Despite Laura Ingraham’s best efforts—which, in her case, means a hastily composed apology tweet that managed to work in both smug self-righteousness and a plug for her show—advertisers are still fleeing her primetime Fox News slot like so many rats from a burning building.
Seven sponsors have now pulled their ads from The Ingraham Angle, five of those after Ingraham’s half-assed apology hit Twitter. First were Rachel Ray’s pet-food company Nutrish and travel site TripAdvisor, whose exit prompted Ingraham’s “in the spirit of Holy Week…” tweet to Parkland survivor turned gun control activist David Hogg yesterday. (She had previously mocked Hogg on Twitter for being rejected by a handful of colleges, like the good Christian she is always loudly insisting that she is.)
Hogg rejected Ingraham’s apology, saying he would only believe her if she condemned “the way your network has treated my friends and I in this fight.” We all know that’s never going to happen, so the feud between the high school senior and the 54-year-old conservative talk show host remains a going concern. And sponsors want nothing to do with it: After Ingraham’s apology yesterday, Wayfair, Expedia, Nestlé, Jos. A. Bank, and Hulu all pulled their ads from Ingraham’s program.
Between the inevitable “I’m canculing my Hulu, this is PC fachism” replies to that tweet and conservatives boycotting Netflix over former Obama administration official Susan Rice’s appointment to its board of directors, we’re starting to wonder if maybe this is all guerrilla marketing for that Fox News streaming service. What? They espouse crazier theories on Fox News all the time.