October 6, 2010, - 2:01 pm
The Rutgers Gay Suicide & Laura Ingraham
While I was away for the last of the Jewish holidays, last week, the major news story was the suicide of a gay Rutgers student who was outed by his roommate and the roommate’s friend when they secretly videotaped him having sex and posted it online. The gay student, Tyler Clementi, a talented violinist, committed suicide. While I oppose gay rights and gay marriage, I felt for this kid, whose privacy was invaded and whose roommate embarrassed him publicly for no legitimate reason. What people do behind closed doors is their business, not mine, unless they are public figures and/or are hypocrites–not the case here. (It’s liberals who stick their noses in people’s business, not conservatives.) These people, Dhuran Ravi and Molly Wei, are despicable and have been charged with invasion of privacy (which is essentially a slap on the hand, but it’s pretty much all they can be charged with). But the first person I thought of was Laura Ingraham.
Death of Outrage: Laura Ingraham Shamelessly Outed Plenty of Tyler Clementis
You see, Laura Ingraham–who is idolized by so many ignorant conservatives–was the original Ravi and Wei. Before the internet and Facebook, and cheap video cameras, Ingraham was the editor of the Dartmouth Review and took it upon herself to go to meetings of gay students, secretly tape them, and then out them to their parents, sending them the tapes. Thank G-d that the internet and cheap video cameras weren’t around then, or she’d have likely done the same as Ravi and Wei. She did the 1980s equivalent of it. Ingraham was proud of these deeds, invading the privacy of these students who did nothing to her, and embarrassing them to the people closest to them–their families. Ingraham admitted she did this, after Jeffrey Hart, a conservative faculty member (and Nixon and Reagan speechwriter) who was the Dartmouth Review’s advisor, exposed this Ingraham “activity.”
Ingraham never apologized to these students. And who knows if any of them committed suicide because of her actions? Regardless, she’s as despicable as Ravi and Wei. But, instead of facing justice and scorn, she was rewarded with law school, prestigious judicial clerkships, failed cable TV show after failed cable TV show, a syndicated national radio show, and the permanent guest hosting spot for Bill O’Reilly on FOX News Channel. And, of course, she has the gushing praise of phonies like Michelle Fraudkin and many others, who don’t seem to care that she did the same thing as Dhuran Ravi and Molly Wei did to Tyler Clementi.
Later on in life, Ingraham wrote an op-ed piece in the Washington Post, writing about how her gay brother’s lover was dying of AIDS and she wants more tax-funded research money for AIDS–the mostly gay disease that gets the lions share of research dollars as opposed to cancers that affect far more people who didn’t choose to engage in gay sex or intravenous drug-using. That was her “penance,” her “apology.”
Yup, that’s your “conservative” hero–Laura Ingraham, the original Dhuran Ravi and Molly Wei, who despicably outed gay students to their parents and never looked back. (And that’s aside from some of her other absurd liberal leanings, like her crazy PETA-style animal rights BS and promotion of single motherhood.) She’s laughing at you all the way to the bank. Suckers.
So, how long until Ravi and Wei get radio shows and FOX News gigs? If she can do it, why not them? The death of outrage is not the monopoly of liberals. Conservatives maintain their fair share. What Laura Ingraham did at Dartmouth is no different, no less unforgivable than what the Rutgers kids did to Tyler Clementi. Yet, there is no outrage for her and never has been any.
Yes, the scariest animal wears pants. And she’s also the scariest conservative, too.
Tags: conservative, Dhuran Ravi, Fox News Channel, invasion of privacy, Laura Ingraham, Molly Wei, outing gays, Rutgers, suicide, the death of outrage, Tyler Clementi
” I felt for this kid, whose privacy was invaded and whose roommate embarrassed him publicly for no legitimate reason.”
There’s a teaching in “Ethics of the Fathers”, a chapter of the Mishna. It states, “He who publicly embarrasses another (literally “whitens the face”), even if he has Torah and good deeds to his credit, has no portion in the world to come.” We’d all be better off if we refrained from humiliating our neighbors.
Raymond in DC on October 6, 2010 at 2:17 pm