At best, it implies that she wants to debate them on this issue, or she feels that their complaints about her should be settled by debate. Even if it implies an openness to debate about this issue, it doesn’t say that she favors open debate about all issues, or that she believes radio shows should offer their calllers fair and open debate.
So… no. She’s an idiot, amply demonstrated, and she has no clue about what the First Amendment does… but so far, I’m not hearing any hypocrisy.
So we agree, on the “idiot thing” 
I see the “hypocrite” wars are still smoldering… (and it’s HYPOCRISY, people, hypocracy would mean something like “government from underneath”)
(A) OK, I know it’s considered bad form to bring it up, but I can’t stand it: for crying out loud use a spelling checker.
(B) The consensus is nobody violated her first amendment rights. We fully accept, realize and defend her 1st Amendment Rights, but there is no 1st Amendment Right to not be subject to organized protest, just as there is no right under the 1st.A. to be free from hearing things that offend you; BUT it DOES confer you a right to gather in an organized group and say “Hey, this offends us!” An organized protest* is* the right of the offended, it does not violate the rights of he who gave offense. Don’t like it that way? Take it up with the Founders.
(C) Nobody perpetrated “censorship”. The only censorship (=the action of preventively restraining a person from communicating something) happening here is SELF censorship, by withdrawing her contract from consideration for renewal. Censure (=an expression of moral condemnation) is a different thing than “censorship”.
(D) Specifically: Social ***censure *** is the expression of disapproval of an individual who is flouting community mores. It’s how a society reacts to someone, for instance, routinely addressing other persons as “nigger” or “cunt”, showing up at High Mass in a miniskirt and mesh top with no undergarments, getting sloppy stinking drunk at parties and waking up covered in vomit in someone else’s front yard every weekend. In order to avoid incurring in censure, we ALL, to a greater or lesser extent, exert some self-censorship in the interest of civil peace. BUT we are free, under our constitutional rights, and it is part of our cultural character, to defy unjust social censure and stand on our principles, if we are willing to bear the costs. It is also within our rights and national character to say “f#@& this, I don’t have to take this s#!+, good bye!”
(E) If the group of people down the street circulates a petition to boycott my business, I am free to organize MY supporters in a counter-petition. However, if their petition includes outright malicious lies, I can seek to sue for libel; or if my opponents try to carry out their campaign in a way that disturbs the public peace or threatens my personal safety, then the legal system and fair-minded citizens must step in to subdue the mob. Dr. Schlessinger, as a so-far profitable media producer and succesful on-air personality, is far from a powerless individual needing protection from organized opposition – she could confront her critics, and in fact has and intends to continue to do so in various other media. She, and only she, decided that the specific venue of the radio show was not worth trying to make sustainable past this season, apparently in view of the self-inflicted damage.
Oh yeah. I forgot that’s your pet project.
No. Fighting ignorance is my pet project. This is just one battle.
Give Bricker a break - his whole profession is defined by nitpickery.
This is why I’m already boycotting the new Jimmy Smits show about the Supreme Court justice who resigns to take on pro-bono criminal defense cases. I figure each episode will turn on his ability to make dramatic speeches in court, instead of the more realistic tack of arguing finer points of law.
Well, that and a Justice has to know he’s in a better position to help a larger number of people while on SCOTUS than in taking one case at a time. Kinda makes me wonder what would happen if a Justice suddenly started siding with criminal defendants in all cases. Or are there one or more Justices who already do that? Does Ginsburg?
This is just a sidebar, feel free to ignore it.
Well, an honest justice might say to himself, “As a judge, I am constrained to follow the law; as an advocate, I can help those who need help even if they’re technically guilty.”
In Dr. Laura’s book (Stop Whining, Start Living) she says:
“The people and circumstances around me do not make me what I am, they reveal who I am”
Well, what her recent incident reveals is that Dr. Laura is an ignorant, hateful, racists and a bigot. The people have revealed who she is and have spoken out loud.
I thought it was agreed that her use of the word was not racist.
Or, could it be that the treshold is so low one caught reading “How to kill a mockingbird” outloud could be called a racist?
Even in the very best light, her tone in the entire exchange was insensitive, ignorant and dismissive of racism. Her comment that “if you don’t have a sense of humor [about being called nigger] then you shouldn’t marry out your race” was wildly offensive, and I think probably revelatory of what really bothered her. She never really answered the caller’s question or even trie to listen to it. She was agitated from Jump Street that the caller was in an interracial marriage. That’s obvious.
Who agreed? I didn’t. I am an African-American man and I say the following tells me she is a racists hateful bigot…
Even if one did agree that mere use of the word is not racist, Dr. Laura’s use of the word eleven times within five minutes to a woman who made it clear she found it offensive does seem at best a trifle RUDE does it not? Besides, as I’m sure you know if you read the transcript of the entire conversation, Dr. Laura’s use of the n-word was just a warm up for worse things to come. Unless you think the rest of her comments were germane to the caller’s original question, in which case this is a fruitless conversation.
How does the phrase you underline confirm that she’s a bigot? She may very well be against interracial marriage, but that is not the point she is making. She is quite clearly upset about the fact that frank discussion of racial relations is treated as a taboo subject. Damn me to hell for agreeing with the bitch, but I do. You condemn her not for her position, but for her language; because you assume that her position is entirely conveyed by how she expresses herself. You feel that you can judge her based on the form of her argument, rather than the context and content.
I’m not saying that you are wrong about Dr. Laura, I’m saying that you are wrong about reflexively assuming that anyone who does not bow to taboo is therefore a racist. She purposefully used That Awful Word over and over in an attempt to emphasize how toxic it has become, but she just wound up succumbing to the poison. Good riddance, but I hate to see her go out as a justified martyr.
For the record, I don’t agree with her treatment of the caller. The poor lady was apparently experiencing genuine racism, and needed real advice. Instead, she got side-swiped by Dr. Laura’s festering peeve. I will never understand why anyone would ask Dr. Laura for advice.
Not regarding this, particularly, but she’s spoken out against both dating married men and living together before marriage, and I believe she began dating her second husband when he and his first wife were separated but not divorced, and then moved in with him, although they obviously couldn’t get married until his divorce were finalized.
Now, if I were in the mood to be charitable towards her, I could say that she didn’t develop those beliefs until after the events occurred, because that might be the case. but that does seem somewhat hypocritical to me.
That is absolutely hypocrisy. Unless, as you say, her genuine beliefs didn’t coincide with those events, but that’s for her to clear up. That’s an excellent example of hypocrisy, and (as I said) it doesn’t surprise me a bit.
I don’t know who Dr Laura is or what her reputation is that makes people want to loathe her. I even suspect that were I to know more about her, I wouldn’t like her very much myself. However…
In this very narrow window, I have to support her on both issues:
1st amendment rights - true, her 1st amendment rights have not been taken away. However, she has experienced what is called ‘a chilling effect’ on her rights, which is a legitimate, if not a legal, issue. Being able to legally do something, and having societal or other pressure against you, can legitimately feel like an abridgment of those rights.
The N-word: her comments were spot on. It can seem legitimately confusing and unfair to outsiders to be subject to a verbal taboo that others are allowed to openly and profusely flaunt. It can even go as far as becoming an example of the thing it purports to be against.
Only if you believe there is some ambiguous, extra-Constitutional right to say anything you want without consequences. That is the problem; people like Dr. Laura and Sarah Palin lack any sense of personal accountability for their speech. They want their speech to be protected, while the speech of their opponents is restricted. That is not the social contract we live under in America. If she feels her speech is being chilled, it is only because she lacks the courage of her own convictions.
The caller said the n-word was unacceptable at any time. For Dr. laura to lump the caller in with rappers and gang bangers and say “how come it’s OK” is a bigotry in itself. The caller said it is not OK, so that argument does not wash.
I was in another thread discussing the not-mosque-at-ground-zero-plus-two and someone came along with this argument that a private citizen can’t violate someone else’s first amendment rights. Does this really and truly hold water? I know at the level of the Constitution we’re dealing with what the branches of government can or can’t do, but then there’s also the associated trickle-down that states can’t do what isn’t constitutional, and I would think along those lines that that would pretty clearly make it impossible for states to allow one citizen to violate the civil rights of another. I guess at that point it would boil down to non-constitutional law - i.e. you can’t smash my printing press because it’s my property, you can’t kill me because murder is illegal, but still. I think it’s the Constitution that guarantees free speech indirectly.
None of this applies to Dr. Blowhard, of course, who traded away her right to chant ‘nigger’ in exchange for a lucrative broadcasting contract whose voluntary nature is demonstrated by the fact that she was free to end it.
But the caller does not get to unilaterally dictate social convention. Even if the caller herself is uncomfortable with the word in any circumstances at all, it’s a fair observation that there is some non-trivial segment of African-American society that regards it as acceptable when used within the group and a vicious insult when used by an outsider. Nor is it simply rapper and gang bangers: I have only to flip my XM Radio to the uncensored comedy channel to hear black comedians using it.
I won’t use the word, because I think it’s ugly beyond belief. But that doesn’t erase the fact that many African Americans, from many different careers and walks of like, do not consider the use of the word an insult in every circumstance. That is a distinction that people should be able to address.
None of which should be taken as approval of the method Dr Idiot chose to address it. Lenny Bruce, she is not.
Nor do the rappers and gang bangers. Just because some social malcontents use it does not make it a social convention. The caller certainly can dictate the conventions of the call, and should not be held responsible in that context for a racial epithet used by those beyond her control.