Delingpole: If Fox Had Abandoned Ingraham, It Would Have Been Game Over for Conservatives

The Associated Press
The Associated Press

Fox has decided to back Laura Ingraham against the leftist cry bullies.

I wish I didn’t have to live in a world where this was news.

Unfortunately, we live in one where being popular and successful and good at your job is no guarantee that you won’t be peremptorily thrown under the bus on the flimsiest of pretexts by employers who too often care more about conforming to the latest politically correct rules than they are in protecting their core business model.

The left knows this and exploits this corporate cowardice mercilessly, in line with Lenin’s dictum: “Push with the bayonet. If you feel mush, push harder…”

Had Fox caved, its credibility with its viewers would have been toast.

David Hogg – the Parkland shooting survivor who tried to destroy Ingraham (and nearly succeeded) on the basis of a tweet calling out his whiny entitlement – hates everything that Fox and its viewers represent.

So too do all the groups backing Hogg and encouraging companies including Office Depot, Jenny Craig, Hulu, TripAdvisor, Expedia, Wayfair, StitchFix, Nestle, Johnson & Johnson, Atlantis Paradise Island, and Liberty Mutual to pull their advertising from Ingraham’s show.

For Fox to have ditched Ingraham on the basis that she was no longer so bankable would have sent a clear message to the world: we value the opinion of people who loathe us more than we do the opinion of people who love us.

I’m glad that Fox are presenting their decision as a point-of-principle issue.

“We cannot and will not allow voices to be censored by agenda-driven intimidation efforts,” Jack Abernethy, co-president of Fox News, said in a statement to The Los Angeles Times.

I just wish I could be more convinced that this really was their main reason for doing the right thing and sticking by Ingraham.

But the unfortunate fact is that far too many individuals and institutions on the right are far too ready to cave these days under the slightest pressure from the left.

Fox has done the right thing in this case. Let’s hope it makes a habit of it – and that other conservative organisations get the message. Our job on the right is not to court the good opinions of people who are always going to hate us. Our job is to look after our own.

 

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