Not just politics, not just by men

Knowing only that Laura Ingraham is a female talk-radio host, or that she’s a conservative talk-radio host, isn’t enough for a listener to know what to expect when tuning into her namesake show on KRLA-AM (870).

She’s no mouthpiece for “feminists and other gender victims,” as she once wrote. And she’ll sometimes throw darts at those in her own political camp, whether it’s criticizing President Bush on immigration or deriding KABC-AM talk host Sean Hannity’s claim to being “a man of the people” because, she said, he now flies only on private planes.

“I try to make it something people have fun listening to,” Ingraham said of her show, which airs 6 to 9 a.m. weekdays. “Getting on a soapbox and railing away, that’s boring. Young people don’t tune into AM radio because they think it’s all the same.

“I get tired of the left-right back and forth,” she said. “I just like doing a mix of topics.”

Her guests can range from columnist Fred Barnes to Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), from “Saturday Night Live” comedian Darrell Hammond to filmmaker Paul Mazursky. She’ll bring on her brother, a gay schoolteacher in San Francisco, or talk about her beloved yellow Labrador retriever, Dr. Troy.

Ingraham said she thinks listeners enjoy her mix of subjects, political and cultural, and a delivery that combines serious and sarcastic. But she’s mindful of the same limits that restrain female comedians from being as bawdy as male counterparts.

“Women always have to walk a difficult line,” Ingraham said. “You want to navigate between being a passionate advocate of whatever you’re talking about and being shrill.”

Nevertheless, her gender is noteworthy in political talk radio, a field assumed to be dominated -- on both sides of the speaker -- by the stereotypical “angry white males.”

“There are a lot of women in talk radio -- they do money shows, health shows, relationship shows,” said Michael Harrison, publisher of Talkers magazine, the industry journal. “Laura Ingraham is the top female political talker in America.

“Some people believe, in the raucous, argumentative, contentious world of talk radio, it’s harder for a woman. Some people think it’s less appropriate for a woman to argue as much as a man,” he said.

But he doubts that the dearth of female voices is the result of discrimination. Harrison said talk radio is a small universe, and it’s hard for anybody -- male or female -- to break in. “There are not that many talk show hosts who do politics to begin with. It’s a very select group.”

Ingraham, 38, said she likes being a trailblazer, and though she agrees that the industry is small and tough to break into, she sees a crop of local and national female hosts poised for greater exposure and influence.

“Like anything, there’s a little bit of a lag time,” she said, noting that few women once practiced law or medicine but that her 1991 graduating class at the University of Virginia law school was half female. “I’m not a big proponent of diversity for diversity’s sake. I’m not for proportional representation in any profession. It just takes time. I think the market will see talented women out there.”

Ingraham grew up in Connecticut, attended Dartmouth College and was the first female editor of the school’s conservative student paper, the Dartmouth Review. During the last years of the Reagan administration, she worked as a speechwriter in the White House and at the departments of Education and Transportation. She later clerked for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.

MSNBC hired her when it launched in 1996; she said she was on the air for the network’s first three hours of existence. Her exposure there prompted talk-radio’s Don Imus to invite Ingraham as a guest.

When her contract at MSNBC wasn’t renewed in 2000, she said she was looking for something new. “I love launching things,” Ingraham said, and the following year she started an evening talk-radio program on the Westwood One network. When they couldn’t get her on mornings, she left for Oregon-based Talk Radio Network -- which also distributes incendiary cultural commentator Michael Savage’s program -- and debuted her new show Sept. 1.

Radio appealed to her, in part, because “I didn’t hear many women on the air, which I think is a shame. And nobody doing conservative politics with a dose of culture and humor.”

She added that she particularly thinks it is important to have women speaking out on social issues such as abortion, pornography and school vouchers.

But Susan Douglas, professor of communication studies at the University of Michigan, and author of “Where the Girls Are: Growing Up Female With the Mass Media,” said Ingraham’s success has little to do with her gender and comes more because she has patterned herself after her male counterparts.

“She’s got a very tough voice and a tough-sounding rap. She reinforces, if you’ll pardon the feminist term, patriarchal values. It fits the tradition of talk radio,” with its verbal combat and one-upmanship, Douglas said.

“She’s been very shrewd. She’s fitted her performance style into that mode of verbal aggression.”

Her show is based in Washington, D.C., but Ingraham said she spends time in California -- she lived for a short while in San Diego after law school and said she enjoys outdoor pursuits, such as hiking around Malibu.

She’s even considering moving here -- a notion that comes as something of a surprise, given that the title of her latest book is “Shut Up and Sing: How Elites From Hollywood, Politics and the U.N. Are Subverting America,” released a month ago by Regnery Publishing.

“It would be fun for a while,” Ingraham said. “Kind of like the ant at the picnic.”