Audio: 620WTMJ responses to Laura Ingraham's comments 
• Jay Sorgi and Jim Peck on Wisconsin Weekend Morning News, the first place where Laura Ingraham's comments were heard on 620WTMJ
• WMN's John Jagler and Gene Mueller giving Ingraham the business

More: Brett Favre Retirement Coverage

On Friday morning's national live broadcast of the Laura Ingraham show, she started her program by playing a segment of the Brett Favre press conference from the day before where he teared up, a time when certainly many Packers fans were tearing up themselves.

Laura Ingraham apparently doesn't think the most durable, toughest quarterback in NFL history (based on consecutive starts) is even male.

"All these years, and I didn't know there was a woman quarterback in the NFL," said Ingraham to start her Friday show that aired on replay on Monday at 2:00 a.m. on Newsradio 620 WTMJ.

"Brett Favre...we're watching this in the studio, obviously retiring from the NFL, great quarterback, handsome 38-year-old man, he gets up there and he does this press conference that was frankly one of the most embarassing things I have ever seen.

"That's a great message for young boys. 'Get up there and act like a girl and start blubbering like a baby."

Then, in her best impersonation of a crying toddler with its favorite toy taken away, she wah-wah-wah's while uttering in a mocking tone, "It's about me, it was never about me, but it is about me, bla, bla, bla" before returning to her regular voice and stating, "I could not believe what I was seeing."

Packers fans around the country could not believe she had the gall to say such blubber about the man who became possibly the ultimate competitor the position of quaterback has ever seen.

Eventually, she took the conversation in the direction of saying it was more about the supposed wussification of men, saying that it was another example of how men are allowed in public to shed tears in an "unmanly way."

Such tears, tough, are something Favre has done before publicly:
- when Favre cried about his alcohol addiction and a broken thumb after a comeback win over Oakland in 1999,
- when he sobbed after his father died and he played the best game of his life against the Raiders in 2003
- when he cried over possibly playing his last game against the Chicago Bears in 2006,
- and when he shed tears through a press conference with Anna Welentowski, a girl with an incurable brain disease that Brett and his wife Deanna have been praying for as long as three years after they first met.

If Laura actually decided to pay attention to anything about football for the last 16 years, she'd know she had just put her foot in her mouth.

Even her own poll clickers, when asked if he'd embarassed himself publically, said no by a 2-1 margin.

Has any human being ever been tougher when 1200 pounds of defensive linemen were coming 60 times a game with the desire to eat decapitated quarterback noggin mush for lunch?

Forget the fact that Favre withstood those challenges with separated shoulders, severely-sprained ankles, concussions, broken bones on his throwing hands and numerous other injuries, let alone a broken heart from his father's death and wife's bout with breast cancer.

Plus, her theory on real men "back in the day" never sobbing has proven itself to be a complete fallacy.

Just look at pro football's founding father, George Halas.

Numerous times, he found himself bawling.

Think about his former running back, Brian Piccolo, the subject of "Brian's Song," the movie that made all men who watch it tear up.

Think Gale Sayers, Piccolo's roommate and friend. Halas teared up publicly and choked up in presenting Sayers to the Pro FootbalL Hall of Fame as a new inductee.

Then, there's Green Bay's "Saint Vincent," the ultimate butt-kicking tough guy coach.

Coach Lombardi bawled a number of times, with just a sampling including:

- A 1962 Elks Club banquet to announce him as 1961 NFL Coach of the Year, when he thanked his wife Marie for her support.
- When linebacker Nelson Toburen suffered paralysis and became a quadreplegic, he sobbed profusely.
- At the end of the Ice Bowl, with press in view, he and quarterback Bart Starr each let go powerful tears at the accomplishment of winning a still-NFL record third straight title.

Then came her diatribe saying soldiers on the beaches of Normandy in World War II would never have teared up with bullets in their faces.

Well, yeah, you don't expect that...but you don't think those same incredibly brave guys came home, suffered from the psychological wounds of war, and didn't go for their wives' shoulders and turn on the tear-gush machine? Or they didn't let the water works flow when they mourned their brethren who died on the shores of France?

Those tears come in more reflective moments.

Brett Favre normally didn't gush out of his eyes when Warren Sapp came with a desire to turn him, like other quarterbacks, into "chicken," as he put it.

Would Laura Ingraham be able to take that, or would she run in the other direction and squawk like a chicken?

Brett's tears came after more than a month of reflection, and the realization that the thing that's defined so much of his life over the years needed to end, as much as he hated that fact being true.

There is no apology necessary for being a tearful "real man," because "real man" describes what Brett Favre, someone who came to terms with addictions and life choices and became a model husband, father, community leader and football icon, remains as, especially because he can be real, even with his tears.

Laura, you have an apology to make, to Brett Favre himself, to Packers fans, to all men and all people who realize the truth that being a real man means you're tough enough to know that you can let go the tears and you don't let go of your true toughness.

Packers Nation is waiting.