The Doctor Is Out

Score one for decency.

Dr. Laura Schlessinger announced that she is ending her radio show at the end of the year. She told Larry King that her decision has nothing to do with the racial slur she emitted on the air last week, but rather to regain her right to free speech. Says the not-so-good doctor: "The reason is I want to regain my First Amendment rights. 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."

In other words, she's afraid of losing advertisers.

Say what's on her mind and in her heart? I never thought she had either. Even the Tin Man and the Scarecrow had one or the other, and, when it comes to facing adversity she herself created, Dr. Laura has about as much courage as the Cowardly Lion.

A friend of mine who's a nationally known journalist - I'm not mentioning any names - was one of many who put pressure on getting Schlessinger off the air, and Dr. Laura's appearance with King was her way of insisting the she's jumping rather than being pushed. I don't know how Schlessinger is going to speak out for the mean-spirited social values she's championed all these years without a microphone - her Web site, I assume - but if she uses the opportunity to offend anyone else, she'll be called on it.

Incidentally, though Schlessinger apologized for using the N-word, what she said afterwards was almost as offensive. She thought that once Barack Obama was elected President, black people would realize that racism is dead and stop complaining - this in light of racist political rallies over the President's spending plans. She sounds like the Rush Limbaugh fan who once declared, "[Limbaugh] is right. Racism in this country is dead. I don't know what the (pluralized N-word) are going to complain about now."

Oh ,well, I hope this is over, because we're waging two wars simultaneously, and there's no time for fighting. (Get it?)

Now that Dr. Laura is showing herself the door, now's a good time to put the pressure on other right-wing talkers to make a less-than-graceful exit. Let's go after Glenn Beck next.

Don't Call the Doctor

When I heard that Dr. Laura Schlessinger used the N-word eleven times, I had one question: WTF?

I certainly wasn't LOL.

Schlessinger - whose doctorate is not in psychology but in physiology, the study of the functioning of living systems - was asked by a black woman on how to deal with the apparent racism of her white husband's friends, and the not-so-good doctor saw nothing wrong with the N-word because black comedians use it all the time. Schlessinger could have stopped there, but she complained how, when white people say the N-word, "it's a horrible thing. But when black people say it, it's affectionate."

Schlessinger - who obviously never paid very much attention to the viciousness of such stand-up comedy - offended the caller, who called her on using the N-word. Schlessinger proceeded to use it repeatedly, complained about being taken out of context and told the caller that maybe she shouldn't have married outside her race. To her credit, Schelssinger admitted that what she said was wrong, but didn't actually she was sorry, and that she was trying to make "a philosophical point."

Schlessinger - whose doctorate doesn't require her to discuss anything related to deep thought - must be on another planet. I understand her point - black people use the N-word in popular entertainment and no one complains. How does she know a lot of black people don't find that offensive? Why does she think that black comedians on cable television and their largely black studio audiences reflect black America? And if Schlessinger - whose mother was an Italian war bride of an American Jewish soldier who served in the Second World War - can't recommend ways to deal with adversity in mixed marriages, why would anyone should ask her for advice?

Schlessinger - who keeps making me insert clauses following her surname that are punctuated by hyphens - ought to get out of her radio station studio and listen to what black people really think. And if she wants to make philosophical points, maybe she should read Plato or Freud so she can learn how to think before she speaks.

I can't believe that Schlessinger - who was once endorsed by odious right-wing pundit Cal Thomas as a standard bearer of family values - is likely to remain on the air. I'm calling her by another N-word. Neanderthal.