WASHINGTON — A few moments before wheels up on Laura Ingraham’s Easter vacation Saturday morning, she tweeted a preflight picture of a holiday-themed drawing made by one of her sons. It had all the Easter trappings: parishioners at an altar, a communion service complete with a chalice, a haloed figure flanked by angels, watching from above.
‘‘My seat-mate son drew me an Easter present preflight,’’ her accompanying tweet said.
Ingraham told her Fox News show viewers on Friday that the trip is an Easter vacation. The network said the vacation was pre-planned. But the break comes as she is facing some of the harshest criticism so far on her five-month-old show — and a growing advertiser revolt around comments she made about David Hogg, a survivor of the school shooting in Parkland, Fla., and activist.
The controversy revolves around her comments on Hogg, one of the survivors of the Feb. 14 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. In recent weeks, Hogg has emerged as one of the most vocal advocates for stronger gun laws. But amid the rallies and talk shows and a ballooning number of Twitter followers, he’s also a high school senior who felt sad after getting a college rejection letter.
In an interview with TMZ on Tuesday, Hogg spoke about receiving rejection letters from California colleges. Hogg has an SAT score of 1270 and a 4.2 grade-point average. He’s been accepted to Florida Atlantic University, California Polytechnic State University. and California State University at San Marcos, TMZ reported.
On Wednesday morning, Ingraham tweeted a story from a conservative news site that described Hogg as a ‘‘Gun Rights Provocateur’’ — and said he hadn’t gotten into four University of California schools he applied to.
‘‘David Hogg Rejected By Four Colleges To Which He Applied and whines about it,’’ Ingraham tweeted. ‘‘(Dinged by UCLA with a 4.1 GPA . . . totally predictable given acceptance rates.)’’
Hogg responded by compiling a list of 12 companies that advertise on ‘‘The Ingraham Angle’’ and sent a message to his nearly 700,000 Twitter followers: ‘‘Pick a number 1-12 contact the company next to that #’’
Many did.
More than a dozen advertisers have announced they’re pulling pulling commercials from Ingraham’s show, according to ThinkProgress. They included Johnson & Johnson, Nestlé, Hulu, Jos. A. Bank, Jenny Craig, Ruby Tuesday, and Miracle-Ear.
Ingraham apologized for her tweet, but Hogg blasted it as an insincere ‘‘effort just to save your advertisers.’’
The advertisers’ efforts to distance themselves demonstrate the influence the Parkland students have amassed and companies fears’ about becoming collateral damage in polarizing controversies. Hogg and other Parkland survivors have also show a willingness to go after their detractors directly.
‘‘I just think it’s a testament to the sick immaturity and broken state of our government when these people feel the need to peddle conspiracy theories about people that were in a school shooting where 17 people died, and it just makes me sick,’’ Hogg told BuzzFeed News. ‘‘It’s immature, rude and inhuman for these people to destroy the people trying to prevent the death of the future of America because they won’t.’’
And he had some specific thoughts on Ingraham’s vacation.
Around midnight Friday, he posted a video clip of Ingraham’s announcement.
‘‘Have some healthy reflections this Holy Week,’’ he tweeted.