I think she’s doing everything she can.
Admittedly she’s limited in her options, because there’s not a financing power behind the opposing voice that she can attack.
Has Dr Laura complained about any articles, blogs, or news stories done about her?
To paraphrase, she might well be saying, “Look, say what you want about me. But don’t go running to my boss and demand that he fire me.”
Has she ever organized or supported a boycott, or encouraged people to write to sponsors? (And don’t get me wrong: it wouldn’t surprise me a whit if she had.) THAT would make her a hypocrite.
A hypocrite is not simply a general moral scold.
OK - when and how?
Sure. Have there been any instances in her past, maybe a TV show or movie or something? For example, she seems like the kind of person that would encourage listeners to write to a network over a televised same-sex kiss. THAT would be hypocrisy, and I would be not in the least surprised to learn of it.
I thought it was made clear earlier in the thread that she was complaining about people using any tactic other than direct debate to refute her. (And of course she doesn’t engage in direct debates).
I think that hypocracy can speak to intent. The fact she can’t silence her critics with a boycott doesn’t automatically absolve her of hypocracy; she clearly wants to silence them one way or the other.
By criticising those who use any other method than direct debate to challenge her. As I noted, her options are currently limited.
I don’t really care enough about her to research into her history. And I feel that there’s enough information in the current situation to tag her with the hypocrite label, though I do admit that if we found an example such as you describe it would be a more direct and explicit example of hypocricy than the current one.
First of all, she doesn’t have an employer. She owns the company that produces her show. She has no boss to fire her. Second, none of the stations who pay her to carry her show threatened to remove her show from their airwaves. Thisd, she went on Larry King a day and a half after the incident on her show to complain that her First Amendment rights were being trampled. Aside from the fact that the First Amendment has no bearing in her situation, what evidence is there that an organized effort to get her show cancelled and her sponsors boycotted was put together and mobilized in 36 hours?
No, not really made clear.
Again: she may want to silence them by the overpowering reason of her arguments – that is, silence them by persuading them of her superior argumentative position. (Ha! Ha! I slay myself!)
Wanting her opponents to shut up doesn’t make her a hypocrite, since she doesn’t seem to mind if they want HER to shut up. What she seems to mind is taking their complaints to her sponsors, shutting her up not by superior argument but by economic pressure.
Maybe no evidence at all. But what does that have to do with the charge of hypocrisy?
Be specific:
(A) Dr. Laura says _____________
but
(B) Dr Laura does _____________, the opposite of (A)'s blank.
Fill in those spaces.
I disagree.
In what forum are they supposed to debate with her? Her show?
Hmm, I think that this open debate here between us isn’t helping me with the lurkers, -er, I mean, it’s not the optimal forum for good debate. I think that the right way for us to debate would be for you to send emails to my personal e-mail account. Which I will not give you the address of.
On a somewhat different subject, regardless of all other details the fact that she’s waving a first amendment flag here makes her look even more hypocritical than she might otherwise appear, because regardless of the possible effect on the actions of her sponsors, her opponents themselves are just talking. Speech in action, simple as that. (Unless there’s some sign that they’re doing more?) It’s pretty much de-facto hypocricy to yell “Your speech criticisizing me is violating my right to free speech!”, I’d think, regardless of all else.
Still smarting over that one, huh? A general moral scold who has an unchecked moral failing is a hypocrite.
Is Dr. Laura Schlesinger a hypocrite? Not in this particular instance that I see. She had a moment of utter demented lapse and used a racist term a number of times. That can be attributed to the disease process of any number of dementias, or simple racism. She has not in the past been a crusader on issues of race that I know of, however, I’m not able to listen to her abusive program.
If racism is considered a moral hazard, then I suppose that she could fairly be considered a hypocrite. She does do a lot of moralizing. Is being a racist a moral hazard? I think so. Not that I don’t think racist things from time to time.
It really depends how tightly you define hypocrisy and how broadly you describe her actions (assuming no mental disease).
Now she does run a radio show that has an attraction for people to call up and be abused verbally by her for their own poor choices. She seems to have made a poor choice (again, assuming no mental disease) in her choice of words and is reaping the consequences of it.
I can see in this case how people could reasonably be on the side of her being a hypocrite. I can also see how someone with really tight definitions trying to defend her would be right on the knife’s edge of being reasonable in saying that their personal view was that she was not a hypocrite.
You hit a cord there.
You we are not talking about the government taking up leagel action against a single person’s right to free speach, ergo, no this isn’t [technically] a first amendment issue.
Or is it? Although the …>governmant<… isn’t the perpetrator of the censureship, as you pointed out, an organized group of protestors is.
Shouldn’t 'We the People" who, in order to form a more perfect union, a government by the peple, of the people, for the people… be the ones who must realize and accept Dr. Laura’s First Amendment rights?
If we do not extend the Consttutionaly Protect right, one man to another…
Then I ask you, what good are they. Of what possible use is it to me, or you, that Congress can not violate them, if you or the guy down the street can?
Ponder that.
-PT.
Dr. Laura says she wants to the freedom discuss and debate.
Dr. Laura actually cuts the caller off when the debate gets too disagreeable. But that doesn’t stop her from unleashing a few more choice paragraphs, and leaving the other side no way to respond.
My cite is the very controversial call that started this whole mess.
Must be nice to “debate” in a forum where you can stuff a gag in the other person’s mouth and then go on to say whatever you like yourself. That’s why (among a great many other reasons) I call her a hypocrite.
She did? When?
Nope.
We the people do recognize that right. Nobody’s stopping the bitch from talking. We the people don’t have to patronize her sponsors, though, or refrain from expressing opinions about her speech and nobody’s obliged to pay her to spew her crap on the radio.
No one at all is stopping this harridan from saying whatever she wants on her own dime, though.
I have a lesbian friend who jokingly calls herself and her girlfriend dykes. So can I not only turn around and call her a dyke, but lesbians everywhere? And (this part is the important part, so pay attention) expect to not make anyone mad?
Am I the only one who thinks this whole thing was staged from the very beginning? It strikes me as odd that a black person struggling with a touchy racial situtation would seek this fool out for advice. All of this seems a little pat to me. Contract is running out. Ratings are going down. Gee, how about we exploit America’s racial anxieties with a Imus-like Spectacular! It’s been a few months since we had one of those.
And like always, we fall right into our respective roles. And Laura tries to cast herself as a martyr, sacrificing herself so that little innocent white children can walk the streets one day with their heads held high and refer to black people as “niggers” and be applauded instead of reviled. You know, like their forefathers and mothers did back in the good old days, when the Negroes knew their place and never complained, even when they were slaves fucking themselves merrily in the fields.
Then cue Palin to remind everyone, with her little “don’t retreat…reload” spiel, that not only is she addicted to attention no matter how bad it makes her look, but that GUNS ARE THE ANSWER TO ALL THINGS. Gee, Sarah, I don’t want to believe you think threatening to shoot people is an acceptable counter-strategy when you’re booed off the stage for being racially insensitive, but by gollee, it certainly seems that way.
No, you’re not the only one; I have suspected this from the beginning. Dr. Laura may be [is] a total douchebag, but she’s not stupid. Especially after her problems with the gay community, she knew exactly what she was doing. And she knows damn well this has nothing to do with the First Amendment.
Good riddance.
From the Larry King interview:
“SCHLESSINGER: Yes, but I don’t hatch (sic) the right to say what I need to say. My First Amendment rights have been usurped by angry, hateful groups who don’t want to debate. They want to eliminate.”
Which implies that SHE wants to debate, yes?
Perhaps she didn’t say it explicitly, but she certainly implies it.
OK, fair enough. I somehow doubt it’s the government’s job to protect her radio show (her job). They can’t force the radio station to keep her, and they can’t force sponsors to finance her show if they don’t want to. Stupid talk has consequences. Even for her. As I understand it, the First Amendment would only apply if the government and the law were telling her to shut up.
So how’s that shooty bullety thing working for her? 
Not to put too fine a point on it, she never claimed she wanted a debate. She only said THEY don’t want one.
So, maybe it’s not definite about her being a hypocrite because that would depend on the specific circumstances. But I believe we DO have a consensus that she is an idiot.