Where Does Dr. Laura Go From Here?

 The following article is written by someone who is obviously not a fan of Dr. Laura, but it certainly carries more than a grain of truth. She was often impatient, abrasive and uncaring on her radio show and offered advice on the basis of "Do what I say, not what I do" It'll be interesting to see what happens with her in the future.
   . . . June

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Into The Next Stage: Why Did Dr. Laura Get In Trouble When Bill Maher Didn’t?

By GUY AOKI (First published in The Rafu Shimpo on August 26, 2010

Dr. Laura Schlessinger. Hypocrite. Giving marriage and family advice for 31 years when she hated her parents, didn’t talk to her mother for 18-20 years (before she was found dead in her condo two months after succumbing to heart disease), and her first marriage broke up after only five years. While defending her right to “free speech,” after the conservative host said she found a magazine that featured “stealth pornography” in a surf shop and the store owner denied it, she sued him for libel asserting he had ruined her reputation. The judge threw out the lawsuit calling it “frivolous.” And the “good doctor” had to settle the $4 million counter-lawsuit out of court.

Oh and quitter too. After not being religious for most of her life, Schlessinger, her second husband, and son converted to Orthodox Judaism in 1996 but changed her mind in 2003. She began the Laura Schlessinger Foundation in 1998 but by 2004 found it too difficult and expensive to keep underwriting. She initiated a bi-weekly column for the Santa Barbara News Press in 2006 but stopped writing in the middle of the following year, then started it up again only to give up in December 2008 (hey, I’ve been doing my column for 18 1/2 years!).

Whenever I accidentally caught her syndicated radio show, I could only listen for 10 seconds because she invariably cut off the callers and dispensed advice like some psychic who didn’t need to hear the rest of the details to understand the situation. And she was so abrasively annoying.

On Aug. 10, when she got into trouble for repeating “the N-Word” while giving a black caller, “Jade,” advice on how to deal with her white husband’s white family and friends, I thought about Bill Maher and our debates on “Politically Incorrect” nine years earlier.

He also said similar things: He as a white person should be able to say “nigga” because it had become such a part of pop culture that it was not offensive as “nigger.” So why did that part of the discussion pass without much notice while Dr. Laura felt the need to end her show as of December of this year? Maybe because hers was a one-sided debate and she exuded insensitivity as the host.
Read More . . .

‘Dr. Laura’ Retreats After Racial Epithets

Laura Schlessinger said on Tuesday night that she would not renew her contract for her long-running radio talk show when it expires at the end of the year. See the article from the New York Times below.

Laura Schlessinger Leaving Show After Using Slur
By JOSEPH PLAMBECK Published: August 18, 2010

Following criticism and the loss of advertisers after her use of a racial epithet 11 times on her long-running radio talk show last week, Laura Schlessinger said on Tuesday night that she would not renew her contract for the show when it expires at the end of the year
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On CNN’s “Larry King Live,” Dr. Schlessinger said that she would leave her “Dr. Laura Program” because she doesn’t want to have to prune her words or opinions.

“I want to be able to say what’s on my mind and in my heart and what I think is helpful and useful without somebody getting angry, some special interest group deciding this is the time to silence a voice of dissent and attack affiliates, attack sponsors,” she said. “I’m sort of done with that.”

On Aug. 10, Dr. Schlessinger used the epithet 11 times while arguing in an exchange with a caller that there was a double standard depending on who utters the word.

“Black guys talking to each other seem to think it’s O.K.,” she said. “I don’t get it. If anybody without enough melanin says it, it’s a horrible thing. But when black people say it, it’s affectionate.

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Dr. Laura Schlessinger Ends Her Radio Show

Dr Laura said she "realized I had made a horrible mistake, and was so upset, I could not finish the show." She said she pulled herself off the air at the end of the hour. In a way it's too bad, but it certainly gave the country the opportunity to discuss the subject.


June


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Dr. Laura Schlessinger ending radio show

msnbc.com staff and news service reports updated 8/18/2010 1:06:55 AM ET

 

"Dr. Laura Schlessinger says she's shutting down her 30-year-old syndicated radio program at the end of the year so she can get her 'First Amendment rights' back.

Her announcement on 'Larry King Live' comes just a week after she repeatedly used the N-word while taking a call on the air from a black woman who wanted to discuss her interracial marriage.

She told King, 'My contract is up for my radio show at the end of the year and I've made the decision not to do radio anymore.'

'The reason is I want to regain my First Amendment rights,' she told King, according to E! Online. 'I want to be able to say what's on my mind and in my heart and what I think is helpful and useful without somebody getting angry, some special interest group deciding this is the time to silence a voice of dissent and attack affiliates, attack sponsors. I'm sort of done with that.'

She's not retiring or quitting, she said, but rather, hopes to be 'stronger and freer to say the things that I believe need to be said for people in this country.'"

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