Ingraham grew up in a middle-class family in Glastonbury, Connecticut. and graduated from Glastonbury High School, in 1981.
Ingraham earned a bachelor's degree at Dartmouth College, in 1985, and a law degree at the University of Virginia School of Law, in 1991. As a Dartmouth undergraduate, she was a staff member of the independent conservative newspaper,
The Dartmouth Review. In her senior year, she was the newspaper's editor-in-chief, its first female editor. She wrote a few controversial articles during her tenure, such as a piece characterizing a campus gay rights group as "cheerleaders for latent campus Sodomites". She also secretly tape recorded the organization's meetings, and sent copies to the participants' parents.Reed, Ishmael. (1999-01-23) "Unequal rights for haters."
Salon.com. Jeffrey Hart, the faculty adviser for
The Dartmouth Review, described Ingraham as having "the most extreme antihomosexual views imaginable," and noted that "she went so far as to avoid a local eatery where she feared the waiters were homosexual and might touch her silverware or spit on her food, exposing her to AIDS." In 1997, Ingraham wrote an essay in the
Washington Post in which she stated that she changed her views after witnessing "the dignity, fidelity and courage" with which her brother and his late companion coped with AIDS. She said she now understands why gays need protection and regrets her "callous rhetoric." However, in 2009, the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation named Ingraham as one of the "worst anti-gay and anti-transgender voices of 2008," citing her statements regarding transgendered people and "allusions that being gay is a 'bad choice'."
In the late 1980s, Ingraham worked as a speechwriter in the Ronald Reagan administration for the Domestic Policy advisor. She also briefly served as editor of
The Prospect, the magazine issued by Concerned Alumni of Princeton. After receiving her Juris Doctor from the University of Virginia School of Law, in 1991, she served as a law clerk for Judge Ralph K. Winter, Jr., of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, in New York and subsequently clerked for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. She then worked as an attorney at the New York-based law firm Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom.
Ingraham has had two stints as a cable television host. In the late 1990s, she became a CBS commentator and hosted the MSNBC program
Watch It! Several years later, Ingraham began openly campaigning for another cable television show on her radio program. She finally got her wish in 2008, when Fox News Channel gave her a three-week trial run for a new show entitled
Just In.
She appeared on a 1995 cover of
The New York Times Magazine for an article about rising young conservatives, in which she joked about subjugating Third World countries.
She also appeared on the August 3, 2010, episode of The Colbert Report, where Stephen Colbert implied that she had integrated "hideous, hackneyed racial stereotypes" into her book
The Obama Diaries. In reply she suggested that a word Colbert had previously used to label her, banshee, which is of Irish origin, also contained racial overtones, suggesting that it may be offensive to Native Americans.
Radio show host
Ingraham launched
The Laura Ingraham Show in April 2001, which is heard on 306 stations and on XM Satellite Radio. The show was originally syndicated by Infinity's (now CBS's) Westwood One, but is now syndicated by Talk Radio Network. Ingraham is also the official guest host of
The O'Reilly Factor on Fox News Channel and a weekly contributor with her segment, "The Ingraham Angle." She anchored a three-week show, in June 2008, called,
Just In with Laura Ingraham. Great News on the Laura Ingraham Front by Michael Gaynor America's Election HQ Returns Monday - mediabistro.com: TVNewser
In one of her most famous incidents, on Election Day 2006 Ingraham encouraged listeners to jam the phone line of a toll-free Democratic Party service for reporting voting problems. No tangible consequences came of it.In 2008, Laura Ingraham was rated as the No. 6 radio show host in America, by
Talkers Magazine. She was as high as No. 5, in the past, according to the same publication. Talkers Magazine Online
Ingraham is represented by the Executive Speakers Bureau, of Memphis, Tennessee, and receives between $20,000-$30,000 per appearance.
Books
- The Hillary Trap: Looking for Power in All the Wrong Places, first published June 2000, while the author was a talk show host on MSNBC, was updated and reissued in paperback December 25, 2005. It analyzes and reinterprets Hillary Clinton as a faux feminist, whose "liberal feminism has created a culture that rewards dependency, encourages fragmentation, undermines families, and celebrates victimhood".
- Shut Up & Sing: How Elites from Hollywood, Politics, and the U.N. are Subverting America, published October 25, 2003, decries liberal "elites" in politics, the media, academia, arts and entertainment, business, and international organizations, on behalf of "disrespected" Middle Americans, whom the author praises as "the kind of people who are the lifeblood of healthy democratic societies".
- Power to the People, a New York Times number one best seller, published September 11, 2007, focuses on what Ingraham calls the "pornification" of America and stresses the importance of popular participation in culture, promoting conservative values in family life, education and patriotism.
- The Obama Diaries, a New York Times number one best seller, published July 13, 2010. The book purports to be a collection of diary entries made by Barack Obama, though fictional and satirical, criticizing himself, his family and officials in his administration.
