Jane Mayer is many things: a longtime staff writer at The New Yorker, an author, an incisive investigative reporter. But among that litany of celebrated achievements hides one little-discussed, yet equally essential piece of information—Mayer once had both her boyfriend and her dog stolen by Laura Ingraham. Luckily, she was able to steal back the more important one.
Elle ran a long profile on Mayer on Wednesday, digging into her storied reporting career, friendship with Jill Abramson (sigh), and relationship with fellow journalist Bill Hamilton. Somewhere amid tales of exposing Obama’s drone strike habit and teaming up with Ronan Farrow on bombshell reports about the (numerous, remember!) sexual assault allegations against Brett Kavanaugh, was this explosive tidbit (emphasis mine):
By then Mayer was professionally established, but like Broadcast News’s Jane, she found that her love life still delivered setbacks. In the early ’90s, she returned from a reporting trip to discover that the lawyer she’d been living with had taken up with her “polar opposite,” Laura Ingraham, now a Fox News host.
WHAT.
The new couple refused to return Mayer’s dog, so one day, when they weren’t home, she and Abramson drove over, and Mayer climbed through the pet door to retrieve it.
HOLY CRAP.
The house, incidentally, was also the site of a delicious piece of DC gossip: After the guy and Ingraham broke up, Ingraham supposedly flooded it by sticking a hose through the mail slot.
AGAIN, WHAT.
I am struggling to wrap my head around several facts, not the least of which is that some idiot dumped Jane Mayer for Laura fucking Ingraham. I am also having visions of Mayer and Abramson accosting her ex a la Elle Woods and Paulette in Legally Blonde, though I suppose that isn’t exactly what happened. A girl can dream!
Anyway, while I’m sure Mayer is very busy trying to investigate mass corruption, abuse, and wrongdoing, I implore her to make her next book a thorough In Cold Blood-style non-fiction narrative documenting this exact incident. This will be the Pulitzer winner, I’m sure of it.