Laura Ingraham Defends Using Violent Sound Effect to Silence Rep. John Lewis
More: Laura Ingraham Defends Using Violent Sound Effect to Silence Rep. John Lewis
Laura Ingraham defended her use of a “blow up” sound effect on her radio show to cut off audio clips, claiming it was “fun” and “teasing,” after receiving heavy criticism for using the sound effect to silence a recording of civil rights leader Rep. John Lewis’ speech at the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington.
On her August 26 radio broadcast, Ingraham used an effect that sounded like gunshot to cut off a recording of the speech given by civil rights leader Rep. John Lewis (D-GA) at the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have A Dream” speech. Lewis’ skull was infamously fractured by a state trooper on “Bloody Sunday” in Selma, AL, in 1965, and many civil rights activists — including Martin Luther King, Jr. — were literally silenced by assassins’ bullets during the civil rights movement of the 1960s and ’70s.
Ingraham came under heavy criticism for using this sound effect to cut off Lewis, with Salon’s Joan Walsh describing the move as “unusually vicious” and MSNBC’s Steve Bennen writing that it “was one of the more offensive things I’ve heard in a while.”
In response, Ingraham claimed the sound was not of a gunshot but instead a “blow up effect,” and claimed criticism of her using the sound effect on Lewis was an attempt “to crush free speech”:
My producers and I have used this blow up effect to interrupt windbags for 10 years of political and cultural persuasions. The cannon or “blow up” sound is meant to convey the gaseous thoughts of a speaker combusting, but of course the bilious Joan Walsh of Salon.com knows that. (My producers have even blown me up when we play long clips from TV appearances!)
[…]
This is absurd and venomous and the predictably pathetic work of people who mean to crush free speech as they advance a failing, progressive agenda. If Joan Walsh or other left-wing loons give voice to their moronic, dishonest analysis, they might self-combust on my show, too. Boom.
