•  Poll: Do You Listen to Dr. Laura?

Dr. Laura Schlessinger:

She's abrasive, she's cruel, and, in some circles, she's a bigot. So why are nearly 8 million people listening to her?

 By Elaine Herscher

Editor's Note:Paramount cancelled Laura Schlessinger's television show on March 30, 2001 due to poor ratings. Meanwhile, Schlessinger's radio listenership has dropped from a high of 14 million a few years ago to about 8 million today. Despite other conservative radio hosts overtaking her, Schlessinger's show is among the most popular nationally and remains solidly in the top five of most listened to radio programs.

A woman named Valerie is explaining that her 5-year-old from her first marriage never sees his father or paternal grandparents, when Dr. Laura Schlessinger, the most controversial host on talk radio, interrupts to say how sad it is that Valerie made such a poor choice in her first husband.

Before Valerie can get her moral dilemma out on the table, Dr. Laura announces she's not letting any more callers like this one on her show.

"You know, I'm overrun (with) you people marrying and divorcing, and then there are all these uncles and grandparents... Do you realize how awful that is for kids?" says Schlessinger, who's been divorced once herself. "I can't figure out, in a free country, a woman marrying a philandering, drug-abusing bum." (Valerie hadn't mentioned the ex's proclivities.)

"We should make a law that women have to be married for seven years, then we untie their tubes," she continued. "This makes me sad. Doesn't this make everyone else sad?"

Lesson One in the Dr. Laura School of Moral Absolutes: Don't come crawling to her with your ethical problems if you can't handle getting slapped around.

Lesson Two: Dr. Laura's universe is divided into right and wrong. What she thinks is best for children is right. Anything that interferes with that is wrong.

Lesson Three: You already know what's right because moral absolutes are the glue that binds civilization. You just need a good, swift evisceration on national radio to move you in the right direction.

The same day Schlessinger dispatches Valerie's fragile ego, she tells Maryann that her adult daughter's a "loser" not worth trying to please. Rather than defend her child, Maryann agrees. "You're terrific and God bless you," she tells Dr. Laura.

Given the on-air host's now infamous stand against homosexuality, which has sparked an ongoing national protest by the gay community, her hard line against working mothers, her insistence on reducing complex social issues to black and white -- not to mention the barrage of insults she hurls -- one has to wonder why as many as 8 million people listen daily to what she has to say.

"Some people listen to her because she's entertaining and outrageous. Some people listen to her so they can laugh at her, because she's a buffoon and they love to hate her," said Michael Harrison, editor and publisher of Talkers magazine, the talk-radio industry's trade publication, based in Springfield, Massachusetts. "And some people relate to her message about standing up and being more responsible. That message holds up for a lot of people. It's when she goes off on attacks against specific groups that she gets into trouble."

Schlessinger's biggest troubles right now are with the gay community. Her references to gays as "biological errors" who can be "cured" and her assaults on same-sex marriage and lesbian and gay parents have been followed closely by the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) -- as have her views that most pedophiles are gay men, an assertion not supported by facts. GLAAD was the first group to challenge Paramount's plans to give her a syndicated television talk show, scheduled to begin airing in September 2000. The group's efforts were soon followed by a Stop Dr. Laura Web site that got more than a million hits in two days. A successful year-and-a-half campaign by the group against the show ended with its cancellation in March 2001.

"Dr. Laura is free to malign any minority she chooses, but Paramount Television is not required to aid and abet in the destruction of our civil rights and the denial of our humanity," said John Aravosis, a gay lawyer who put up the Web site.

The ultraconservative Family Research Council came to Dr. Laura's aid and railed against the "thought police" trying to silence her. So did some gays and lesbians who hate what she says but defend her First Amendment right to say it. She recently issued a tepid apology for her antigay remarks, but no one expects her to tone down once she gets to television.

Schlessinger's doctorate is in physiology, not psychiatry or psychology, although she does have a license in marriage, family, and child counseling. She offered her hard-nosed advice in small Southern California radio markets for more than 20 years until her show became internationally syndicated in 1994. Schlessinger, 60, and her second husband, Lew Bishop, have gotten rich promoting her monthly magazine and her best-selling books, as well as T-shirts and other Dr. Laura merchandise. She and Bishop have a son, Deryk, and she begins each program saying "I'm my kid's mom." She is ardently antiabortion and antifeminist and insists that society is running amok because there are so many working parents. In her estimation, any sexual expression other than that between a man and a woman is rending the country's moral fiber.

Although her views may be distasteful to many people, Schlessinger is an honest voice in a culture that goes out of its way to varnish the truth, said Laura Nader, a professor of anthropology at the University of California at Berkeley.

"(Her callers) are people who are lost, who can't talk to their own families. She tells them straight from the shoulder, at a time when people are falsely polite, 'You're a lousy father' or whatever," Nader said. "This is a very psychologized country, where everything is touchy-feely. Nobody (else) tells people they're no good. She tells them right off, and it doesn't cost them anything."

The psychological price could be steep, though, if, in an 80-second radio conversation Schlessinger's snap judgments are wrong. But she says she doesn't do therapy; she does morality. An Orthodox Jew who grew up in a secular household and embraced Judaism later in life, she calls herself a prophet, preaching the Ten Commandments as the antidote to violence, child abuse, and an "anything goes" value system. Above all else, she brooks no whining, especially from women, whom she admonishes to have "brains and guts." You got yourself into your situation; grow up, stop sniveling, and take responsibility.

"She has a very strong sense of right and wrong in a climate of moral relativism. Her perspective is rooted in the Bible -- that holds a lot of appeal," said Leah Rose, a conservative Christian who listens to Dr. Laura about once a week. Among other things, Schlessinger reinforces Rose's views that, although one should show compassion, homosexuality is wrong.

"Being an Orthodox Jew, she's very well versed in the Bible and Christian tradition and Christian laws," said Rose, a stay-at-home mom with four children in Bryn Athyn, Pennsylvania. "She really does make you think, even if you disagree with her and even if you don't like her style. She talks about what's right, over what feels good."

Marie Hongslo of Minneapolis, Minnesota, said she also values Schlessinger's straightforwardness. "She points things out to people that they aren't willing to see. She's pretty bold. I'm bold myself," Hongslo said.

Sociologist Arlie Hochschild said there must be some appeal in Dr. Laura's "abrupt, lawyerly, masculine" tone.

"Hers is a more simplified, mass-culture expression of a sentiment of nostalgia for a bygone way of life, and I think this isn't unexpected," Hochschild said. Author of The Second Shift, a study of two-career families, and codirector of UC Berkeley's Center for Working Families, Hochschild noted that in 40 years, the nation has gone from having two-thirds of mothers with young children at home to having two-thirds of such mothers in the labor force. Families are strained and in flux, and Schlessinger takes advantage of that, she said.

"We're floating. People are confused," said Hochschild. "Here's a person who isn't confused, who's absolutely sure."

In the process, though, Schlessinger is attacking families, rather than supporting them, said Gayle Peterson, a family therapist in Berkeley, author of the book Making Healthy Families, and family columnist for parentsplace.com. About 70 percent of families in America are the ones Schlessinger identifies as worthy -- those with a biological mom and dad in the same home -- leaving out a significant number of other families. Research indicates that single parents and stepparents raise well-adjusted children at the same rate as two biological heterosexual parents, Peterson said.

"A child needs one person who believes in him. These are basic facts of research," said Peterson. "The worst thing you can do therapeutically to a single mom is to make her think there's nothing she can do to keep her child from being psychologically deformed." Dr. Laura tells single mothers and others that they're inadequate, she said. "I think that can add to the depression of single moms, divorced people, gays, and anyone else who doesn't fit the mold."

Anthony Pratkanis, a social psychologist at the University of California at Santa Cruz, said Schlessinger's big draw is that she tells people what they want to hear -- that gays and day care, for instance, are to blame for our troubles. Pratkanis said she also appeals to the lost child in people who want to be told what to do, especially by a famous person.

"In our society, celebrities are our opinion leaders. We look to celebrities for guidance on what to do, whether it's what cereals to buy or how to fall in love. Oprah has more to say on what to read than any college professor," Pratkanis said. "Calling in to Dr. Laura is a way of becoming a quick celebrity."

Listening to Laura, on the other hand, is a way of feeling superior to the hapless callers, said Jeffrey Scheuer of New York, author of The Sound Bite Society: Television and the American Mind. "There is a voyeurism in it," said Scheuer. "It's related to why these judges on TV are popular. They're temperamental and injudicious and unjudgelike. People like seeing them put other people down."

Family therapist Bruce Linton sometimes listens to Dr. Laura as he's driving to pick his daughter up from school. He thinks she makes the answers to ethical dilemmas sound easy.

"I wish life weren't as complex as it is with all these moral choices," said Linton. "She doesn't really listen to people. But I think she's popular because people are just desperate."

-- Elaine Herscher, a former reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle, is a senior editor at Consumer Health Interactive.

References

First published April 19, 2000
Last updated February 19, 2008
Copyright © 2000 Consumer Health Interactive

Or Find More On:

Back to top of page