Thursday, September 13, 2007

How To Interview Laura Ingraham



Chris Matthews shows us the way. You obviously must flatter the little lady, because women really do want to hear how hawt they are:

MATTHEWS: OK. Can I sing your praises? I get in trouble for this, but you're great looking, obviously. You're one of the gods' gifts to men in this country. But also, you are a hell of a writer. Your books always do well. Your radio show -- I just looked at the numbers -- you are up there, one of the top most-listened to radio shows.

But then you can go all illogical on the contents of the interview. For example, like this (I have bolded the leaps for you):

MATTHEWS: Well, the irony here -- and I want to be careful, without offending anybody -- but immigration is great for this country. You and I are all products of immigration, but --

INGRAHAM: Yeah.

MATTHEWS: -- it seems like people who are defending illegal immigration right now, a lot of liberals, don't like big families.

So, the irony is, we have this big labor shortage. We have a population shortage. People aren't -- we aren't growing in our own numbers, so we need to bring in people, even illegally, or guest workers, or all these gambits that are being talked about, because we don't have an adequate labor supply -- at the same time, let's not have kids.

INGRAHAM: Well --

MATTHEWS: It is an interesting sociometric overlay you've hit here.

INGRAHAM: Yeah, well, power to the people. That means you've got to have people to have power. And we're seeing, in Russia, Chris, they're actually paying people to have children. In Europe, the birth rate is so low that Europe is not going to reproduce itself, and so, Europe is ever dependent on immigrant labor and an immigrant workforce, and they're having trouble with assimilation in some quarters that, you know, I know you've talked about, so --

MATTHEWS: All right. You know what's interesting?

INGRAHAM: -- I just think it's something to celebrate children. I just --

MATTHEWS: People want to import labor and they love sex, but they don't like kids. Well, that doesn't surprise me, but --

INGRAHAM: Well, they're not convenient.

Notice how the story they are building is that the liberals are selfish and don't want children and that this is the reason why they want illegal immigrants? Laura Ingraham has zero children, as far as I know, but that doesn't stop her from telling that not having many children is because of convenience.

Perhaps that is her excuse, but for most Americans the reason for not having large families is the great expense, especially if all the children are expected to go to college. But of course Matthews and Ingraham are talking about extra children to do the fruit harvest and the office cleaning and all those chores the illegals are doing now. They are not thinking about paying for these imaginary children's college education. Neither are they thinking about the fact that a large family means pretty much limiting the wage-earner to one person. So the family finances get squeezed from both directions: more mouths to feed and to educate and fewer people to earn the money. But for Ingraham all that is just convenience.

I find it pretty astonishing that Matthews can say that "people want to import labor and they love sex but they don't like kids" without presenting any evidence for this combination of characteristics actually occurring.

Then there is the whole environmental reason for worrying about population growth, not mentioned in this interview, naturally. While it may well be true that the earth could carry a larger load of us, it is not true that she can do that when all the people want an American standard of living and a couple of SUVs in the garage. Cannot be done, and certainly cannot be done while leaving something for the rest of the animals.