The Opinionator

Laura Ingraham: "Power to the People"

Ingraham, Laura, Power to the People, Washington, D.C.: Regnery Publishing, Inc., 2007.

At the recent annual meeting of the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC,) a young woman introduced about to withdraw  presidential candidate Mitt Romney in a speech which took several negative shots at Republican nominee-apparent John McCain, mocked his stature as a foot soldier in the Reagan Revolution and blasted singer Barbra Striesand for supporting liberal causes.

This woman was talk radio host Laura Ingraham (pronounced In-gram) and she has published a book which is a not so subtly disguised vehicle to boast about her achievements and to promote her agenda, which is standard far right fare. It includes family values, belief in the power of talk radio, respect for Swift Boating, criticism of the public schools, skepticism toward the Internet, wariness toward scientific data, and hatred of illegal immigration,  unions, activist judges, pornography, terrorism, and the liberal media bias.

A former criminal defense attorney and political analyst for CBS news and MSNBC, she is a columnist and is on the radio regularly. She's also a breast cancer survivor.

She is mad as hell and isn't going to take it anymore. Her knickers are in a twist over a host of issues and she blames all the usual subjects like George Soros, atheists,  The New York Times, Al Franken (with compulsory ratings joke), Rosie O'Donnell (with compulsory weight joke,), Dan Rather and Ted Kennedy (complete with drinking joke.) Even President Bush, for illegal immigration and federal spending, is not spared her venom.

One of the things she hates the most is the effort to restore the Fairness Doctrine  which was promulgated fifty years ago to require broadcast networks to provide "opposing viewpoints" when controversial subjects are discussed. The rule was rescinded by the Reagan administration in 1987, and to many has heralded the rise of conservative talk radio. She rails against what Bill O'Reilly scorns as "secular progressivism," something which displays her qualifications to be a substitute host for him.  In a sense, she is a female Bill O'Reilly, one step up from the corrosive Ann Coulter but she plays in the same league.

 She's no fan of the separation of church and state and is still fuming about the popularity of "The Davinci Code" and the promotion a couple of years ago which postulated that Jesus had a family. She reacts strongly to these secular advances, blames Hollywood for most of it, and quotes John Adams and George Washington about the importance of faith. She has nothing good to say about the two recent anti-religion best sellers by Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins.

Her best chapter is the one on the family.  She argues aggresively about the needs of children, the toxicity of divorce and the excellence of large families with traditional married parents following the cultural conventions of family life.  She seems weak in the chapter on illegal immigration, repeatedly boasting how she and others on talk radio stopped the nation from putting together a legislative response to illegal immigrations.  She appears to fear and dislike greatly illegal immigrants and resents the work of President Bush and the U. S. Congress in their attempted response to the problem.

It's a quick read, but a little too glib and a little too mean in certain places.  You can get the feeling you are reading a series of bumper sticker slogans.  Ingraham is an angry woman and this is her call to arms.