Michael Gaynor
"Lowest of low" Ed Schultz proves Laura Ingraham right about the coarsening of the culture
By Michael Gaynor
Pray for the saving of Schultz's immortal soul and Ingraham to succeed in saving our imperiled country!
"It is up to each of us — myself included — to work against the coarsening of the culture," Laura Ingraham wrote in The Obama Diaries.
MSNBC's Ed Schultz picked a weird way to do, by first vilely attacking Ingraham on his radio show and then promptly apologizing.
First Schultz, upset about criticism of President Obama, ranted:
"Rain, thunderstorms, winds getting whipped into tornadoes of horrific proportions. Hot weather, all of this stuff. And what are the Republicans thinking about? They're not thinking about their next-door neighbor. They're just thinking about how much this is going to cost. President Obama is going to be visiting Joplin, Missouri, on Sunday. But you know what they're talking about? Like this right-wing slut, what's her name, Laura Ingraham? Yeah, she's a talk slut. You see, she was, back in the day, praising President Reagan when he was drinking a beer overseas. But now that Obama's doing it, they're working him over."
Ingraham posted this clever Facebook reply: "Re. the crude comments made about me by Ed Schultz on his radio program: First, I was surprised to learn that Ed Schultz actually hosted a radio show. Is it only available online? Second, I have to get back to recording the audio edition of my new book 'Of Thee I Zing.' Now I'm tempted to insert one additional zing — about men who preach civility but practice misogyny."
MSNBC suspended Schultz without pay and Schultz issued this apology:
"On my radio show yesterday, I used vile and inappropriate language when talking about talk show host Laura Ingraham. I am deeply sorry, and I apologize. It was wrong, uncalled for and I recognize the severity of what I said. I apologize to you, Laura and ask for your forgiveness. It doesn't matter what the circumstances were. It doesn't matter that it was on radio and I was ad libbing. None of that matters. none of that matters. What matters is what I said was terribly vile and not of the standards that I or any other person should adhere to. I want all of you to know tonight that I did call Laura Ingraham today and did not make contact with her and I will apologize to her as I did in the message that I left her today. I also met with management here at MSNBC, and understanding the severity of the situation and what I said on the radio and how it reflected terribly on this company, I have offered to take myself off the air for an indefinite period of time with no pay. I want to apologize to Laura Ingraham. I want to apologize to my family, my wife. I have embarrassed my family. I have embarrassed this company. And I have been in this business since 1978, and I have made a lot of mistakes. This is the lowest of low for me. I stand before you tonight in front of this camera in this studio in an environment that I absolutely love. I love working here. I love communicating with all of you on the radio and the communication that I have with you when I go out and do town hall meetings and meet the people that actually watch. I stand before you tonight to take full responsibility for what I said and how I said it, and I am deeply sorry."
Ingraham graciously accepted the apology and moved on to the critical issues facing America.
Schultz's foul and foolish attack on the articulate and ardently conservative Ingraham was not the first or the worst.
Like conservatives Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann and Michelle Malkin, Ingraham has been a target of the Far Left and will continue to be.
In 2005, democraticunderground.com, the news that Ingraham had cancer was greeted with joy.
For example, one poster commented that he'd pray "that she share, appropriately, the wing of Hell populated by Hitler's lower managmement, radio personalities, and writers from the Ministry of Propaganda."
Some comments at the site were so despicable (and counter-productive) that the late Elizabeth Edwards intervened with this comment:
"I have been a Democrat for a long time, and part of the Democratic principles that attracted me as a young person and kept me a Democrat all these years is our compassion. Democrats are simply good and decent people. And good and decent people want everyone to do well — those who agree with them and those who do not. We fight for the right of voices with which we disagree to speak out, for the right of people to say things we don't believe to be true, even for the right to be malicious and mean-spirited. If we fight for the right for LI [Laura Ingraham] to say what she says, how in the world can we use our disagreement with those words as an excuse not to be compassionate in her fight with cancer. Being willing to have her voice muted by illness is the same thing as not wanting her voice to be heard. It is not Democratic or democratic.
"I hope others will join me in wishing her Godspeed in this fight, for the easiest road that she can have, and even for the development of compassion about others who have faced hardship and disease without the support network she — and I — have. As I go through treatment for this same disease, I think often about the women who fight breast cancer without health insurance, without a supportive husband, with a physically demanding job that doesn't know or doesn't care that she is exhausted and weak and aching, with children but no child care. I find it absolutely impossible that LI won't also have those thoughts run through her head or that she won't rethink her position on health care or the social safety net. Pray for her health AND her enlightenment, if you must. But pray, with me, for her good health."
Elizabeth's husband John actually was not so "supportive," not all Democrats are "simply good and decent people" and Ingraham did not flip flop on health care or other important issues.
John Edwards was exposed as an adulterer and perhaps will face prosecution, Democrat control of the White House and Congress was recognized as a mistake in the 2010 election and Ingraham recovered from cancer and continued her campaign against the coarsening of the culture, on radio and television and in two no. 1 best sellers, Power to the People (2007) and The Obama Diaries (2010) and Of Thee I Zing (with Raymond Arroyo), to be released in July.
Hopefully, Schultz's attack will boost sale of Zing instead of distract from Ingraham's message.
Promotional material for the upcoming book states in part:
"While walking through a Northern Virginia shopping mall one Saturday afternoon, it all became clear to Laura Ingraham. Everywhere she turned, she saw signs of the impending disaster: zombie teens texting each other across a café table; a man having his eyebrows threaded at a kiosk; a fiftyish woman shoe-horned into a tube top and skinny jeans; and a storefront ad featuring a Victoria Secret model spilling out of her push-up bra and into the faces of young passersby. Ingraham wondered to herself, 'Is this it? Is this what our forefathers fought for? What my parents struggled for? I wonder if Victoria's Secret is still having that two for one sale?'
"A menacing force surrounds us. We see it, we feel it, we know it. The country we love is in grave peril. While politicians and 'experts' prattle on about the debt crisis at home, and terrorism abroad, a more insidious homegrown threat is emerging. It endangers our future and undermines our present. The uncomfortable truth is: We have become our own worst enemy. The culture we have created is now turning on us. We're on the verge of drowning in our ignorance, arrogance, gluttony . . . ."
Ingraham's rightly focused on saving her country, not slimy smears by Schultz and his ilk.
Not long ago MSNBC reprimanded Schultz for calling New Jersey Governor Chris Christie a "fat slob."
Instead of learning from that experience, he got even coarser.
Ingraham obviously is slender and neat, so Schultz misapplied another four-letter "s" word.
BIG MISTAKE!
Pray for the saving of Schultz's immortal soul and Ingraham to succeed in saving our imperiled country!
© Michael Gaynor
May 28, 2011
Pray for the saving of Schultz's immortal soul and Ingraham to succeed in saving our imperiled country!
"It is up to each of us — myself included — to work against the coarsening of the culture," Laura Ingraham wrote in The Obama Diaries.
MSNBC's Ed Schultz picked a weird way to do, by first vilely attacking Ingraham on his radio show and then promptly apologizing.
First Schultz, upset about criticism of President Obama, ranted:
"Rain, thunderstorms, winds getting whipped into tornadoes of horrific proportions. Hot weather, all of this stuff. And what are the Republicans thinking about? They're not thinking about their next-door neighbor. They're just thinking about how much this is going to cost. President Obama is going to be visiting Joplin, Missouri, on Sunday. But you know what they're talking about? Like this right-wing slut, what's her name, Laura Ingraham? Yeah, she's a talk slut. You see, she was, back in the day, praising President Reagan when he was drinking a beer overseas. But now that Obama's doing it, they're working him over."
Ingraham posted this clever Facebook reply: "Re. the crude comments made about me by Ed Schultz on his radio program: First, I was surprised to learn that Ed Schultz actually hosted a radio show. Is it only available online? Second, I have to get back to recording the audio edition of my new book 'Of Thee I Zing.' Now I'm tempted to insert one additional zing — about men who preach civility but practice misogyny."
MSNBC suspended Schultz without pay and Schultz issued this apology:
"On my radio show yesterday, I used vile and inappropriate language when talking about talk show host Laura Ingraham. I am deeply sorry, and I apologize. It was wrong, uncalled for and I recognize the severity of what I said. I apologize to you, Laura and ask for your forgiveness. It doesn't matter what the circumstances were. It doesn't matter that it was on radio and I was ad libbing. None of that matters. none of that matters. What matters is what I said was terribly vile and not of the standards that I or any other person should adhere to. I want all of you to know tonight that I did call Laura Ingraham today and did not make contact with her and I will apologize to her as I did in the message that I left her today. I also met with management here at MSNBC, and understanding the severity of the situation and what I said on the radio and how it reflected terribly on this company, I have offered to take myself off the air for an indefinite period of time with no pay. I want to apologize to Laura Ingraham. I want to apologize to my family, my wife. I have embarrassed my family. I have embarrassed this company. And I have been in this business since 1978, and I have made a lot of mistakes. This is the lowest of low for me. I stand before you tonight in front of this camera in this studio in an environment that I absolutely love. I love working here. I love communicating with all of you on the radio and the communication that I have with you when I go out and do town hall meetings and meet the people that actually watch. I stand before you tonight to take full responsibility for what I said and how I said it, and I am deeply sorry."
Ingraham graciously accepted the apology and moved on to the critical issues facing America.
Schultz's foul and foolish attack on the articulate and ardently conservative Ingraham was not the first or the worst.
Like conservatives Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann and Michelle Malkin, Ingraham has been a target of the Far Left and will continue to be.
In 2005, democraticunderground.com, the news that Ingraham had cancer was greeted with joy.
For example, one poster commented that he'd pray "that she share, appropriately, the wing of Hell populated by Hitler's lower managmement, radio personalities, and writers from the Ministry of Propaganda."
Some comments at the site were so despicable (and counter-productive) that the late Elizabeth Edwards intervened with this comment:
"I have been a Democrat for a long time, and part of the Democratic principles that attracted me as a young person and kept me a Democrat all these years is our compassion. Democrats are simply good and decent people. And good and decent people want everyone to do well — those who agree with them and those who do not. We fight for the right of voices with which we disagree to speak out, for the right of people to say things we don't believe to be true, even for the right to be malicious and mean-spirited. If we fight for the right for LI [Laura Ingraham] to say what she says, how in the world can we use our disagreement with those words as an excuse not to be compassionate in her fight with cancer. Being willing to have her voice muted by illness is the same thing as not wanting her voice to be heard. It is not Democratic or democratic.
"I hope others will join me in wishing her Godspeed in this fight, for the easiest road that she can have, and even for the development of compassion about others who have faced hardship and disease without the support network she — and I — have. As I go through treatment for this same disease, I think often about the women who fight breast cancer without health insurance, without a supportive husband, with a physically demanding job that doesn't know or doesn't care that she is exhausted and weak and aching, with children but no child care. I find it absolutely impossible that LI won't also have those thoughts run through her head or that she won't rethink her position on health care or the social safety net. Pray for her health AND her enlightenment, if you must. But pray, with me, for her good health."
Elizabeth's husband John actually was not so "supportive," not all Democrats are "simply good and decent people" and Ingraham did not flip flop on health care or other important issues.
John Edwards was exposed as an adulterer and perhaps will face prosecution, Democrat control of the White House and Congress was recognized as a mistake in the 2010 election and Ingraham recovered from cancer and continued her campaign against the coarsening of the culture, on radio and television and in two no. 1 best sellers, Power to the People (2007) and The Obama Diaries (2010) and Of Thee I Zing (with Raymond Arroyo), to be released in July.
Hopefully, Schultz's attack will boost sale of Zing instead of distract from Ingraham's message.
Promotional material for the upcoming book states in part:
"While walking through a Northern Virginia shopping mall one Saturday afternoon, it all became clear to Laura Ingraham. Everywhere she turned, she saw signs of the impending disaster: zombie teens texting each other across a café table; a man having his eyebrows threaded at a kiosk; a fiftyish woman shoe-horned into a tube top and skinny jeans; and a storefront ad featuring a Victoria Secret model spilling out of her push-up bra and into the faces of young passersby. Ingraham wondered to herself, 'Is this it? Is this what our forefathers fought for? What my parents struggled for? I wonder if Victoria's Secret is still having that two for one sale?'
"A menacing force surrounds us. We see it, we feel it, we know it. The country we love is in grave peril. While politicians and 'experts' prattle on about the debt crisis at home, and terrorism abroad, a more insidious homegrown threat is emerging. It endangers our future and undermines our present. The uncomfortable truth is: We have become our own worst enemy. The culture we have created is now turning on us. We're on the verge of drowning in our ignorance, arrogance, gluttony . . . ."
Ingraham's rightly focused on saving her country, not slimy smears by Schultz and his ilk.
Not long ago MSNBC reprimanded Schultz for calling New Jersey Governor Chris Christie a "fat slob."
Instead of learning from that experience, he got even coarser.
Ingraham obviously is slender and neat, so Schultz misapplied another four-letter "s" word.
BIG MISTAKE!
Pray for the saving of Schultz's immortal soul and Ingraham to succeed in saving our imperiled country!
© Michael Gaynor
The views expressed by RenewAmerica columnists are their own and do not necessarily reflect the position of RenewAmerica or its affiliates.
(See RenewAmerica's publishing standards.)
