Jeff Koopersmith

She’s Much Cuter Than Tammy Bruce – and More Treacherous than a Cobra
By Jeff Koopersmith

March 10, 2005 / WASHINGTON, DC (apj.us) / Laura Ingraham most likely does not remember our meeting in 1998 at a book party in honor of Arianna Huffington hosted by a friend of "Ari-Mou's" somewhere in the greater DC area.

This late afternoon "do" -- complete with the boring and abysmally unfunny Mark Russell at the piano -- was held to launch Huffington's then new book, "Greetings From the Lincoln Bedroom," offered up during the Clinton-bashing era at around the same time that the then-new generation of uninformed, snotty, ill-educated-at-the-best-schools talking heads were starting to be inflicted on the American public -- or at least those Americans who actually wasted their time taking advice from the likes of Rush Limbaugh.

Laura Ingraham seemed only able to attract the not-100%-lecherous crackhead Don Imus, who had recently married a blonde half his age and who at the time invited Laura to his radio-television show to throw her a cameo bone now and then -- segments which struck one as a poor play featuring Hitler and Unity Mitford chatting about the "Jewish Problem."

According to some of her current and former friends, Ingraham believes she is "quite good looking and personable," and she is, in a mannish sort of way. She is certainly loudmouthed and can easily punch it out with the likes of brain-dead Imus or, for that matter, almost any blowhard with a moderate IQ.

Ingraham herself is dross from Dartmouth and the University of Virginia Law School, where she was marginalized as sort of an ultra-right-wing (even by Virginia standards) Connecticut cracker in the Bush family tradition. Unlike Ann Coulter, who often appears as if she herself is on crack, but not a cracker, Ingraham prefers to present herself as a cold, calculating wannabe Steelers cheerleader who surrounds herself with adolescent men both privately and professionally. She is the kind of woman you would have seen on Girls Gone Wild had there been such an enterprising series examining "youth culture" anthropology during her college years. Ingraham, according to my friend "the G man," "is the girl most likely to perform drunken fellatio on all the sweaty [Republican] ‘members' of the Princeton Crew after too many glasses of Sant'gria."

Laughingly, Ingraham never misses a chance to tell everyone who might listen that she attended Dartmouth, was a litigator for old-school, too-high-priced law firm Skadden Arps, and clerked for none other than mentally bereaved Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas -- who even then had a penchant for undereducated dopey blondes with moderately respectable academic credentials.

Whether Thomas actually dreamed of finding a blonde pubic hair in his Coke-can during his tenure is only a matter for conjecture, but I now understand why, upon leaving the garage of my old home at Washington Harbour, I would encounter Thomas in his green SUV muttering and shouting at anyone who dared get in his way on M Street -- all too many times.

Creeps like Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly, and Michael "Savage" Wiener had barely stirred from their coffins at this time, and the biggest Hitler-baby soon to gain some modicum of notoriety was Tucker Carlson, whose father should be embarrassed by his son's failure to live up to his formidable style, grace and good humor. I once designed a dog bowl and water dish for Tucker complete with leash and collar painted by hand on porcelain. He didn't get it -- and phoned me to say I was a "f$#@er" for that prep-school joke. He e-mailed me the same -- which I yet have stored on a secure server somewhere in Texas.

But enough about the poster boy for gourmet show leather.

On the day of that Arianna book party, Ingraham had some sort of leg injury (most likely from a skiing accident at some redneck Virginia ice mound) which kept her in her car -- yet was not crippled enough to take the ride and see who might help her ailing career at the Huffington book launch, an event which to me was highlighted by my chance to "loan" and "light" a cigarette for the corpulent throat-cancer candidate Lucianne Goldberg, who had dragged her plump, pimple-faced semi-moron son Jonah to the gig as well. Jonah sweat a lot that late afternoon as well he should have, worrying about whether or not Mr. Blue-gin-for-blood himself, William Buckley, would be senile enough to grant him a stage by allowing the boy to edit the Internet version of his conservative fishwrapper. Months later Goldberg did get the job, as Buckley slid downhill mentally and was most likely in diapers by the time he handed the electronic reins to Jonah. And Matt Drudge was there and at his zenith, little knowing that he would be last week's Sunday paper in the not-so-distant future.

The party, due to rare but lovely weather in the District, sprawled out to the patio and into the garden with no one particularly intrigued to see Arianna -- save for me, who liked her and knew that deep down she was a liberal posing as a conservative in order to earn some money and ego.

Only months before I had hosted "The Arianna Huf" at the Breakers Hotel in Palm Beach where I wintered and coincidentally angered psycho-presidential loser Pat Buchanan and his frog-like wife when I suggested, at the hotel's beachside bar, that he ought to talk with David Corn, Washington editor of the left wing magazine The Nation, on my cell phone. Buchanan sneered at me at the table beside and said "Are you stupid?" I laughed in his face and our mutual waiter, who had already rolled his eyes at the Buchanans, laughed out loud -- and Pitchfork Pat was forced into the men's room down the hall to cool his steam. I would have asked him how it felt to disown his sister Bay simply because she fell in love and married a Mormon, but then again I thought at the time it would do no good to point out Buchanan's despicable un-Catholic attitudes in front of a gaggle of afternoon drunks.

The "Arianna Huff" was a huge and hysterical success and Arianna -- phoning in from Brentwood, California -- was tickled that several younger bachelors were more than intrigued by her photos and looking to pleasure her. I had seen the book "Greetings..." in galleys and had suggested changes for some portions of it that I thought went too far. She seemed to have taken my advice.

You might recall that this was at the time when a host of future radio "personalities" were lining up to make their careers using the tragedy of Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky's foolishness as their express pass. Following the practice used by all right wing "activists" from the time of Hitler -- namely, flood the media with hatred -- this group of telegenic turds, including Laura Ingraham, William Bennett, Tucker Carlson, the vampirish Ann Coulter, and even arch creep Tammy Bruce, were strangling each other nonstop to appear on pitiful cable news television, primarily the FOX News [sic] Channel, but often on MSNBC and CNBC. On television, Leslie "Wolf" Blitzer of CNN also joined the fray -- yet today few recall that he also made his reputation almost solely by brutalizing Clinton and was joined in this effort by the not-too-bright Tim Russert at NBC in climbing the backs of the Clintons merely to enrich himself.

Fast forward six years or so to today. What do we see?

We find Laura Ingraham with her own talk show sponsored by sleazy mortgage lenders who advertise 2% annual percentage rates -- even for bankrupts -- and sound like the Mafioso. Her show, titled wittily "The Laura Ingraham Show," is syndicated to more than 300 radio stations, although her audiences are relatively small compared to O'Reilly, Limbaugh, and Hannity. After all, who wants to hear what a goofy masculina thinks about the Supreme Court -- which, by the way, is what propelled me from my own book to writing this column on Ingraham.

Her latest book, "Shut Up & Sing: How the Elites in Hollywood, Politics...and the UN are Subverting America," is supposedly a bestseller. However, one never knows whether right wing books are truly bestsellers or simply bought up in bulk by the likes of American psycho Dick Scaife, who it is rumored has done this for Coulter.

Ingraham's first book, "The Hillary Trap," released in June 2000, was recently re-released in an updated paperback version. She claims that she hopes to become the person her dog Troy thinks she is.

Perhaps she should marry Troy.

Does one see a "theme" here? Of course: capitalize on controversial aspects of liberal viewpoints and tell Hitler's Big Lie about them.

Just the subtitle of her latest trash -- "elites in Hollywood" and the UN are SUBVERTING America -- is embarrassing enough a philosophy to propose, but the contents are even more sidesplitting, leaving one wondering how this woman made it through Dartmouth as anything but a hall monitor.

No wonder George W. Bush is her hero.

To be fair to Ingraham, I have taped and listened to more than 200 hours of her pap over the past few months. While the show -- from opening music to commercial breaks -- smacks of "Animal House," there are a few fine points which are meritorious.

First, she is adamant -- and this stubbornness is key to pushing the fascist line.

Second, she at least makes a pretense of being well-informed. However, on close examination one can see she relies mostly on others of her ilk for information. For instance, she cites Reverend Sun Myung Moon's so-called "newspaper," the Washington Times -- a pernicious enterprise that at its best is nothing more than a bitter right wing roll of toilet tissue -- as a source of many of her stories. Worse yet, she "interviews" (read: gives an open mike to) the so-called journalists who write this garbage.

One titters when she sighs over the "razor-sharp wit" of demented psychologist Charles Krauthammer, the almost forgotten and once highly-respected journalist who has now morphed into a whore for the ultra right, out of frustration deeply ingrained I imagine.

Ingraham herself is insipid, hatefully so, as she insults everything and everyone "liberal." She spits the word "liberal" from her frost pink lips as if it were poison, and never misses the opportunity to label Ted Kennedy a "fat drunk," forgetting the tragic losses he and his family endured mostly as a result of people who think and thought like Ingraham, who believed out of sheer ignorance and arrogant hatred that that the Kennedys were targets of "true Americans." Unfortunately those targets were found, twice -- not to mention the loss of another Kennedy brother (Joseph) during World War II. Why do we never hear Ingraham speak of the two war heroes? Why is there never mention of Jack and Joe, Jr. as she gloats over the heroism of our boys and girls in the Arab today desert as if she served in the military as well?

Naturally, she offers up such dimwits as Senator Rick Santorum of Virginia... excuse me, Pennsylvania, whose shrewdness is close to that of a mandrill and who is worried lately that whatever is left of the right wing in the Keystone State will drop him because of his attempts to soak Pennsylvania taxpayers for the Virginia home schooling of his spawn along with his absolute insensitivity to anything socially productive -- so much so that he is now pretending to want to increase block grants for the needy. Oh my.

So what is Ms. "Ingraho" up to this week?

Well, she's bitterly angry that the Supreme Court decided in a 5-to-4 decision that it was cruel and unusual punishment to put to death children convicted of murder.

Gee, what a great basis upon which to suggest that Congress should have the ability -- get this -- to override a Supreme Court decision!

Twenty years ago, a law student might be thrown out of class for such an acne-scarred suggestion. But like one of the Mitford sisters, Ingraham is lining up her flock of moronic storm troopers to eliminate the only check or balance left that exists to stop an ugly form of quasi-fascism from overtaking the United States.

She points to Antonin Scalia, a judicial extremist who has single-handedly attempted to destroy almost every constitutional protection emerging from that document over the past two centuries, as her hero -- her guru -- and gleefully posts his wanting dissent to the Roper v. Simmons case which provided the venue for the Supreme Court to tell the dumbest of the 19 states in America that they had better reexamine hanging, shooting, gassing, electrocuting, or injecting "children who have killed."

Ingraham ignores -- totally -- the basis upon which the majority of the court decided to overturn killing of minors laws in a third of the states, and instead focuses on Justice Kennedy's peripheral -- though on-point -- argument that no other democracy on earth puts the young to death. She also ignores recent revelations that a large percentage of convicts put to death are later proved innocent. She ignores the fact that children -- and more than ever people under age 18 are childlike -- have not developed control over hormonal bordering sometimes on psychotic changes which lead to rage which regretfully and tragically sometimes leads to murder. Ingraham claims, with all due gall, that five justices of the Supreme Court are controlled by France and other European legal intellect elites who these five supposedly "spend their summer vacations" with -- being brainwashed against what "the majority of Americans" believe.

In the instant case the convicted minor was also found to be mentally and emotionally incompetent by examining witnesses -- yet Ingraham ignores this, instead furious that the boy was not executed and will not be despite his horrendous crime.

She claims that the court has "overruled the people" populating the 19 states that allow capital punishment of minors. But the fact is that only three states -- Texas, Oklahoma, and Virginia of course -- have put to death a minor since the court found that it was unconstitutional to sentence the mentally retarded to death many years ago. So in a sense she is lying here as well.

Ingraham wants you to believe -- as she does (or does not) -- that legal principles should be decided by the "people." They, in essence, should vote on them. This, when the average American -- her kind of American, the one that lives in a shack, consumes three cases of cheap beer every week, has no education to speak of, and entertains himself watching reruns of NASCAR races and Monday night football.

Whether or not she actually believes what she spouts is something only her significant other might know, for Ingraham has learned how to tap into what John Locke, the father of modern Western education, told us decades ago: "The masses are asses."

It is these "asses" to whom Ingraham and her right-wing clones pimp themselves, hardworking American moms and dads who had no chance to become a critical thinker and so let people like small minded Laura think for them.

Ingraham is in any sense of the definition a bald-faced liar.

She claims that Justice Kennedy, who wrote the MAJORITY opinion, based his opinion on facts emanating from Western Europe in which most states do not sanction the death penalty at all -- no matter the age of the defendant convicted of murder or other "capital" crimes.

She also claims that jumped-up lawyer-cum-Justice of the Supreme Court Anton Scalia is so "sharp" pointing out Justice Kennedy's reliance on Western intellectual thought as "foreign law."

It has always and ever been a practice for the Supreme Court to look to other nations when confronting issues brought before it. Ingraham, lying to the masses who listen to her pap, pretends that Kennedy suggests we rely on France or Germany to "dictate" our laws, when in fact Justice Kennedy made a careful and extensive outline of why the majority of the Justices believed that we should not put children to death -- even for heinous murder -- and I have no doubt this WAS a heinous murder after reading the facts.

In fact, Ms. Ingraham, a super-majority of States has absolutely rejected the imposition of the death penalty on juvenile offenders under the age of eighteen.

Because the death penalty is the most severe punishment, the Eighth Amendment applies to it with special force. In any capital case a defendant has wide latitude to raise as a mitigating factor "any aspect of [his or her] character or record and any of the circumstances of the offense that the defendant proffers as a basis for a sentence less than death."

Maybe Ingraham should take another look at Lockett v. Ohio, 438 US 586, 604 (1978) (plurality opinion), Eddings v. Oklahoma, 455 US 104, 110—112 (1982), and Johnson v. Texas, 509 US 350, 359—362 (1993) (summarizing the Court's jurisprudence after Furman v. Georgia, 408 US 238 (1972) (per curiam), with respect to a sentencer's consideration of aggravating and mitigating factors) before she continues whining about "foreign" influence on the Supreme Court.

Justice Kennedy writes further:

There are a number of crimes that beyond question are severe in absolute terms, yet the death penalty may not be imposed for their commission. Coker v. Georgia, 433 US 584 (1977) (rape of an adult woman); Enmund v. Florida, 458 US 782 (1982) (felony murder where defendant did not kill, attempt to kill, or intend to kill). The death penalty may not be imposed on certain classes of offenders, such as juveniles under 16, the insane, and the mentally retarded, no matter how heinous the crime. Thompson v. Oklahoma, supra; Ford v. Wainwright, 477 US 399 (1986); Atkins, supra. These rules vindicate the underlying principle that the death penalty is reserved for a narrow category of crimes and offenders.

Three general differences between juveniles under 18 and adults demonstrate that juvenile offenders cannot with reliability be classified among the worst offenders. First, as any parent knows and as the scientific and sociological studies respondent and his amici cite tend to confirm, "[a] lack of maturity and an underdeveloped sense of responsibility are found in youth more often than in adults and are more understandable among the young. These qualities often result in impetuous and ill-considered actions and decisions." Johnson, supra, at 367; see also Eddings, supra, at 115—116 ("Even the normal 16-year-old customarily lacks the maturity of an adult").

The second area of difference is that juveniles are more vulnerable or susceptible to negative influences and outside pressures, including peer pressure. Eddings, supra, at 115 ("[Y]outh is more than a chronological fact. It is a time and condition of life when a person may be most susceptible to influence and to psychological damage"). This is explained in part by the prevailing circumstance that juveniles have less control, or less experience with control, over their own environment. See Steinberg & Scott, Less Guilty by Reason of Adolescence: Developmental Immaturity, Diminished Responsibility, and the Juvenile Death Penalty, 58 Am. Psychologist 1009, 1014 (2003) (hereinafter Steinberg & Scott) ("[A]s legal minors, [juveniles] lack the freedom that adults have to extricate themselves from a criminogenic setting").

The third broad difference is that the character of a juvenile is not as well formed as that of an adult. The personality traits of juveniles are more transitory, less fixed. See generally E. Erikson, Identity: Youth and Crisis (1968).

These differences render suspect any conclusion that a juvenile falls among the worst offenders. The susceptibility of juveniles to immature and irresponsible behavior means "their irresponsible conduct is not as morally reprehensible as that of an adult." Thompson, supra, at 835 (plurality opinion). Their own vulnerability and comparative lack of control over their immediate surroundings mean juveniles have a greater claim than adults to be forgiven for failing to escape negative influences in their whole environment. See Stanford, 492 US, at 395 (Brennan, J., dissenting). The reality that juveniles still struggle to define their identity means it is less supportable to conclude that even a heinous crime committed by a juvenile is evidence of irretrievably depraved character. From a moral standpoint it would be misguided to equate the failings of a minor with those of an adult, for a greater possibility exists that a minor's character deficiencies will be reformed."

Kennedy goes on to underscore the very lack of evidence that the death penalty is a deterrent against murder -- for adults or children -- and in fact there is no proof this and plenty of proof to the contrary. Murder is generally a crime of passion -- even in the case of assassination where the murderer is usually emotionally involved against the will of the target to an extreme.

But the key phrase from Justice Kennedy is this: "The differences between juvenile and adult offenders are too marked and well understood to risk allowing a youthful person to receive the death penalty despite insufficient culpability."

Only well into his majority opinion does Kennedy write of "foreign" jurisdictions. It is his FOURTH consideration in ruling that capital punishment of minors is unconstitutional. He points out the United States is the only country IN THE WORLD that sanctions the death penalty for children. The only country in the world -- not as Ingraham would lead you to believe as she pretends that other legal, academic, and intellectual leaders abroad are too stupid to have viable opinions that might be considered by our Courts -- even though she might remember that most of our own laws are based on the British Common Law and, in some instances, the French law. Yet we do not hear her criticizing these laws when they favor business or property rights or her right to lie to the public almost continually on her radio program.

Of course not, because like most of her kind, she is a consummate hypocrite.

Nor does Ingraham point out that Article 37 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, which every country in the world has ratified save for the United States and Somalia, contains an express prohibition on capital punishment for crimes committed by juveniles under 18.

Now isn't that special?

Admittedly a few nations have used capital punishment in the past fifteen years including such outstanding pillars of virtue as Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and China.

These are the nations Ingraham suggests, at least parenthetically, that we emulate.

Scalia, a clone of Ingraham, seems to base his fury with the majority of his judicial peers (along with the idiot Thomas) by claiming: " We now have five justices on the Supreme Court who are perfectly content to rely on foreign law, and public opinion in foreign countries, when ruling on the constitutionality of state laws they don't like."

He makes no mention, in his opening remarks writing for the minority, regarding Kennedy's carefully crafted reasoning behind holding the death penalty for minors as unconstitutional.

Ingraham calls Kennedy's opinion an "absolute travesty" and suggests that the Court should decide cases on the basis of "national consensus" of electing local weasel governments who should be able to make any law they wish despite the constitutional which in fact the founders tried to make impossible by inserting the federal judiciary as the final and untouchable check and balance against tyranny.

This is why judges serve life terms. Even Justice Scalia does not go this far, to suggest term limits or impeachment by Congress of the judiciary, although Ingraham would have you believe he did in his dissent.

Ingraham boldly and idiotically stated on her radio program that judges' terms should be limited and that Congress should have to the power to override their decisions. Is she insane or merely a dolt? No wonder she no longer practices law. She would make more of a mockery of it than her Republican colleagues have already done. Was she fired from Skadden? One can only wonder.

In fact Scalia's opening attack on Kennedy et al was not over foreign thought but a snide attack at Justice Kennedy's wise and prudent look at what Scalia mocks as "the evolving standards of decency."

Yes, DECENCY.

That's a word that used to pepper Republican rhetoric but has, within the last twenty years, been reduced to a catch-phrase sort of like "compassionate conservatism" -- an oxymoron if there ever was one.

Scalia and Ingraham as his parrot writes, "Worse still, the Court says in so many words that what our people's laws say about the issue does not, in the last analysis, matter."

Well, of course what they say does not matter when that violates the basis of our Constitution. That's why Civil Rights laws were upheld largely by a Court made up from racists. That's why the woman's right to vote was installed and not overturned -- despite the majority. Decency above politics -- something that Scalia and others on the Court have no learned, nor or willing or graceful enough to concede.

Yet Ingraham and Justice Scalia somehow believe that "the people" can make up laws as they wish -- moving from tide to tide as public opinions washes, through some sort of populist magic -- or in the case of California, by ballot proposition which has cost that state, and especially its minority poor tragedy of great proportion. They actually believe that by voting for local and state legislators, the people have spoken -- when in fact most voters have no idea what candidates believe about anything, let alone about critical but small issues of basic morality, as in the instant case where we are weighing the prudence of executing children for heinous crimes.

Again, the masses are asses. This is not an arrogant statement, merely a factual one.

Not everyone in America is educated and certainly far fewer have even what we refer to in the vernacular as "common sense." Fewer than 20% of Americans have even a two year college degree, why then would we trust the inhabitants of the some of this nation's most backward states to decide matters of life of death involving children -- and certainly why would be worried that only a third of our states have been heartless enough to keep laws on the books that execute a child, Or anyone for that matter?

"But the Court having pronounced that the Eighth Amendment ("Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.) is an ever-changing reflection of "the evolving standards of decency" of our society, it makes no sense for the Justices then to prescribe those standards rather than discern them from the practices of our people," writes Scalia.

He asks, "By what conceivable warrant can nine lawyers presume to be the authoritative conscience of the Nation?"

Is he cracked or will he go to any extreme to undermine the last and freest-of-corruption stop on the justice trail?

Of course the Nine Old Men and Women may act as the "conscience of the Nation."

And they have, over our history, hundreds of times -- flying in the face of public opinion -- and against far greater misinformed or evilly-intended majorities than Scalia proposes (in error) might support executing children!

Scalia and Ingraham (mentioning them in the same sentence is an insult to Scalia) believe in something called "legislative primacy" -- that in a democracy the legislature -- not the courts -- evince the will and the values of the people.

This is to an extent true. But just as it can be morally correct to reflect the opinion of the majority, it can also be equally immoral to do so. Thus Ingraham and Scalia are wrong -- the appeals courts, and especially the Supreme Court are the final arbiters of morality based on the Constitution which is unclear on that subject -- and designedly so.

Under the Scalia-Ingraham rule, the baby would have been cut in half by Solomon, for this is what the insane crowd wanted -- bloodshed and revenge, entertainment -- bloody entertainment.

I rest my case.

I would like to go on describing the adolescent nature of the Laura Ingraham Show -- Laura herself, and especially her two sidekicks who would be more appropriately placed as bar waiters in a state college beer joint.

It is sufficient to point out that the lead-ins to the show make it appear as if Laura is the next Billy Graham. The music, the silly sound bites that bolster the right and mock the left -- her voice-over sounding like a nine-year-old saying "Only on the Laura Ingraham Show," which smacks of a badly trained bratty announcer -- all demonstrate the untested mind of a tyro and her aides.

Ingraham, preferring to hear herself, rarely takes calls from the public. She delights in interviewing has-beens -- including the old gang of Clinton-bashing washed-out has-been lawyers, writers like Chris Hitchens, and the insidious Mark Levin who delight in their conversion from liberal to fascist simply for the money. In fact, Ingraham uses Hitchens's childish drunken voice in one of her lead-ins, squealing "The question was to me, the question was to me..." because the little sot was being ignored by the host of whatever unwatchable cable show Hitchens was on to protect and run cover for little George Bush.

Ingraham also delights in pretending she is a music critic -- the eyes and ears of her generation. It's pathetic as she pushes one cowboy bebop loser after another as the height of talent. Well, in fairness, she isn't always wrong -- just 90% of the time.

One can see her -- fresh from a manicure, pedicure, and trim behind the Red Door -- buzzing around in her Beemer, stopping at Dean & Deluca for grapes and bitter cheese. She's made it -- or so she thinks, and even more so because she's now a Christian too! Wow -- and she never let's you forget it -- a sure sign that this show is one to miss, forever and always.

I am a Christian, a Catholic by the by, and I am insulted by her newfound love of God -- which is used primarily to underscore her self-righteousness and true malevolence against all that is truly holy.

Tune her out.

JEFF KOOPERSMITH is a political consultant, opinion research authority, policy analyst, and self-described "renegade lobbyist."