His “child-murderer” rhetoric about the NRA and its supporters is obnoxious, but so are the Facebook memes comparing him to, ah, Hitler.

And so is windmill-dunking on a 17-year-old for not getting into college because he holds an ignorant political position with which you strongly disagree.

I’m not a fan of his but let’s be better than this.

That was ill advised morally and professionally, as Hogg is a new hero to the activist left. She was asking for a backlash, particularly knowing how eager liberals are under normal circumstances to organize boycotts of Fox News programs. Once Hogg and his little sister chimed in, though, she had a big problem:

Trying to organize a national advertiser boycott to avenge a petty personal slight is petty in itself, but 17-year-olds have a better excuse to be petty than 54-year-old news-show hosts do. Plus, whatever his faults, Hogg is shrewd in his assessments of his own political power. The average person in his position who’d just been mocked by Ingraham probably would have tweeted his outrage first, complaints about her, counter-mockery, etc etc, *then* had the idea to organize a boycott as he gave the matter more thought — assuming it occurred to him at all. There’s none of that on his Twitter feed. His first mention of her comments was to ask who her advertisers were, followed quickly by a list for his fans to target. It’s an inversion of roles: The adult is the one tossing schoolyard insults and the kid is the one coolly considering how to punish his antagonist.

It worked, too:

Nutrish, celebrity cook Rachael Ray’s dog food company, announced on Thursday that it was “in the process of removing ads from Laura Ingraham’s program.” TripAdvisor, the American travel website, told POLITICO that it had “made a decision to stop advertising on that program.”

“We believe strongly in the values of our company, especially the one that says, ‘We are better together,’” a TripAdvisor spokesperson said in an email. “We also believe Americans can disagree while still being agreeable, and that the free exchange of ideas within a community, in a peaceful manner, is the cornerstone of our democracy.”

The spokesperson added: “We do not, however, condone the inappropriate comments made by this broadcaster. In our view, these statements focused on a high school student, cross the line of decency.”

Wayfair also bailed on Ingraham after Hogg’s tweet. And so, the inevitable apology:

Hogg was gracious in accepting it. Wait, no — check that. Of course he wasn’t:


If all of her advertisers pulled out, he said, “we can show that if you continue to bully the students that survived a mass murder, there’s going to be consequences.”

“Deal with the issues, not the individuals,” he intoned, somehow refraining from calling the NRA and its supporters child-murderers again. He retweeted this too from the father of a classmate who was murdered. Doesn’t sound like the boycott is over:

The past six weeks have been a sustained catharsis, for the Parkland students specifically and for anti-gun lefties more broadly. It makes sense in that context that the catharsis would continue by insisting on stomping Ingraham despite the apology. Whether it’s the NRA, Marco Rubio, a boorish Fox host, whoever, someone has to pay.

By the way, according to USA Today, Hogg is an “aspiring television journalist.” If ever there was someone tailor-made for that job, he’s it. He’ll be a cub reporter for CNN within five years, if not sooner, and have his own show in primetime before 2030. Which is good news, actually: Given the way that network’s been drifting, Hogg joining the team will probably nudge it to the right. Exit question: What was worse, Ingraham end-zone dancing over Hogg’s college rejections or Jeb Bush consoling himself over his 2016 disaster by accusing Trump’s kids of not loving their dad? For cripes sake. What is happening to people?

Update: He’s still going.