Commandeered by the media-savvy professional Left

Matthew Vadum reports at Front Page Magazine,

...After the Feb. 14 atrocity, the Left promptly anointed Hogg a victim and moral authority and declared that survivors of the shooting were exempt from criticism – except of course for surviving students who support the Second Amendment. The tired old rhetoric of the gun-hating movement was given new life by high school students like Hogg.

But teenagers can only get so far. Within days the movement was commandeered by the media-savvy professional Left. Groups such as Michael Bloomberg’s Everytown for Gun Safety, George Soros-funded groups Media Matters for America (MMfA) and MoveOn.org, Planned Parenthood, and Indivisible have helped to organize last month’s March for Our Lives.

Although Hogg’s earlier effort in recent weeks to scare off corporations that do business with the NRA met with mixed results - including a delightfully spirited backlash by Second Amendment supporters against the obnoxious 17-year-old’s push for gun control - the attacks on Ingraham’s advertisers have been succeeding.

Media Matters for America, a left-wing hate group that masquerades as a media watchdog, has been enthusiastically promoting the assault on Ingraham’s corporate sponsors, providing Hogg’s cause with hundreds of thousands of dollars in free publicity. According to MMfA, the following companies have indicated they won’t continue advertising on the show: Nutrish, TripAdvisor, Wayfair, Expedia, Nestle, JoS A. Bank Clothiers, Johnson & Johnson, Hulu, Stitch Fix, Jenny Craig, Office Depot, Honda, Liberty Mutual, Principal, Miracle-Ear, Ruby Tuesday, and Atlantis, Entertainment Studios, and Bayer.

The next day at 1:06 p.m. Ingraham tried to walk back her previous tweet.

"Any student should be proud of a 4.2 GPA -- incl. @DavidHogg111[,]” she tweeted.

“On reflection, in the spirit of Holy Week, I apologize for any upset or hurt my tweet caused him or any of the brave victims of Parkland. For the record, I believe my show was the first to feature David [...] immediately after that horrific shooting and even noted how 'poised' he was given the tragedy. As always, he's welcome to return to the show anytime for a productive discussion.”

Hogg refused to accept the peace offering, tweeting:

“I 100% agree an apology in an effort just to save your advertisers is not enough,” he tweeted. “I will only accept your apology only if you denounce the way your network has treated my friends and I [sic] in this fight. It’s time to love thy neighbor, not mudsling at children.”

And think about this: The campaign against Ingraham’s advertisers didn’t spring directly from a disagreement about gun control, the National Rifle Association, or the Second Amendment. The bullying effort is based in Hogg’s hurt feelings. The catalyst was Ingraham lobbing the gentlest of insults at the thin-skinned teen who is quite comfortable slinging the most vicious, vile insults at anyone who disagrees with him.

Although what Hogg is doing has widely been described as a boycott, it really isn’t a boycott campaign – it’s more of an intimidation campaign aimed at driving Ingraham off the airwaves by scaring her advertisers away. Ingraham has the wrong views so she must be removed from political debates.

The Left calls this kind of action an “accountability” campaign. Accountability, as they use the term, is not about transparency or best practices. Inspired by the so-called father of the New Left, Herbert Marcuse, who favored shutting down non-leftists, accountability actions focus on harassing and intimidating political enemies, disrupting them, and forcing them to waste their resources dealing with activists’ provocations.

Ultimately, it is about destroying the target.

Fox News is standing behind Ingraham, at least for now.

"We cannot and will not allow voices to be censored by agenda-driven intimidation efforts," Jack Abernethy, co-president of Fox News, told the Los Angeles Times. "We look forward to having Laura Ingraham back hosting her program next Monday when she returns from spring vacation with her children."

Read more here.