While Parkland, Fla., shooting survivor and gun-control activist David Hogg is becoming a household name at 17, he’s also a senior in high school anxiously waiting for responses from colleges, like his peers across the country.
But what other students don’t endure is public ridicule when they don’t get into all the schools they applied to.
In an interview with TMZ on Tuesday, Hogg spoke about receiving rejection letters from California colleges, and in doing so sparked derision from conservatives, particularly Fox News’s Laura Ingraham.
Tweeting an article from a right-wing news site about Hogg’s college prospects, Ingraham appeared to make light of his rejections, saying it was “totally predictable given acceptance rates” that he was “Dinged by UCLA with a 4.1 GPA.” In the tweet, Ingraham also said Hogg whined about being rejected.
Hogg, who has a 4.2 GPA and an SAT score of 1270, was accepted to Florida Atlantic University, California Polytechnic State University and California State University San Marcos, TMZ reported.
During the TMZ interview he expressed disappointment about the rejections, but said it has been difficult to focus on college lately.
“We’re changing the world,” he said.
Since the tweet was posted, Ingraham has received backlash on social media. Ingraham was previously criticized for telling professional basketball players to “shut up and dribble.”
You’re a mother.
— Bess Kalb (@bessbell) March 28, 2018
Many have viewed her recent actions — the latest in a slew of right-wing attacks against the Parkland survivors — as particularly appalling given that she is a parent.
Journalist David Corn described Ingraham’s tweet as “deplorable.”
Others were shocked that she was “picking on” a student who survived a school shooting.
Are you really picking on a teenager who just watched his classmates die in pools of their own blood less than two months ago?
— Brooke Binkowski (@brooklynmarie) March 28, 2018
Hogg responded to the tweet as well, asking Ingraham to identify her biggest advertisers and taking immediate action to start a boycott against the companies that support her.
In a less than an hour, Hogg had compiled a list of 12 companies, which he then tweeted to his hundreds of thousands of followers, telling them to contact the businesses.
While Ingraham has been the most recent target of criticism, she is not the only adult who has faced backlash for attacking the high school students.
Just days ago, Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) and his campaign team came under fire for posting a meme on Facebook about Emma González, another Parkland student and activist, The Washington Post’s Samantha Schmidt reported. The photo was criticized as attacking González’s Cuban heritage.
The Parkland survivors have been fiercely targeted since they first spoke out after the shooting and the attacks have only continued, as The Washington Post’s Abby Ohlheiser reported.
On Twitter, civil rights attorney Lisa Bloom said Ingraham’s tweet may be a sign that Hogg has “really gotten under Fox News’ skin.”
More from Morning Mix:
This high school rejected NRA ‘blood money’ for rifle team. Locals donated instead.
The horns were so loud they wrecked the violist’s hearing — and his career
‘The fatty on the train’: Kim Jong Un nicknames proliferate in China despite censors