Laura Ingraham Meshes Fantasy and Reality in "The Obama Diaries"

Laura Ingraham is one of the most popular radio talk show hosts in the country, a Fox News contributor, and an accomplished author whose latest book is a fiction-nonfiction hybrid called The Obama Diaries. But before discussing it today, she was forced to describe to Imus exactly what Charles was doing to the news copy in front of him.

“He has multiple highlighters with multiple tabs,” she said. “So it looks like an old constitutional law class here this morning.” Satisfied, Imus allowed Ingraham to explain the basis of her book, which he called laugh out loud funny.

“I think that what we need to do with the Obamas is peel the onion a little bit,” she said. “They have an incredible press operation. I call it the ‘razzle dazzle.’ They have the theater of diversion.”

One such example is the inordinate amount of attention paid last year to what kind of dog the Obamas were going to get. “It’s this man-crush all throughout the media,” she continued. “We were supposed to focus on the swing set, the romantic walks, the vegetable garden, the beautiful family, and meanwhile our economy was going to hell in a hand basket.”

Ingraham’s book contains faux-diary entries by members of the Obama inner circle, including the First Grandmother Mary Robinson. Because Imus asked, Ingraham did a quick reading from an entry in Vice President Joe Biden’s diary, in which he is upset that his family is not getting as much attention as the Obamas.

“My son Beau is a freakin’ war veteran!” Ingraham read from her book. “Have they not seen my drop-dead gorgeous wife? She’s pushing 60, but doesn’t look a day over 58.”

Interspersed with these entries is a narrative that Imus had unfortunately characterized as a right-wing diatribe, but Ingraham insisted it tracks with the diaries. “You match the narrative of the last 19 months with the facts in the diaries, and they fit hand-in-glove together,” she said.

When people accuse her of delving into fiction, Ingraham replies, “What’s more fiction: the idea that the stimulus bill saved or created three million jobs, or these diary entries where the Vice President is livid that he hasn’t scored a cover of People Magazine?”

After her chat with Imus, Ingraham was heading over to the The View, where she’ll play co-host today to one of Imus’s best pals, Joy Behar, who always claims she’d like to be a guest on this show and then never returns anybody’s phone calls.

“This is going to make my life easier,” said Ingraham, who Imus suspects will be able to handle herself just fine.

-Julie Kanfer