Watch this clip very carefully from last night’s Real Time with Bill Maher. Do you notice that Maher doesn’t actually refute any of Eliot Spitzer and Heather McGee’s points about David Hogg’s pushback against Laura Ingraham’s rhetorical assault?
As Northeastern University Professor Dan Kennedy observes here, all parties involved in the Hogg-Ingraham controversy simply exercised their First Amendment rights. Did it ever dawn on Maher that maybe, just maybe, Ingraham’s former advertisers don’t want to be associated with someone who comes across as a jerk?
Right or wrong, forty years ago this month the United States Supreme Court ruled that businesses have First Amendment rights. Ingraham’s former advertisers are not suppressing her First Amendment rights; they are merely using their First Amendment rights to say that they no longer wish to associate with the Fox fiend.
Bill, wake up, dude. Ingraham brought this mess upon her own head. She thought that she could get away with viciously insulting innocent victims. She has now received a long-overdue rude awakening. Ingraham is not a victim. She and her ilk have victimized too many for far too long. Hogg is not a villain for fighting back against right-wing denigration and demonization. He’s an American hero.
