I hope this is the right place to put this…I got this forward from a slash mailing list I’m on, and thought you all might enjoy it. 
TomPaine.com, April 19, 2000
http://tompaine.com/features/2000/04/18/3.html
TOMPAINE.COM EXCLUSIVE: INSIDE DR. LAURA’S TV SHOW
An Eyewitness Account of Dr. Laura’s First TV Taping.
By John Aravosis, a Washington, D.C.-based writer and an organizer of the stopDrLaura.com web site.
It was an ethical dilemma worthy of the “Dr. Laura” radio show. A gay Hollywood “extra” shows up for a taping of the “Leeza” TV show at Paramount Studios. But he suddenly finds that Leeza Gibbons has been canceled, and in her place is the queen-of-mean herself, anti-gay radio talk show host Laura Schlessinger.
“I didn’t know if I should walk out, yell at her, or stay and take notes,” Jim (not his real name) recalls thinking as Ms. Schlessinger walked into the studio. The unwitting fifth columnist decided to stay, and he sought me out to tell his story. By his account, Laura Schlessinger’s new TV show is DOA.
The experience of this first taping may be enough to convince Paramount to abandon the program before it’s launched this fall. The company is facing intense criticism for its decision to add Dr. Laura to the lineup. Schlessinger has called gays and lesbians “biological errors,” sexual deviants, and pedophiles. Civil rights advocates accuse Paramount of a double standard on prejudice, saying the studio would never give a show to someone who had voiced similar unfounded slurs about African-Americans, Jews, or other minorities.
NEGATIVE, BORING AND IGNORANT
As an “extra” who has attended many such tapings, Jim knows what’s expected of him: “sit, smile and clap,” he told me. Pretty routine stuff. That’s why he was surprised by the secrecy surrounding the first taping of Dr. Laura’s show. The studio audience was made up entirely of paid extras, and no one was forewarned that their host would be the good doctor – who in real life is a physiologist, not a psychologist.
“This has never happened before; [the studio] always tells us where we’re going,” Jim said. He overheard another audience member saying that “she had gay friends and had she been told it was Dr. Laura, she wouldn’t have attended.”
It was 7:30 in the morning when Laura Schlessinger entered the studio. She was shorter than expected, wearing a nondescript suit, and her hair was “better than usual,” Jim said. Schlessinger immediately tried to warm up the audience.
“She kept trying to bribe the audience,” he said.
“She tried to get us all in a good mood by giving us a tee-shirt and a water jug. Usually, the warm up will give you a prize or two, but never to this extent. Afterwards she gave every person in the audience her Ten Commandments book,” Jim noted. “A lot of us said we were going to have a book burning party.”
The studio proceeded to tape several long segments. Jim said the segments are normally edited so that only the best parts air. “I don’t think there were any good parts,” he said. “I don’t know what they’re going to cut. She wasn’t even being controversial – just negative, boring, ignorant.”
Schlessinger’s first segment centered on a question: “Why are woman so bitchy and jealous of each other?” She asked a woman in the audience her opinion. The reply: “I don’t know.” Not much to excite a TV audience there.
A second topic was teenage mothers. Schlessinger asked the audience whether they would attend a baby shower given by an unwed teenage mother.
“Most of the audience said it’s a life coming into this world, of course you should go,” said Jim. Schlessinger’s reaction was swift and mean. You should not go, Jim heard her say. You’re only encouraging teenagers to get pregnant. Unwed mothers should be ashamed of themselves, and there should be more shame in the world.
When one audience member said she would attend the shower anyway, everyone clapped.
BREEDING INTOLERANCE
“The thing is, she doesn’t know how to work on TV,” said Jim. “She would just stare into the camera and just go on with monologues.”
One man in the audience complained afterward that it was a “chick show,” because all the topics focused on women. Another told Jim that Dr. Laura would “bomb” because she had no rapport with the audience. Her tone was “hostile” throughout, and she was “cold and distant and angry,” Jim reported.
Paramount has issued one statement in response to critics concerned about this hostility being targeted against gays and others with whom Schlessinger disagrees. “With the production of Dr. Laura’s upcoming television show, and all of Paramount’s current programming, we are committed to presenting society’s moral and ethical issues without creating or contributing to an environment of hurt, hate or intolerance.”
But when asked how well he felt Paramount kept its word during Dr. Laura’s first TV taping, Jim said:
“Those three things are exactly what came across from her. She was hurtful, hateful, and she’s breeding an intolerance.”
NOT LONG FOR THE TV WORLD
In spite of his Hollywood-insider status, Jim
thinks Dr. Laura’s new show should be cancelled before it begins.
“I am against censorship, I’m an artist, but there has to be corporate responsibility,” Jim said.
“Dr. Laura says gay people are biological errors, and that viewpoint causes hundreds and thousands of gay teens to kill themselves, and people to commit violence against us.”
And while Jim thinks Paramount will go ahead with the show in spite of the protests, he believes the first taping went so badly, that the Dr. Laura show is not long for the TV world.
“A bad time was had by all,” Jim said. “She’d
better get happy,” he said, referring to the overall negative tone of the show, “or I think it’s gonna bomb.”
Most people disagreed with Dr. Laura during the TV show taping, Jim said, but Dr. Laura always had an easy answer. “She just said her view and then walked away from them while they were still talking,” he said. She never realized that “it wasn’t radio, it was real people… On the radio she can just cut off people who disagree with her,” Jim said. “But with [a TV] audience, it’s harder for her to do that.”
One woman in the audience was on the verge of
tears when Dr. Laura asked her opinion about the unwed teen mother issue. Jim reports that the woman told Dr. Laura that the child was a real living person, and that friends and family should attend the shower.
“The woman told Dr. Laura that this wasn’t a
perfect world,” Jim said. “Dr. Laura just couldn’t get that.”
(Editor’s Note: “Jim’s” true name, and perhaps even gender, have been changed to protect his or her future job prospects in Hollywood.)
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