then moved on. Hogg doesn’t see it that way. He said Ingraham apologized only because the advertisers were bailing on her.

Joe Concha, media reporter for The Hill newspaper, says Hogg’s anger may be setting a potentially dangerous precedent if he persists on trying to end the career of someone who has said she is sorry and has admitted to making a mistake.

Read his analysis in The Hill here.

I have to concur with Concha’s analysis.

Hey, no one’s perfect, young man.

medical news, national news

Right-wing media attack getting out of hand

Right-wing mainstream media talking heads need to get a grip on this Ebola story.

Some of ’em are yammering about demands for Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director Tom Frieden to resign.

For what?

http://mediamatters.org/blog/2014/10/14/foxs-cdc-smear-campaign-calls-for-directors-res/201146

Two of the “stars” of this trash Dr. Frieden cavalcade are Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly and Laura Ingraham. They haven’t listen too intently to what their colleague Shepard Smith said on the air recently, that the Ebola “crisis” in the United States isn’t a crisis at all, that we have little to worry about and that — here it comes — we shouldn’t politicize this issue by seeking to lay blame on medical professionals who are trying to do their job.

That hasn’t stopped Blowhard Bill and Laura the Lip from firing off their criticism of Dr. Frieden.

Ingraham likened Frieden to “Baghdad Bob.” Remember that guy? He was the idiot propagandist who proclaimed that Iraqi forces were defeating American troops in 2003 — as Americans were rolling into the Iraqi capital city.

There’s no need at all to demonize Frieden in the manner that some on the right are seeking to do. Indeed, even O’Reilly’s own Fox colleague Greta Van Susteran has proclaimed Bill-O is wrong to criticize Frieden’s work as head of the CDC.

Let’s calm down, shall we?

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Liberals were right about Iraq?

Talk radio is big around here, the Texas Panhandle, that is.

It’s big everywhere it seems. Conservatives rule the air waves these days. They’ve got their devotees who hang on their every word.

The Big Two seem to be Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck. Throw in some others, maybe Laura Ingraham, Michael Medved and Mark Levin, mix ’em up, and they’re pretty big as well.

Thus, it was with some interest that I read an interesting admission from Beck the other day.

He said liberals were right about the Iraq War and that he — and other conservatives — were wrong.

http://www.newsweek.com/glenn-beck-admits-liberals-were-right-iraq-war-255341

I couldn’t help but think of “Happy Days” character Arthur Fonzarelli, who just couldn’t ever admit to being wr —-, wr —- about anything. Ever. He couldn’t say the word, for crying out loud.

Beck ain’t Fonzie, apparently. He was able to admit it.

“You cannot force democracy on the Iraqis or anybody else, it doesn’t work. They don’t understand it or even really want it,” Beck said on his radio show this week.

Newsweek.com had an interesting take on Beck’s admission: “This is a major turnaround for the famously right-wing pundit who in 2009 said, ‘The most used phrase in my administration if I were to be president would be ‘What the hell you mean we’re out of missiles?”’

In a perfect world, it shouldn’t really matter what an entertainer thinks about such matters. This world isn’t perfect, quite obviously. So I guess it does matter that a talk-show personality who purports to speak for millions of listeners is willing to do an about-face on one of the more contentious issues of our time.

Who’s next? Rush?

Don’t bet the farm on that one.