Daily listeners to the Laura Ingraham show (like me) know that she likes to interrupt silly soundbites with an explosion sound effect. Somehow on the Left, this is now being characterized as an audio assassination. The Daily Kos carried the headline “Laura Ingraham Uses a Shotgun to Imagine Assassinating Rep. John Lewis During his MLK Speech.”
On Monday, Ingraham exploded the Lewis soundbite as he demanded “comprehensive immigration reform,” just before he used the ridiculous metaphor of illegal aliens hiding “in the shadows" -- she noted they were brought as guests to Obama's State of the Union address. Ingraham explained their sound effect to NewsBusters:
My producers and I have used this blow up effect to interrupt windbags for 10 years of political and cultural persuasions. The cannon or "blow up" sound is meant to convey the gaseous thoughts of a speaker combusting, but of course the bilious Joan Walsh of Salon.com knows that. (My producers have even blown me up when we play long clips from TV appearances!)
Par for the course--people with an ideological axe to grind are attempting to read malicious intent where none exists. Their goal is not to debate, but to stifle speech.
The Kos crowd and other leftist blogs didn’t think it was an assassination when Ingraham interrupted snippets of George W. Bush or John McCain or Lindsey Graham with the same sound effect. “TeamSarah4Choice” – abortion advocates should avoid loose talk about the politics of murder – can only imagine the very worst:
Clearly, Laura Ingraham intended to give the illusion to her listeners that Rep. Lewis was assassinated in the middle of his speech. Yeah, that's the mind-set of these rightwingers. They spread lies, hate and now, Laura Ingraham takes her their listeners to wallow in her repugnant mind where she images using a shotgun to assassinate black Congressional leaders.
Who will Laura Ingraham envision using her shotgun to assassinate next?
Joan Walsh at Salon somehow heard a “crackling gunshot” from the “ignorant and vicious” conservative host:
I have to wonder why she chose to silence Lewis, symbolically at least, with a gunshot. It’s no coincidence she’s also an NRA mouthpiece whipping up fear that the government is coming for our guns. All of the white-grievance mongers are getting angrier, and their brew of pro-gun paranoia and white racial resentment is toxic. Ingraham should be ashamed of herself, but she’s just another rodeo clown, and she has no shame.
Ingraham told me: "This is absurd and venomous and the predictably pathetic work of people who mean to crush free speech as they advance a failing, progressive agenda. If Joan Walsh or other left-wing loons give voice to their moronic, dishonest analysis, they might self-combust on my show, too. Boom."
She also said "I referred to John Lewis as a 'trailblazing civil rights figure.' They're absurd."
