A Laura worse than the Doctor?

Mopey Buckxxx here, continuing my hard-hitting expose of the revanchist propagandists of the AM dial. Or, more precisely, partially remembered tidbits of right wing radio that I listened to while weeping and hitting my head repeatedly on the steering wheel on the way back from pyschedelically awful graduate seminars in US history.

Perhaps the worst thing I have ever heard is the show hosted by Laura Ingraham. It is quite surreal to hear her program come over the waves, because her theme song has a collage of soundbites that could be mistaken as "liberal" or "feminist" signifiers-- Helen Reddy's "I Am Woman," some riled-up protestor screaming "power to the people!", etc. But once she begins the chatter, it is obvious that she leans farther to the right than Edmund Burke. She makes Phyllis Schlafly look like Helene Cixous. Her hauteur makes Ann Coulter's noxious sense of self-importance seem almost "aw-shucks." Her bullying of guests makes Sean Hannity's manhandling of liberals seem like gentle Shiatsu. She has written a book that is actually called Shut Up & Sing: How the Elites in Hollywood, Politics...and the UN are Subverting America.

Isn't that title just what happens randomly when you let a monkey play with "neocon public intellectual" poetry fridge magnets? Her bio reveals the secret behind the apparent puzzle of her appropriation of leftist 1960s tropes. She is the first of the openly female neocon bleaters on the talk scene, and thus seeks to bask in a little revolutionary aura while she waxes poetic about George Bush's abdominals and indulges in such fresh drolleries as mocking Ted Kennedy's fondness for the dramglass. The things you say!

My guess is that she was packaged by her handlers as a youth-oriented, "hip" female voice. After all, her website includes links to her favorite albums, and none of them are by Pat Boone or the Whiffenpoofs. She likes Ben Folds! Well, that's it for the hip stuff. But she certainly plays up her street cred (she mentions her interview with U2's Bono in every single shred of press bumf). If interviewing Bono once makes you cool, what would that make Carson Daly? Sun Ra?

One can easily imagine her branding consultants sitting down with her CV, and coming up with her image: Dartmouth grad? Reagan staffer? Clarence Thomas gofer? You know, this lady could be a sort of whiter, more anal retentive, chunky-highlighted Angela Davis. The gauntlet has been thrown down liberals! Whaddaya got? Streisand? Bring it!!!