Laura Ingraham Responds (sort of)

I've been pretty clear here about my disappointment in the conservative pundits who attacked Harriet Miers so ferociously. Laura Ingraham has figured most prominently in my posts on that subject.

Yesterday I sent this e-mail to Laura, and now I have received a response:

Date: Thu, 27 Oct 2005

Laura:

The following is typical of comments I am getting to my blog posts about your approach to Harriet Miers. I thought you should see it:

"Great letter Lowell, I'm feeling exactly the same way about Laura Ingraham, and about a lot of the other people I generally admire and listen to/read. On the day of Mier's withdrawal, Laura should at least have had the decency to remove all the mocking sound clips, even as she claimed to be in a no-gloat zone. She shared crocodile tears with Bork--who said it was sad Miers had been so savaged--he, who declared her 'unable to write, except in cliches.' It was grotesque. I remember the very day after the nomination, when I heard Ann Coulter say: 'you know, some of us actually went to top law schools.' I wanted to gag. I'll never look at some of these folks the same way again."

Posted by Paul S

This is the post Paul S was responding to:

http://hedgehogcentral.blogspot.com/2005/10/my-e-mail-to-laura-ingraham-today.html

Still love your show, still hate the way you dealt with Miers.

Lowell Brown
Los Angeles, CA

Laura's response (obviously written by one of her staff):

If you think that Laura did the wrong thing after reading her speeches, then you and we just have different understandings of what it means to be a judicial conservative. Laura was right from the beginning and I suppose that is what gets some angry. Anger does not change the facts. Her writing IS filled with cliches--quoting Barbra Streisand and lauding Ann Richards? QUoting Justice Ginsberg? "Two justice systems in America"? Get real--we dodged a bullet with this one. Judge Bork was exactly right.

This response would be a little more persuasive if the issue were what Laura did "after reading [Miers'] speeches." All Laura's indecent attacks on Miers occurred before those speeches even came out.

Oops.

Over the last two days Laura has been emphasizing the speeches (minor lunchtime addresses that do seem disturbing, but about which we know nothing, except what's written on the pages the Washington Post published). To hear Laura talk, those little talks justify everything she and all the others did to Miers. Fact is, the speeches had almost nothing to do with the previous three weeks of savaging Miers because no one had discovered them yet.

With rare exceptions, the attacks by the anti-Miers conservatives' were very poorly reasoned and manifestly unfair. These are smart, well-educated people (as they loved to remind us), so they definitely knew better. They are now scrambling to defend what was a neo-borking of the first order, and appear to be incapable of embarrassment or self-examination. Instead, Laura hides behind those speeches discovered at the last minute.

Even so, I am embarrassed for many of the neo-borkers. Some were responsible, but I'm afraid Laura pushed the envelope far too much for my sensibilities.

There has been no response from Laura to my longer, more focused e-mail, which I posted here. I find it interesting that she chose the e-mail above for a response. I'm still not holding my breath while I wait.