Conservatives, not liberals, should protest ABC over Laura Ingraham

4/14/14 6:07pm by 41

What is with the mainstream media and their infatuation with “crazy” conservatives?

ABC News is the latest media outlet to “reach out” to Republicans by picking an angry bomb-thrower to represent the GOP on George Stephanopoulos’ THIS WEEK Sunday show.

Stephanopoulos announced yesterday that conservative talk-radio host Laura Ingraham is ABC’s “newest contributor.”

Ingraham is awful.  She reeks of Fox News and the angry right.  What exactly will she contribute to intellectual discourse other than bile?

IngrahamABC2

But it’s always this way with the mainstream media.  They have this set idea of what a “Republican” and what a “Democrat” look like.  And neither is terribly close to the truth.

On MSNBC, for example, a Democratic guest or contributor is someone preferably under 30, and cute.

Erick Erickson really is a sexist neanderthal, and sadly typical of today’s GOPOn CNN, things tend to go better. But they too like their Republicans a bit surly and far to the right – former CNN “contributor” (that means they paid him) and GOP blogger Erick Erickson, who now is at Fox News, comes to mind. (The rest of us, when they don’t put “contributor” after our name, do not get paid for our TV appearances, just fyi.)

The Washington Post can be just as bad.  They had a famous brouhaha now several years back when they decided to hire a liberal and a conservative blogger.  The liberal ended up being the tame, as compared to Laura Ingraham, and quite good Greg Sargent. The conservative was a far-right bomb-thrower who thought Coretta Scott King was a “commie,” and was facing serious plagiarism allegations that seemed to mount by the day. He was then replaced with another far-right nut.

Then there’s Fox News, where the men need to be old and white, and the women young, blond, beautiful and wearing a primary-colored one-piece dress.  But even on Fox, real Republicans are conservatives, not moderates.

I’ve complained for years about how “to be Republican” in today’s GOP one must be “conservative.” About how the discussion, every time a GOP presidential primary comes around, is which candidate is the “real conservative” – because to be a true Republican one must of course be “conservative.”  And they haggle over which candidate is more like Ronald Reagan (because the candidates wrongly assume that Ronald Reagan, in 2014, would be a conservative – he wouldn’t be).

But now we see the mainstream media making the same mistake, assuming that the only real Republican is a conservative, and usually an angry and caustic conservative at that.  Laura Ingraham isn’t a deep-thinker like George Will or Bill Kristol or David Frum. She’s a bomb-thrower, and she represents a lot of what’s wrong with political discourse in America today.

If I were still a Republican, I’d be ticked at ABC.  As a Democrat, I’m simply disappointed.


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Follow me on Twitter: @aravosis | @americablog | @americabloggay | Facebook | Instagram | Google+ | LinkedIn. John Aravosis is the Executive Editor of AMERICAblog, which he founded in 2004. He has a joint law degree (JD) and masters in Foreign Service from Georgetown; and has worked in the US Senate, World Bank, Children's Defense Fund, the United Nations Development Programme, and as a stringer for the Economist. He is a frequent TV pundit, having appeared on the O'Reilly Factor, Hardball, World News Tonight, Nightline, AM Joy & Reliable Sources, among others. John lives in Washington, DC. .

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  • mononucleosis

    Thank you. I try, but I still can’t hate with the intensity of the right.

  • Mike_in_the_Tundra

    Didn’t your mommy ever tell you two wrongs don’t make a right? Lockett did a despicable thing, but does that justify Oklahoma doing a despicable thing?

    I know Chris Hayes didn’t have his present show during the Gosnell era. Did you watch every one of his Saturday morning shows for the last three years? Personally, I watched very few of his Saturday shows.

  • GK3 Chesterton

    WOW what a hateful vindictive person you are. Apparently you and mononucleosis are cut from the same cloth.

  • GK3 Chesterton

    Chris Hayes comes off as revealing important truths that absolutely need to be
    announced to the American public. Which would be OK if he was at least
    consistent. His reporting on the botched Oklahoma death penalty case April 30,
    2014 is a good example. He brought out many points to support his case: that the criminal suffered, that the State didn’t reveal the drug mixture and so on and so on. Of course Chris Hayes omitted what caused Lockett to be getting the death penalty in the first place:

    Stephanie Neiman, 18, was dropping off her friend Summer Bradshaw at that house, and
    Lockett and his accomplices tried to take the keys to her new Chevy truck.
    Neiman, who graduated from high school only two weeks earlier, fought back, and
    the men covered her mouth with duct tape and beat and sexually assaulted her.
    They also covered her 18-year-old friend’s mouth with duct tape, and beat and
    sexually assaulted her. Both were abducted, along with Bornt and his son.
    Lockett and his accomplices drove the four people they kidnapped west of Ponca
    City. Lockett asked Neiman if she planned to call the police. She would not say
    no, and Mathis spent 20 minutes digging a grave over which Lockett shot Neiman
    twice with a sawed-off 12-gauge shotgun, the three other victims later told
    authorities. Ms. Neiman was buried alive.

    For all of his grandstanding, why isn’t Mr. Hayes equally
    outraged by the action of Dr. Gosnell and what he did to LIVE CHILDREN in
    Philadelphia? If Mr. Hayes is so righteous, the least he could do is be fair and balanced in his outrage.

  • GK3 Chesterton

    WOW what a hateful vindictive person you are. But then again I don’t want to be to hard on mononucleosis.

  • TellMeImDreaming

    Good. Let as much of America as possible see and hear these people. They know what they’re getting on Fox. She might upset a few ABC viewers.

  • gratuitous

    Will Ms. Ingraham continue her journalistic ways? Her stint on the Dartmouth Review in 1987 included outing the members of a secret gay student group on campus, and sending the member list to the parents of every name on the list.

    I wonder if that little episode will be brought up, or continue to slide down the Memory Hole?

  • Still a stretch. Randi tells the truth. But yeah, she can be a little less polite than most.

  • LEFTLEANINGTX

    Love you handle !!!
    Ah she’s ok on intelligence I guess, certainly not brilliant.
    But really her calling card is her big obnoxious mouth. It’s amazing how many fire breathing attack dog bimbo’s dragons the have on the Right though.
    Lets see there:
    Liz Cheney
    Laura Ingrham
    Sarah Palin
    Elizabeth Hasselbeck
    Ann Coulter
    Michelle Bachman
    It’s amazing that such a small percentage of the electorate has so many down right hateful women pundits. That audience stays constantly enraged because of Fox news and as hateful as they are it has to be very unhappy group of people.
    And man o man will their heads explode when Hillary Clinton becomes our next president in 2016.

  • mononucleosis

    Randy Rhodes is all I can think of.

  • mononucleosis

    I’m not certain how smart Liz Cheney is. She certainly can’t count votes – statewide or in her own family.

  • mononucleosis

    Don’t be so hard on Laura. Coultergeist is simply Fox’s insurance that they’ll still have a resident crazy once Buchanan goes to that place that Dante wrote about.
    Laura replaces ABC’s baseball editor and faux intellectual, Georgie Will. And she is about as faux as you can get. With Cokie off to her retirement home on Morning Joe, Lady Laura is a twofer. She is also the eye candy for their septuagenarian viewers. The fact that she’s bat shit crazy is irrelevant.

  • LEFTLEANINGTX

    And I can certainly understand why they wouldn’t want to be called Republicans anymore because not only do you have Laura Ingrham representing the party you also have::
    The Religious Right
    The Tea Party
    The Climate Deniers
    The Anti Science Group
    The Bigot Anti Immigration Group

    The party had been hijacked by right wing loons that are so ignorant that they don’t understand stamping their feet won’t make them right,, they must win elections.
    They don’t get that most basic concept.

    Your are correct about Alec Baldwin but lets see how long the keep Laura around ,,,,,if not for anything but laughs

  • LEFTLEANINGTX

    you left out plunging neckline and breast exposing

  • LEFTLEANINGTX

    We to be fair they said young and cute, they didn’t escort looking.
    I wouldn’t call anyone on Fox young and cute.

  • LEFTLEANINGTX

    Laura Ingraham is just mad becayse the bimbo blonde slot is filled by Ann Coulter and Liz Cheney who sucks all of the air out of the room as far as blonde bimbos. Not only that but Ann Coulter and LIz Cheney are much smarter that Laura too. So Laura Ingraham is relegated to insignificance and is always in a game of bomb throwing catch up.

    I never would have though I’d would have called corpse like Ann Coulter good looking but by comparison Horse face Laura Ingraham loses that battle hands down and the old white male Republicans likes them pretty blonds especially the ones with plunging necklines.

  • GeorgeMokray

    Ben Domenach, the Washington Post columnist who left that paper because of his plagiarism, is a somewhat frequent guest on Chris Hayes’ MSNBC show. People like Domenach should be shunned from the public forum. Jason Blair, Janet Cooke, and Stephen Glass are not on the TV being asked about policy and politics. Why is Ben Domenich? And why is Chris Hayes aiding and abetting his career?

  • angryspittle

    Bloody Billy Kristol, the man who is never right about anything is a deep thinker? Coulda fooled me.

  • angryspittle

    Fox goes for the blonde bimbos in short dresses flashing that always elusive beaver shot for the old fucks who watch it.

  • black_in_alabam

    Hate radio’s name was ABC before it was Clear Channel

  • eggroll_jr

    I love ABC. Sometimes they beat Fox for sheer vapidity. Gaze, for example, at this coverage about the Bundy trespass case.

    “It’s not about cows, it’s about freedom,” Utah resident Yonna Winget told ABC News…

    and so it begins,

    It’s not about STDs, it’s about freedom.
    It’s not about calories, it’s about freedom.
    It’s not about voter suppression, it’s about freedom.
    It’s not about discriminatory practices, it’s about freedom,
    Etc.

  • emjayay

    “On MSNBC, for example, a Democratic guest or contributor is someone preferably under 30, and cute.”

    Really?

    However, it is interesting that on local news or Fox News, the women anchors dress like they are at a singles cocktail party and the men dress like IBM executives in 1960.

  • AnthonyLook

    No one watches “This Week”. Now that perpetual fungivitis Lotta Ingrate is on, it will become ABC’s contribution (like Fox) to the demise of the Republican Party.

  • pappyvet

    Hate radio comes to ABC.

  • I’m glad you said that. CNN is unwatchable now. They actually had people on speculating about the missing Maylasian flight maybe being abducted by aliens or going into a black hole. That’s just sad. They used to do some good reporting. They’ve had some real idiots behind the desk, but overall it was usually decent, but it’s taken a hard right turn in the last year or so. I’m getting almost all my news by following the few decent reporters left on twitter.

  • Back in 2010 I heard Ingraham go on and on about how they suddenly ask all about race in the Census. Never mind that this is a question that has been asked every 10 years starting in 1790 (or that the 2010 census form questions were pretty much settled during the Bush administration). She couldn’t be bothered to inform herself. She just wanted to rant about something so she did. That bears no resemblance to Rachel Maddow’s program which is well-researched. I’d have no problem if she represented liberals on a panel discussion. Ingraham on the other hand is just there for the controversy and they’re going to get it. I guess Mary Cheney wasn’t extreme enough for ABC.

  • Oh, we have them. I can’t name anyone that extreme because no one would put such a person on TV or even on the radio. I’m sure there’s some ill-informed liberal loudmouth out there who says inflammatory things all the time. But would liberals want to listen to that a couple of hours every day? No. I’ve actually listened to Ingraham’s program a few times. She’s like Rush Limbaugh minus the charm. (That was sarcasm, sort of. But at least I can see how Rush could be entertaining if you didn’t mind the racism, misogyny and stupidity.)

    I agree with Aravosis that conservatives should be outraged that they will be represented by someone this vapid. I said the same thing about Elizabeth Hasselbeck when she was on The View. The reality is that right-wingers eat this batshit crazy nonsense up and beg for more. They’re gonna love it and probably tune in to watch.

  • The kind of Republican you are describing only exists in scripted TV shows. Not one of the people I know who used to claim to be Republican will use that term now. They are too embarrassed by the party. Ingraham is a horrible choice, of course. They’ll be ousting her for saying something outrageous by the end of the Year. (Note: I made the same prediction about hot-head Alec Baldwin when msnbc hired him. The result was inevitable.) I’d love the see the short list for who else was considered for this job. Who else is going to be the GOP apologist except one of the loons?

  • Perhaps. But I think Rachel Maddow comes close to a credible journal-ish-ist. But she’s not a bomb-thrower.

  • sophie

    There is no “left wing” equivalent, due to the fact that most left wing commentators, if they exist at all, are sane. I suppose Colbert or Lewis Black, Bill Maher, Sarah Silverman, etc., might be considered liberal pundits–but then they are comedians, aren’t they.
    The writer of this piece does not seem to get it that the MSM was bought and sold more than a decade ago. There are no credible teevee “journalists.”

  • cole3244

    when liberals are so afraid of the word they call themselves progressive the cons have won the war of words, timidity in the face of aggression is a sure fire road to defeat and irrelevance.

  • Indigo

    Maybe it’s just as well. After all, vituperative anger is the leading tone coming from the Republican party. It seems to me she can effectively represent the reality of contemporary Republican thinking (if thinking is what it is).

  • Indigo

    Yes, Disney . . . and what’s a Disney episode without Cruella De Ville?

  • LanceThruster

    I’ll be no more or less likely to watch their MSM propaganda regardless.

  • Mainstream media is increasingly owned by far-right corporate interests. There’s part of your explanation right there.

    ABC broadcasting is owned by Disney.

  • PeteWa

    “Laura Ingraham isn’t a deep-thinker like George Will or Bill Kristol or David Frum.”

    ouch, that’s a mighty shallow “deep” bar you’ve set for Laura.

  • usagi

    You proceed from the mistaken assumption that the purpose is discourse.
    The purpose is money.
    This is filling the dead air between the ads with something that will keep the demographic the advertiser wants from flipping to another channel.
    They have determined that they will make more money by hiring in this way than by hiring another way. That is the only reason television does anything, ever. They are enabled by any number of other factors, but there is only one driving force. Money.

  • 1strepublic14thstar

    Damned liberal media, never letting conservative voices on the air.

    ///sarcasm off///

  • bkmn

    As if any of those loyal Fux viewers are even aware of any other news channels.

    It didn’t work for CNN (which is a joke now) and it won’t work for ABC.

  • Is there a left-wing equivalent to the likes of Laura Ingraham, or the lengthy list of far-right Sunday show pundits? Do we have bomb throwers?

  • Elijah Shalis

    Amazing that mainstream media companies feel the need to steal Fox viewers by putting bigots on their shows.

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