David Hogg, the high school student, turned anti-gun rights advocate, and his handlers at Media Matters are in the process of learning the lesson that if you strike at the queen, make sure you kill her, to paraphrase Emerson. The advertiser boycott aimed at driving Laura Ingraham from the airwaves has cost the Fox News commentator nearly 30 advertisers. However, the campaign has swelled her audience by 20 percent. The development suggests that the boycott is doomed to failure and that Hogg and his adult enablers have been humiliated.

Why the boycott was silly to begin with

The gentle reader should remember why the boycott against Ingraham started. Ingraham taunted Hogg about his failure to get admission into a college, something most thought was inappropriate for an adult, directed toward an adolescent. However, Hogg, behaving like the teenager that he is, retaliated by calling for an advertiser boycott against Ingraham’s Fox News show. Almost 30 complied by pulling ads, though at least one has already returned, and, since Fox had slashed ad rates, the show has not lacked for advertisers. FNC has rallied behind its host to promote freedom of speech and oppose censorship.

The effort backfires on Hogg

As a result, Hogg is flailing about on social media, looking for something else to boycott and calling for some ill-defined walkout of everything.

Very likely, as Ingraham maintains and even builds her audience, and Hogg’s misbegotten children’s crusade against guns begins to fade away, the advertisers will come trickling back, and Fox News will steadily raise rates.

Ingraham will remain unmolested on her perch at FNC long after David Hogg becomes a sad footnote in history. The young man’s 15 minutes of fame are already running out.

If the “blue wave” that is supposed to materialize to sweep Democrats back into power fails to happen because of a backlash against the big push for “common sense gun control” then Hogg’s erstwhile supporters will turn against him.

He will no longer be trotted out to harangue delirious crowds of leftists. The adulation will cease, and Hogg will be abandoned, at about the time he turns 18.

An element of Greek tragedy surrounds this story. More worthy students who survived the mass shooting, such as Anthony Borges, who was shot shielding his classmates while barring a classroom door with his body, have been ignored by the media and liberal activists. Kyle Kashuv, who quietly lobbied Washington power brokers, including President Trump, on gun rights, has not been celebrated as the voice of his generation as Hogg has been. Both Borges and Kashuv have called out law enforcement and school officials as having failed them, not the NRA.

But that did not fit the required narrative, so they were not heard. However, as Hogg will spend the rest of his life wondering about the cost of fleeting fame, they have a brighter future ahead of them.
© ALL RIGHTS RESERVED