Conspiracy
Ingraham Releases Statement Clarifying That Her Cheering Was Actually A Warning
By Tah Foil, . BSN Network. Satire.
Laura Ingraham, the Fox News host and author of "The Obama Diaries," a book about a president she opposed, released a four-page clarifying statement Tuesday asserting that her on-air enthusiasm for American military action against Iran, which she expressed loudly and at length between March and August of this year, was not enthusiasm at all but a form of sustained journalistic caution delivered in the key of celebration.
The statement was distributed to reporters at 11:47 p.m., a time her publicist described as "strategic."
"I was raising concerns," the statement reads, in its second paragraph. "The concerns I was raising were: what if this goes wrong. That is what I was saying. People heard cheering. What I was doing was the opposite of cheering, which is also sometimes audible."
The statement does not define what the opposite of cheering sounds like. It does include three footnotes, two of which link to segments that do not appear to exist in the Fox News archive, and one of which links to a Wikipedia page for the word "nuance."
Ingraham appeared on her own program Monday night, before the statement was released, and described her position on the Iran conflict as having been "consistent from the beginning, which was: I had reservations, which I expressed through my support."
She then played a clip of herself from April saying "This is exactly what needed to happen and anyone who disagrees is either naive or working for someone who is," and nodded slowly, as if the clip confirmed what she had just said.
John Bolton, who was also in favor of the strikes and has not yet issued a clarifying statement, told reporters he "admired the architecture" of Ingraham's reversal but called it "premature, since we don't know yet whether there's anything to reverse from."
Viewers who watched Ingraham's program during the relevant period have offered mixed accounts. A viewer in Pensacola, Florida, who asked to be identified only as Merv, told a local radio station that he had watched every episode and understood her position to be pro-strike. "She had a graphic," he said. "It said 'Strike Now.' I don't know how to read that as a warning, but I'm open to it."
A second viewer, reached by phone, said she had found Ingraham's position nuanced from the start. "You could tell she had doubts," she said. "She kept saying things like 'finally' and 'it's about time.' That's not the language of someone who's fully on board."
Ingraham's statement addresses the graphic Merv mentioned in a footnote, describing it as "a graphic produced by a lower third operator whose name I do not have" and noting that the word "now" was "in a font size that, in context, reads as ironic."
The statement also includes a timeline, labeled "Laura's Actual Position Over Time," which begins in January with the entry "Skeptical, privately" and ends in August with "Vindicated, publicly," with no entries in between.
A Fox News spokesperson confirmed the statement was official and added that Ingraham "has always believed in a strong but thoughtful foreign policy, which her record reflects, depending on how you define reflects."
The statement's final paragraph closes with the sentence: "History will show that I was right about this, and also that being right about this is what I was doing the entire time, in real time, on air, with a microphone, five nights a week."
It is not known whether history has been notified.
The story we are making fun of: https://www.mediamatters.org/us-iran-relations/laura-ingraham-rewriting-her-mealy-mouthed-acquiescence-iran-war-opposition