Laura Ingraham

Laura Ingraham on the cover of her book Shut Up and Sing.

Laura Anne Ingraham (born June 19 1964 in Glastonbury, Connecticut) is an American conservative talk radio host and author.

Career

Ingraham graduated from Glastonbury High School in Glastonbury, Connecticut in 1982. She holds a bachelor's degree from Dartmouth College and a law degree (J.D.) from the University of Virginia School of Law. During her Dartmouth years, she wrote for the conservative newspaper The Dartmouth Review.

In the late 1980s, Ingraham worked as a speechwriter in the Ronald Reagan administration. She also briefly served as editor of The Prospect, the magazine issued by Concerned Alumni of Princeton. In the early 1990s, she served as a law clerk to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and to Ralph K. Winter on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. She then worked as a white-collar criminal defense attorney for Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom. She appeared on a 1995 cover of The New York Times Magazine in a friend's leopardskin miniskirt — which she joked is displayed in the Smithsonian — for an article about rising young conservatives.

In the late 1990s, she became a CBS commentator and hosted the program "Watch It!" on MSNBC. She is the author of two books: The Hillary Trap: Looking for Power in All the Wrong Places, which presents Hillary Clinton as an example of the 'traps' women can encounter, as well as Shut Up & Sing, which decries the 'elitist' views Ingraham attributes to liberals working primarily in entertainment, academia and the media. According to David Brock, Ingraham had originally struck a deal with Ruth Shalit, at the time a writer for the New Republic, to draft The Hillary Trap for her, but Shalit declined.

Ingraham launched The Laura Ingraham Show in May 2001, which is heard on more than 300 stations and on SIRIUS Satellite Radio and XM Satellite Radio. The show was originally syndicated by Infinity's (now CBS') Westwood One, but is now syndicated by Talk Radio Network.

The Laura Ingraham Show

According to the spring 2006 issue of Talkers magazine, Ingraham's talk show has the fifth largest audience among nationally aired talk show hosts, trailing only Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Michael Savage and Laura Schlessinger. NewsMax.com Magazine's "Top 25 Talk Radio Host" list selected Ingraham as the sixth most influential host in the nation. On her web site, law school classmate and friend Lee Habeeb is billed as "co-producer, sidekick, constant irritant" (on May 30, 2006 Ingraham announced Lee Habeeb had left the show for another job) and Matt Fox is billed as technical producer. Behind the scenes, their guest booking producer is Heather Smith, a former Fox News Channel producer. The site features online polls, "Read It or Weep" articles of note handpicked by Laura from various websites and blogs, and audio clips available via podcasting.

The format of the 3-hour weekday program is host commentary, interaction with Laura and Matt, phone calls and guests. The show covers primarily politics, pop culture and media bias, with topics of interest including race relations, trends in schools, the Middle East and the legacy of feminism. The show features several recurring segments, each with a distinct satirical theme.

The segment called "But... Monkey" takes a politician's sound bite and divides the words before "but" from the words that follow with a screeching monkey sound. Other variations of the monkey cited include the "Having Said That Monkey" and the "Double But... Monkey." Other segments include "Lie of the Day," during which a sound bite is played of an alleged lie over the Anastacia song "Why'd You Lie to Me". Another satirical segment is "Deep Thought of the Day", signaled by the sounds of piano, smooth flowing water and chirping birds accompanied by statements. For example, one "Deep Thought" featured on the show was from Maya Angelou who said, "Don't let facts get in the way of the truth. You can tell so many facts you never get to the truth."

Other segments include "Sound Bite of the Week", which allows callers to choose which of several noteworthy sound 'bites' played before accepting calls is the most outstanding, good or bad. The segment "Looking for Leaders" profiles individuals who have made some outstanding contribution to America by example; one segment featured Kyle Maynard, born without arms or legs, who became a wrestling champion and author. Other lesser-used segments include the "What's He Smokin' Moment of the Day", the "Awkward Pause Moment of the Day", and most recently, the "Black Helicopter".

The segment "Guess the Guest" — in which callers are encouraged to hypothesize as to the identity of a certain guest on selected episodes of Larry King's CNN show by listening to choice sound cuts from the interview — had been played often on Ingraham's radio show until 2005 when for no stated reason, she stopped using the segment. Later, in 2006, resumed it. Ingraham "messed up" the segment twice in a row after she herself guessed the guest correctly, leaving little to callers' imaginations. She has 'officially' banned herself from guessing anymore, but sometimes guesses anyway.

Ingraham visited Iraq from February 5 to February 10, 2006, leaving the morning of February 11. The show then featured several interviews and segments with military personnel now serving in Iraq, and she added to her website a daily journal of her trip, which also featured a visit to a nearby hospital.

Laura often calls the show "Reality Radio", and this is evidenced by her and her producers constant jokes, bloopers and Laura's occasional lateness on the show. Coming back from Israel, the show opened with Laura's producer introducing her on the phone, as she rushed to get into the building, urging her taxi driver to go faster.

Listeners have the option of obtaining at "Laura365" membership, which gives them access to the LauraIngraham.com message boards, podcasting capabilities, behind the scenes photos and "Best of Laura" audio clips. The website also sells Laura Ingraham t-shirts, "Former Embryo" apparel and little "But...Monkey" stuffed animals which make the show's "But...Monkey" noise.

Personal

In April 2005, Ingraham announced she was engaged to businessman James V. Reyes, with a planned wedding in May or June 2005. On April 26, 2005, she announced that she had undergone breast cancer surgery. On May 11, 2005, Ingraham told listeners that her engagement to Reyes was canceled, citing issues regarding her diagnosis with breast cancer. Despite the breakup, she maintains that the two remain good friends, and has told listeners in 2006 that she is currently in good health.

Ingraham once was engaged to conservative author Dinesh D'Souza and has dated former New Jersey Democratic Senator Robert Torricelli. She is a convert to Catholicism.

Controversies

Views on homosexuality

According to David Brock (in his 2002 book Blinded by the Right), Ingraham, while writing for The Dartmouth Review in the mid-1980s, once attended meetings of a gay student organization for the purpose of publicly outing them in the newspaper. Ingraham secretly taped a meeting of the Gay Students Association, then published the transcript, identifying students by name and calling them "sodomites". According to Ingraham, however, she attended the meetings to report in the newspaper how tuition money was being spent.

Jeffrey Hart, faculty advisor to the Dartmouth Review, later wrote in The Weekly Standard that Ingraham held "the most extreme anti-homosexual views imaginable" as an undergraduate, and that she avoided a local restaurant for fear that gay waiters might touch her silverware or spit on her food, exposing her to AIDS.

A decade later, on February 23, 1997, however, Ingraham wrote an essay in the Washington Post in which she announced significant changes in how she views gays and lesbians. This was motivated primarily by the experience of her own gay brother, Curtis, rumored to have been estranged from her for a time after the gay student group controversy, as he cared for his ailing partner:

In the ten years since I learned my brother Curtis was gay, my views and rhetoric about homosexuals have been tempered... because I have seen him and his companion, Richard, lead their lives with dignity, fidelity and courage.

Statement about Iraq War media coverage

On March 21, 2006, Ingraham stirred controversy as a guest on NBC's The Today Show with remarks about coverage of the Iraq War by "NBC and networks of the United States":

To do a show from Iraq means to talk to the Iraqi military, to go out with the Iraqi military, to actually have a conversation with the people instead of reporting from hotel balconies about the latest IEDs going off.

Ingraham's comments followed a six-day visit to Iraq under the protection of U.S. forces,[1] during which she traveled on a Blackhawk helicopter, visited a hospital and several secured villages, and spent nights in the Baghdad Green Zone. In order to tour an Iraqi orphanage, Ingraham left the safety of the Green Zone, donned body armor and traveled a route which abutted a large crater created "by a bomb that detonated the night before." During her visit Ingraham also interviewed the mayor of an Iraqi village, members of the Iraqi military, and an Iraqi businesswoman. She also visited a public children's hospital.

Laura Ingraham made the "hotel balconies" comment while Jill Carroll was a hostage, and only two months after ABC news anchor Bob Woodruff and cameraman Doug Vogt were seriously injured in an explosion from an improvised explosive device near Taji, Iraq, about 12 miles north of Baghdad, while traveling with the Iraqi military in an open vehicle. This provoked criticism that Ingraham did not portray the full involvement of the mainstream media reporters in Iraq; she was criticized by Keith Olbermann, but praised by National Review, fans of her radio show, and many non-partisans as well.

Lara Logan, who was a guest speaking from Iraq on Howard Kurtz's CNN program Reliable Sources, voiced that Ingraham had no validity in criticizing journalists for not being active enough in Iraq when she had not gone there herself. She was then corrected on-air by Kurtz, who informed her that Ingraham had been in Iraq for eight days, to which Logan, a full-time correspondent from Iraq, then scoffed, "For eight days."

Encouraged mass calls to Democratic voting problem hotline

During her show of November 7, 2006 (Election Day), Ingraham was heard encouraging listeners to call the phone lines of a toll-free Democratic Party number intended for voters to report problems in voting.

A transcript of Ingraham's statement as follows:

INGRAHAM: Wait a second! So – (Laughter) you call 1 888 DEM VOTE – otherwise `Dim Bulb Vote' or `Dumb Vote' – and all you do is get transferred to muzak, then they cut you off. This is what I'm thinking. Tell me if you think I'm crazy. This is what I'm thinking. I think we all need to call 1 888 DEM VOTE all at the same time. And, by the way, when you call, when you call the number – and remember, it's `Dem Vote' not `Dumb Vote' – when you call the number, as we did, and we got transferred, transferred, then we just got hung up upon. You know, we're supposed to have these election teams within a matter of minutes, they're supposed to be coming to the polls. Can you imagine what those people look like? Halloween all over again. So if you have trouble with the poll, you're supposed to call, via 1 888 `Dumb Vote,' and this is what you get.

OPERATOR: Thank you for calling 1 888 DEM VOTE. To continue in English, press 1. Para continuar en español, oprima el dos.

INGRAHAM: Oh, and if you're Saddam Hussein, no problem. Vote absentee, in Maryland or Ohio.audio

On November 16, 2006, Senator Pat Leahy asked the Justice Department whether it would be investigating Ingraham for voter fraud.

Leahy stated, "I hear about so many candidates and political parties trying to interfere or intimidate people so that they won’t vote. According to press accounts, right-wing radio host Laura Ingraham, urged listeners of her radio show to jam a phone line set up by Democrats to investigate alleged voter irregularities. She told her listeners, everybody call that voting line all at the same time and basically mark it inoperative. Is that something that your division investigates?"

Wan Kim, an assistant attorney general, said her actions sounded like "voter fraud scheme", but that it didn't fall under his division's responsibility.

No legal action has been taken against Ingraham thus far.

External links

• Official website.

• Photos of Ingraham in Iraq, February 2006