Fox News host Laura Ingraham didn’t come out looking too good after seeming to admit that she let her elderly mother work as a waitress to pay off Laura’s student loans in a tweet opposing the idea of debt forgiveness for other former students. The right-wing response to President Joe Biden looking into limited student loan forgiveness options has largely been the claim that since others suffered to pay back these predatory loans, everyone else should have to suffer in the same way.
Of course, that suffering would not be the same for someone who went to school to be something useful like a teacher and someone who has spent the last couple decades getting paid big bucks to sit in a chair, look at a camera, and be racist.
“My mom worked as a waitress until she was 73 to help pay for our college, even helped with loan repayment,” Ingraham tweeted. “Loan forgiveness just [sic] another insult to those who play by the rules.”
The left-wing argument is that it would be better if nobody’s 73-year-old mom had to wait tables to pay for their children’s education, and though it’s unfortunate that many people already had to do so, helping the people struggling now is still a good thing to do. Kind of like how we still give new kinds of medical care to people today even though people in the past died because the science wasn’t there yet.
In fact, it would help the economy, which affects everybody, to free up mass amounts of income that average Americans can spend on goods and services, supporting restaurants like the one that hired Ingraham’s mom.
Some would even support giving money to those who had already paid off their student loans, but Ingraham would probably demonize that idea as a “handout.”
Meanwhile, a lot of people are wondering why Ingraham let her elderly mother toil on her feet all those years while she was working in law offices, as a speech writer for the Reagan administration, and then in high-paying media positions. According to her mom’s obituary, she worked as a waitress until 1994, one year before Laura appeared on the cover of The New York Times Magazine as part of a feature on young conservatives.
To those who advocate for taking care of one’s elderly parents and other family members, this isn’t come off well. It also brings to mind the time Republicans drummed up fake accusations against U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez claiming that she wasn’t taking care of her grandma after the congresswoman posted photos of her damaged home in Puerto Rico.
In spite of the thorough roasting that is still in progress, Ingraham has left the tweet up without explaining or denying that she let her mom work into old age rather than repay her student loans with her own money.