Laura Ingraham Creates Free Racist Campaign Ad for Republican Candidates Everywhere
Laura Ingraham, a Fox News talking head whose smirking-racist shtick has occasionally prompted even some Fox News executives to be like, "Hey, it would help us out if you could be a little less of a smirking racist," initiated a fresh round of headaches among her corporate overlords on Wednesday, bemoaning in her monologue the "massive demographic changes" that have rendered vast swaths of this once-proud nation unrecognizable. "They are changes that none of us ever voted for," she said, demonstrating a keen understanding of exactly which types of people watch her show and which types do not, "and that most of us don't like."
Lest the thrust of her argument go unnoticed by viewers less attuned to the precise frequency of this dog whistle, Ingraham went on to clarify that "much of this is related to both illegal and in some cases legal immigration, which of course progressives love." She also played B-roll of people working on a farm (because all immigrants work on farms), showed undated clips of people climbing over a wall (because all immigrants entered this country by climbing over a wall), and then shared a cautionary tale about an undocumented immigrant in Philadelphia who committed heinous crimes after authorities failed to deport him (because, as you know, committing heinous crimes is why all immigrants come here, and it is the only thing any of them do, whenever they are not working on farms).
Ingraham has long understood the value to her personal brand of tossing red meat to Fox News viewers, many of whom might otherwise find two hours of Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson sufficient to meet their recommended daily allowance of bigotry. But what is striking about segments like this one is how closely they track the evolving electoral interests of the Republican Party, whose single issue is now making voters too afraid of brown people to vote for anyone else. If you moved Ingraham to a voiceover role, superimposed a few bullet points over her stock footage, and then transitioned to an upbeat instrumental and the soft-lit image of a would-be congressman and his wife and 2.4 children, this half-minute would be indistinguishable from a 2018 campaign spot. By shoehorning advertising into its scheduled programming, the network provides the party with as much free airtime as it wants.
Fox News is an organization founded by wealthy conservatives to promote their preferred policies and favored politicians, and has always functioned as the quasi-independent propaganda arm of the Republican Party. This has become a sometimes-tricky balancing act for its talent, as the GOP's base became whiter and less-educated and more rural over the decades. (The notions that Laura Ingraham, a corporate lawyer-turned-entertainment personality who lives in New York City and is worth an estimated $45 million, has some deep philosophical interest in building a wall or is just now taking notice of the existence of diversity, are kind of absurd.) But a message that resonates with voters in Midwestern swing states is what the party needs right now, and Ingraham is a company woman all the way, and so that is what she delivers.
