# What did "Dr. Laura" do to supposedly anger gay-rights groups? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [July 19, 2008, 8:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-dr-laura-do-to-supposedly-anger-gay-rights-groups/457082 "2008-07-19T20:46:46Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2008, 3:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-dr-laura-do-to-supposedly-anger-gay-rights-groups/457082/21 "2008-07-21T15:57:43Z")
> [@](#): > > Her son, Deryk, was/is deployed in Afghanistan and, allegedly, his MySpace page is a bit…extreme (link goes to an online newspaper article). I don’t know if they’ve determined if the page is actually his or not yet. I notice in reports that spokesmen hint and suggest that it might not be Deryk Schlessinger’s MySpace page. But nobody has ever flatly denied it. ---
**Author:** ![Desert\_Nomad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/desert_nomad/32/177_2.png) [@Desert\_Nomad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Desert_Nomad)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2008, 4:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-dr-laura-do-to-supposedly-anger-gay-rights-groups/457082/22 "2008-07-21T16:11:51Z")
[QUOTE=phouka] And then she went around the bend. [/QUOTE] Odd bit of local trivia. This expression originated with British soldiers stationed on Telegraph Island, a small (1 acre?) bump of land in a fjord on the Musandam Peninsula in Oman. The isolation and stillness is quite remarkable and they went a bit insane, thus “going around the bend”. As far as I know, Dr. Laura can’t be heard in Oman. ---
**Author:** ![jayjay](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jayjay/32/6765_2.png) [@jayjay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jayjay)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2008, 4:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-dr-laura-do-to-supposedly-anger-gay-rights-groups/457082/23 "2008-07-21T16:13:45Z")
[QUOTE=Desert Nomad] As far as I know, Dr. Laura can’t be heard in Oman. [/QUOTE] Can you imagine being the Omanian whose fillings pick up THAT bit of shrillery? ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Drake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ad7895/32.png) [@Dr.Drake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Drake)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2008, 6:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-dr-laura-do-to-supposedly-anger-gay-rights-groups/457082/24 "2008-07-21T18:52:48Z")
[QUOTE=Desert Nomad] Odd bit of local trivia. This expression originated with British soldiers stationed on Telegraph Island, a small (1 acre?) bump of land in a fjord on the Musandam Peninsula in Oman. The isolation and stillness is quite remarkable and they went a bit insane, thus “going around the bend”. [/QUOTE] Cite? This sounds like an etymological legend to me. OED just quotes “an old naval term” from 1929; an article by Alex Leff in the _History of Psychiatry_ says it’s a 19th-century sailors’ term, from the specialized use of bend meaning “knot.” Both prefer “round the bend” to “around the bend.” Either way, Dr. Laura is definitely nuts, or evil, or both. ---
**Author:** ![astro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9dc877/32.png) [@astro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astro)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2008, 7:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-dr-laura-do-to-supposedly-anger-gay-rights-groups/457082/25 "2008-07-21T19:08:01Z")
[QUOTE=Little Nemo] I notice in reports that spokesmen hint and suggest that it might not be Deryk Schlessinger’s MySpace page. But nobody has ever flatly denied it. [/QUOTE] If she’s all about tradition -bible etc. why does her son have her maiden name as his surname instead of his bio-dads? ---
**Author:** ![Desert\_Nomad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/desert_nomad/32/177_2.png) [@Desert\_Nomad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Desert_Nomad)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2008, 7:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-dr-laura-do-to-supposedly-anger-gay-rights-groups/457082/26 "2008-07-21T19:08:12Z")
[QUOTE=Dr. Drake] Cite? This sounds like an etymological legend to me. OED just quotes “an old naval term” from 1929; an article by Alex Leff in the _History of Psychiatry_ says it’s a 19th-century sailors’ term, from the specialized use of bend meaning “knot.” Both prefer “round the bend” to “around the bend.”. [/QUOTE] The phrase was coined in the 1860s when the British sought a safe location for the telegraph cable from India to Britain. It is quite common knowledge in the region… looking for a few cites/references. > **[File:Oman Telegraph Island.jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Oman_Telegraph_Island.jpg)** > **[At this Oman hideaway you can feel cut off](https://www.independent.co.uk/travel/middle-east/at-this-oman-hideaway-you-can-feel-cut-off-851858.html)** > > Zighy Bay is Oman's latest luxury offering. But, asks Sarah Barrell, will guests get any sense of the country it's in? “The phrase “round the bend” was coined here by the 19th-century Brits who spent years laying a telegraph cable, living on a rocky islet known as Telegraph Island. The phrase has its origins in the expats’ isolation – or in the path of the cable around the peninsula; either way, this place induces a rare, soul-silencing stillness.” ---
**Author:** ![JRDelirious](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jrdelirious/32/9531_2.png) [@JRDelirious](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JRDelirious)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2008, 8:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-dr-laura-do-to-supposedly-anger-gay-rights-groups/457082/27 "2008-07-21T20:01:34Z")
[QUOTE=jayjay] They both figured out that in the early to mid 90s, you could get a whole lot bigger audience by being a far right-wing idiot than by being a reasonable person. [/QUOTE] But O’R at least didn’t really quite get all the way to wackville until the early 2000’s, when he truly acquired national “mainstream” visibility. IMO it could be more a question that their early work garnered a reasonably positive response, and either they read that as meaning that they’d get an even better response by going even further, or they read that as meaning that if they were right about the one thing, they must be right about everything. As of the last time I checked out what was up with that show, “Dr. Laura” does a very interesting thing , to which **MGibson** has alluded: a large number of her callers bring up issues or problems that a non-radical reasonable person in the audience \*\*could \*\* still respond to with: _“Well, you should have thought of that BEFORE you went ahead and did it!”_. She then does her schtick of answering like she has access to some higher pool of knowledge of right v. wrong. But here’s the really neat part: sometimes, by the sounds of the caller and their reactions, \*you can TELL \* that _they expect her to ream them out_ over what they’re doing wrong or failing to do right; it’s like they KNOW what’s going to be the answer, BUT they so distrust their own judgement that they need some sort of external authority to tell them what to do. (Either that, or it’s a visit to the Emotional S&M parlor, to be told they’re naughty boys and need a whipping, to enjoy the humiliation). ---
**Author:** ![ManiacMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b782af/32.png) [@ManiacMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ManiacMan)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2008, 11:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-dr-laura-do-to-supposedly-anger-gay-rights-groups/457082/28 "2008-07-21T23:11:12Z")
[QUOTE=jayjay] They both figured out that in the early to mid 90s, you could get a whole lot bigger audience by being a far right-wing idiot than by being a reasonable person. [/QUOTE] As opposed to being a far left-wing idiot of course? ---
**Author:** ![jayjay](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jayjay/32/6765_2.png) [@jayjay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jayjay)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2008, 11:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-dr-laura-do-to-supposedly-anger-gay-rights-groups/457082/29 "2008-07-21T23:37:33Z")
[QUOTE=ManiacMan] As opposed to being a far left-wing idiot of course? [/QUOTE] Eh. There are a couple of those. Not near as many, of course… ---
**Author:** ![Yookeroo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/yookeroo/32/323_2.png) [@Yookeroo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Yookeroo)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2008, 1:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-dr-laura-do-to-supposedly-anger-gay-rights-groups/457082/30 "2008-07-22T01:58:54Z")
[QUOTE=jayjay] Eh. There are a couple of those. Not near as many, of course… [/QUOTE] There’s probably as many, but there’s no audience for them. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-did-dr-laura-do-to-supposedly-anger-gay-rights-groups/457082.md?page=1)