Reacting to comedian Bill Maher’s highly criticized call to bring back fat-shaming, The View’s Meghan McCain took the opportunity Monday to seize upon the time when Laura Ingraham publicly mocked her for being “plus-sized,” throwing that moment back in the Fox News host’s face.
Earlier this month, Maher delivered a monologue in which he argued that fat-shaming needed to make a comeback because “being fat isn’t a birth defect” and the problem with America’s health-care system is that “Americans eat shit, and too much of it.” This prompted a scathing response from CBS late-night host James Corden, who said “fat-shaming only does one thing: it makes people feel ashamed and shame leads to depression, anxiety and self-destructive behavior—self-destructive behavior like overeating."
McCain, who applauded Corden’s condemnation of Maher on Twitter over the weekend, noted during Monday’s broadcast of The View that she may not be where she is in her career if it weren’t for Ingraham’s potshot.
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“I want to say if I weren’t fat-shamed, I wouldn’t have a career,” she declared. “Laura Ingraham said I was too plus-sized to be on TV. Shout out Laura: I’m on The View and you’re not!”
In March 2009, Ingraham took to her radio show to take a personal dig at McCain. After McCain had appeared on MSNBC’s The Rachel Maddow Show to bemoan extreme partisanship, Ingraham employed a stereotypical Valley Girl-like voice to ridicule McCain.
“I was really hoping that I was going to get that role in the Real World, but then I realized that, well, they don’t like plus-sized models,” Ingraham said. “They only like the women who look a certain way.”
McCain would later respond to Ingraham’s remarks by saying “kiss my fat ass.” Somewhat ironically, following these comments a decade ago, both Ingraham and McCain would later become colleagues at Fox News.
The conservative View host would go on to point out that she’s “fat-shamed every day” as critics are constantly telling her she’s too fat to be on The View before dinging Maher for not understanding all the issues surrounding obesity.
“I think we need to have compassion towards people who are struggling in life in general, and as you said, so much about obesity in this country is about poverty and access to health care,” she said, adding: “But I’m conflicted because I wouldn’t have met my husband if he weren’t a guest on Bill Maher, so I always have a tiny little place in my heart for Bill Maher.”
