Has she ever actually given advice to anyone? I’ve only heard her radio show a few times, and, like Ben said, it sounded like people were calling in with legitimate questions only to be berated by Dr. Laura for all the “mistakes” they’ve made in their lives.
I think she just likes to hear herself talk.
No, more the “trying to be cute and perky but not quite pulling it off”.
I used to listen to Dr. Laura at my old job. This was a few years ago.
She wasn’t always bad. Really. If she were, I wouldn’t have listened. She got in these PMS moods, where I had no choice but the turn the dial for about a week. Other times, she really wasn’t bad. It all depended on the questions asked, and the attitude of the person asking. Sometimes I heard her give pretty decent advice (or so I thought - because it made sense to me.) Other times I heard her go off “half-cocked” and not listen to all the circumstances of the person’s problem. (Too much of that, and I turned the dial.)
Part of her “style” is that she is short and to the point - kind of like she’s thinking, “Time’s a wastin’!” People who listen to her for more than a few weeks get used to this, and understand that sometimes her “curtness” is not meant to be mean, it was just that, well, “Time’s a wastin’!”
I’m not defending whatever she’s done lately, because I haven’t listened to her for a few years. Who knows what she is up to now. But I will say, oftentimes in the past her advice wasn’t bad, and she wasn’t usually nasty and mean to her callers. If she were, I wouldn’t have listened. If she were mean to gay people, I wouldn’t have listened. (I never did hear her be mean to a gay person because they were gay - quite the opposite, in fact.)
From what I could tell, anyone who listened to her show and called up would have to be aware that this was a person who was anti-daycare, anti-abortion, pro-religion. If they didn’t want the opinion of someone who felt strongly along those lines, they shouldn’t have called. Most people knew who they were calling, and probably felt simularly to her on these things. Or at least I’m guessing.
Another thing that I know about her - to her listeners (and I was one a few years ago) it was NO surprise that she had a “checkered past” fraught with indiscretions. So when the nude photo scandal came out, I did not think of her as a hypocrite, because I already knew she had done dumb things in her past. She came off (at least in my recollection) as a person who had “been there, done that”, not as some holy, pure, untouched person who had never screwed up. If she had come off as some sort of perfect person with a perfect life, I don’t think I would have listened.
I thought this was about those pictures of her? I saw the Dr Laura nude pics on the net, they were great but now I cant find them.
Yeah, I did hear that she used to be more common sense,
“Don’t cheat on your spouse, spend time with your kids, don’t steal, don’t sleep around with strangers, etc etc.”
Now, she just acts like Queen of the Harpies.
**Jeep’s Phoenix wrote:
Has she ever actually given advice to anyone? I’ve only heard her radio show a few times, and, like Ben said, it
sounded like people were calling in with legitimate questions only to be berated by Dr. Laura for all the “mistakes” they’ve made in their lives.**
I’ve listened to Dr. Laura and honestly tried to understand her but I can’t. I’ve tried to figure out why people would call her up and pour out their woes to someone who is so un-empathetic. My only guess is that being an anonymous caller is easier than going to a true professional counsellor is the reason.
As for why the show is so popular; the same reason we all slow down when driving by an accident on the freeway, especially if we’re in the opposite lane, a morbid fascination with the grisly. 
What about when she excused her indiscretions by saying that hey, she was an atheist, so of course she was immoral?
Or the way she tells women not to have a career?
Anyway, I should stress that part of my point is not just that she is “stern” or “seems curt.” I’ve heard her berate listeners at length for imagined sins which she read between the lines of their story, and which were irrelevant to the issue they were asking her about. Clearly time’s not a-wastin then.
Plus, she’s an outright fraud, and should be punished just like anyone else who practices without a licence (IMO.)
-Ben
I have never heard her say that. Of course, I have not heard her show for a few years, but I seriously doubt that she put it that way. Did you hear her say that, word-for-word, personally?
NOPE, I have never heard her say that! Why would she say that? She has a career! Have you heard her say that, personally, word-for-word?
As far as being called “Dr.”, I do remember hearing her clarify what her credentials were, and stressing what she was not. She did this more than once on her show. She said she was on the show giving advice, and to “nag and preach”. So I don’t think she qualifies as “practicing without a license.”
I have not listened to her recently - for all I know she has gone off the deep end. But to be honest, I am a little dubious about these recent claims about what she has said. What she has actually said. Because claims about what she represents and what she has said in the past have been so scewed.
During the nude photo scandal, I remember feeling shocked that the photos were coming out, but not shocked that she had done them. Because I had actually heard her show, knew where she was coming from. And yet everyone around me, on the press, etc., people who had not heard her show, were calling her a “hypocrite”, and claiming that she had always pretended to be this perfect person. But in my recollection, she had never done that. She was a “been there, done that” person. Never pretended to be perfect…and yet everyone (who did not listen to her) thought that about her. So obviously they were not getting accurate information. Or so it seemed to me.
I found this article written by one of my favorite columnists, and I thought I’d give a link:
http://www.channel2000.com/kcbs2/drew/kcbs2-drew-20000529-183935.html
A few sentences from his column:
How many people here have listened to her for more than a few minutes? Or for more than a program or two? (Listening, of course, the attitude that she is an evil woman?) I have to be honest, most of the people I encounter who hate her have never even listened to her, or have only heard snippets of her show. I, on the other hand, have listened to her for quite a while (a few years ago - but she had her strong critics back then, as well.) If you read my previous post, I do say that she did get crabby and curt on occasion, and I’d turn the dial. And that she would jump to conclusions too much sometimes, and I’d turn the dial. She could be hard to take, sometimes. But she also had a lot of good advice, common sense, and she wasn’t mean to gay people.
I am conflicted now with all this recent controversy. I listened to her show, I liked listening to her (when she was in a good mood.) I would be saddened to hear that she had totally turned around, and transformed herself into this monster. But I somehow doubt she’s as bad as that. But…I could be wrong. I guess I’d be more willing to believe that she had totally gone off the deep end if I could hear from some people who are regular listeners. If some people like that would compellingly insist that Dr. Laura is nothing like she was when I listened, that would be pretty damning evidence to me.
This is close to how I’ve thought too. Also, why is HER, so called ‘intolerance’ evil, and every other name, but the very people calling the names are just as intolerant??
Hate mongering, is hate mongering, I don’t care if you have a national pulpit to spew it, or just a message board. One isn’t less or more than the other.
Though I’ve not listened for a few years either, as I’ve stated, I home school, and Dr. S. can get really vulgar, and I don’t want to hear it, and I don’t want my son to hear it either, but, for the MOST part, it’s just common sense.
Factually, she’s quick to criticize, she can be very harsh and sarcastic but there are more lies spread about her, than truth. She’s never said she’s against a woman having a career, unless as yosemitebabe said, she’s gone off her clock in the last two years, which I doubt.
She’s against married couples having children and institutionalizing them in daycare for the sake of acquiring THINGS. Period. The controversy over homosexuality, I am totally amazed, the calls that I remember her taking, they were almost always caring and open. So, I’m not sure if she’s been misquoted, taken out of context, or what. But, to take the words of people that I believe, haven’t listened to any more than a word or two, wouldn’t be very factual, which is what this message board is based.
She is completely family oriented, why people find THAT threatening, is beyond me. She can be abrasive, but would that generate the kind of hatefulness that she seems to?
But, if you’re so quick to preach ‘tolerance’ you ought to be willing to live it, and allow others to live it too. Fair’s fair.
Yosemitebabe: My experience is the same as yours. I listened to her often five years ago because that’s what my radio was tuned to. Based on the uproar the last few years, I figured that she had changed a bit. In the past she attempted to be very brief while trying to empathize if it was warranted. She definitely did not coddle and often quickly pointed out the wrong decision these callers had made without the voicing empathy. Back then, numerous callers had problems that were easy to solve (e.g. woman staying with an abusive man). I did not always agree her assumptions but her immediate conclusions were typically sound and fairly obvious. I quit listening because of all the callers with practically the same problem. I just got bored.
Does that include being tolerant about other people’s intolerance? In the recent past she’s made a number of anti-gay remarks, including that Matthew Shepard was largely responsible for his own murder. She has no tolerance for women who work with kids at home (she should talk, her son isn’t even in his teens yet). Divorce, sex before marriage, and not being of a religious bent are all bad in her book.
I used to listen to her years ago, and she was nowhere near as bad back then as she is now. I find myself wondering what happened to her in the interim.
Cites, please? Did you hear this personally? I am not sure, but I believe that I was listening to her when the Matthew Shepard story broke. I cannot imagine that she would say anything that hateful. Please, some reputable cites!
Cites, please? Reputable cites, please? She is against having kids and then institutionalising them (as Anti Pro points out) so the parents can go out and get more THINGS. She’s not against a mom working to make ends meet. Or that’s what she’s been saying as far as I know…once again, if she’s gone off the deep end, that’s a different story. But I am not convinced that she has as yet. I’d like some reputable cites, from people who have actually spent a good amount of time listening to her recently.
She’s very conservative, and is not encouraging divorce. (What?!?! Does anyone here think divorce is a great thing? It is sometimes necessary, but is it wonderful?) She’s also pro-religion, and doesn’t encourage sex before marriage because it so often brings unplanned pregnancy, and young moms raising kids by themselves. These beliefs are nothing new.
You can get a short list of the witchy woman’s most inflammatory comments here. This is the “stop dr laura” web site so I’m wondering if it might be just a little biased, but they do give sources for all of the quotes (many from her own show).
Additionally, this week’s Newsweek reports:
Well, she doesn’t actually say that. In fact, she says the opposite. Not I like her or defending her, I just clicked on the link and ran into the quote. Dr. Laura says enough nasty stuff without having to make more up.
From stopdrlaura.com:
“You know what was largely responsible for that guy’s [Matthew Shepard’s] death? Those two guys who killed him did not go out looking for a homosexual to kill that night. They were shooting pool. He went to the bar. He left with two guys he thought he was gonna have sex with. He got murdered. How many women has that happened to? How many women have left bars thinking they were gonna get some action with some guy who raped and murdered and tortured and murdered them? Far more women than homosexual men have ended up dead that way, I would guess. Is that a hate crime against women? I think so but they specifically picked the woman who was willing to leave for sex. If Matthew hadn’t been willing to leave for sex, he might still be alive. That certainly doesn’t make him responsible for his own death but when you put yourself into a situation of going off to have anonymous sex with people you meet at a bar, what kind of person is gonna leave with you? Usually scum… This was a terrible tragedy but it’s also one that might have been avoided if he had simply gone home with his friends instead of thinking he was gonna get a little.”
- Dr. Laura radio show, April 16, 1999 (quoted by CBSC).
Another quote from stopdrlaura.com:
“the ultra-conservative advice dispenser went on to report the results of her fax poll regarding controversial marriages. ‘I asked for only those supporting legal gay marriages to respond to the question of whether it’s OK for adult male and female siblings to marry,’ Schlessinger said. ‘Except for one fax, they all said yes,’ she reported with disgust.”
- Dr. Laura quoted by the New York Post, 2/16/00
This is a lie. There is no way this can be true. No way in hell. Anyone who would fall for this blatant falsehood deserves to have Dr. Laura yell at them.
I admit, some of the direct quotes from the stopdrlaura page make me pause. They sound pretty awful. However, I do not take the other quotes from newspapers and magazines too seriously. They are merely reporting on what they think she said, and what they think she meant. And I do not find such sources to be terribly reliable.
About the “biological error” thing. Now, it sounds bad, and it is bad. But I think I remember her starting to form her opinion on this on the show, before I stopped listening. (I stopped listening because I changed jobs, not because I was blacklisting her, or anything - by the way.) I remember she used the word “anomaly” to explain homosexuality. What she meant was, in the basest sense, the human reproductive system was put there for a reason (to reproduce.) When someone has a brain that is not wired to want to reproduce with the opposite sex, it could be considered an “anomaly”. But, not like it’s a bad thing. Just different. I remember when I heard her explain it, it wasn’t that offensive to me. I kind of figured, everyone is different, and we all have “anomalies”, but that’s not a bad thing. I have a six-toed cat. He’s a great cat, and I wouldn’t change his six-toed feet for the world. But I guess his six toes could be considered an “anomaly”, or, a “biological error”. But WHO would want to change his feet to be “normal”? Surely not I! Same with gay people (in my opinion.) And (as I ramble on here) who is to say that six toes aren’t “normal” too? Perhaps they are a just a variation on “normal”. So, I didn’t find myself getting too ruffled over what she said - it was something about the way she explained it.
If Dr. Laura had kept it at that, I don’t think it would be too bad (when it’s explained the way I heard it.) But apparently, if these quotes are accurate, and contain the same inflammatory meaning when in context, she has gone farther than that. Which is a terrible shame. But still a little hard to believe. She’s terribly politically incorrect, sure. But she has been misquoted so much, and her quotes have been taken out of context so much…I just don’t know who to believe anymore.
You should see her website…
I have read transcripts of her show, since I don’t know when it is on, or what station. (radio, that is).
And I read her telling someone that Wicca is evil, that it’s idol worshiping and going to hell and all.
I’ll try and look this up when I get home from class tonight…
grrrrrrr, I posted this morning, but it didn’t seem to have shown up.
First off, she has been speaking out a lot more on homosexuality in the last year. That’s because she was a supporter of Proposition 22 and was trying to get her views to as many voters as possible.
Is it possible that it isn’t offensive to you because it doesn’t refer to you? I’m not trying to slam you here, but I find it offensive to be called a “biological error”.
I would never tell any human being that they are a mistake. Honestly, how do you think that makes the other person feel?
So you’ll have to forgive me for not being a fan of a woman who thinks I’m a disordered, deviant, biological error.
Dr. Laura also feels the APA was wrong to remove homosexuality from its list of mental disorders. Plus, she is also a strong advocate for reparative therapy, even though she admitted it didn’t have the good success rate.September 8th, 1999 Transcript
That doesn’t make me feel safe and secure at all. It worries me that it, within my parents’ lifetime, homosexuals were institutionalized. That only the opinion of the APA is keeping us from going back to the days of shock and aversion therapies. I have no desire to go back to those day and refuse to “agree to disagree” with Dr. Laura on this point.
Do I think Dr. Laura is a hateful bigot? No, probably not. I do however think she is greatly mistaken on her psychological views of homosexuality. I would like to see her look to someone other than the Family Research Council for her facts on homosexuality. That’s a quack organization if I ever saw one. They’ll cite Paul Cameron, a proven fraud, but dismiss Dr. Evelyn Hooker and her double blind, peer reviewed study. If it doesn’t fit into their pre-conceived views, it’s junk science as far as they’re concerned.
I’d like to see Dr. Laura actually back her views with facts rather than anonymous letters, testimonials, and personal anecdotes. The fact that she hasn’t thus far indicates to me that she doesn’t actually have proof that her views have any basis at all.
Her speciality is family counciling. She should stick to that and leave the armchair psychology out of it.
I never heard her call homosexuals a “biological error”. Apparently she started doing that after I stopped listening to the show. The word she used was “anomoly”. She used the analogy of diabetics, saying that they had a part of their body that worked different from most people. My sister is a diabetic, and I was not offended by her using that term. The way she explained it, we are all different, and each of us has something in our bodies that works differently from many other people. And that’s just the way it is. The same way with my six-toed cat. In the basest sense, I suppose you could stretch the definition and say that my diabetic sister and my six-toed cat are “biological errors”. Hey - so am I. I wear glasses - I had to start wearing them at age 10. People were not born wearing glasses, so what goes on with some of us, that we need to wear them later on? That could be considered an “anomoly”, or maybe even an “erreor”.
Sure, the word “biological error” sounds terrible. And I couldn’t see any reason use it on anyone. But if I were to use it, I would use it to describe myself with my glasses, my sister’s diabetes, my cat’s six toes, and my friend who has some webbed toes. And on and on. Big whoop-de-do. So all of us have “biological errors”. That’s the way I would use the term. But it does look like Dr. Laura is focusing on homosexuals when she uses the term, which really dismays me. She was so different when I listened to her. She would admonish uptight people who were disapproving of gay people to basically mind their own business. I have no idea what has gone on in the last few years. I still am hesitant to believe every quote attributed to her, but I think that something is going on that is troubling.
Kyla, I want to thank you for being one of the few who actually examines the truth behind these allegations against Doctor Laura.
Allow me to add to your work in that:
Guinastasia:
Okay, this is seriously taken out of context. I heard the call that you’re most likely referring to. It was last week. Here’s how it actually went:
The caller said that he was raised a Christian, but there were certain tenets of the Christian faith that he just couldn’t bring himself to believe, mainly the idea that people who had never heard of JC were doomed to Hell because they don’t believe in him, even though they never even had the opportunity to. He looked for a religion that he did like, and found Wicca. However, his family is Christian, didn’t know of any of this, and would be very hurt if he just announced that he was abandoning Chritianity. He then said that Wicca is a nice, “inclusive” religion, and he thinks that Christianity can somehow be part of it.
Doctor Laura then told him, no way. If you believe in Christianity, Wicca is idol-worship, and a Wiccan is in violation of at least the first two, and probably the first three of the Ten Commandments. There’s no way to reconcile the two. She then recommended that he speak to clergy about his concerns regarding the Christian faith because he’s clearly uncomfortable with making a clean break with Christianity, and there are certain moral issues that arise whenever one presumes to choose a religious affiliation for one’s self.
That was it. The Doctor Laura web site has a one-week audio archive of the shows, and I’m pretty sure that this call was in Thursday’s or Friday’s show, if you care to listen to hear it for yourself. It sure as heck wasn’t as bad as the way you heard it said.
I doubt I’m going to change anyone’s mind about liking or disliking Doctor Laura and her show, but posts like mine and Kyla’s above should at least make those of you reading them realize that stopdrlaura.com is not a very reliable source of such information.