She has a tendency to weigh the importance of kids in the family too strongly for my tastes, coming off more or less as “If you have kids, they are your entire life until they are 18 years old. To have any pleasure of your own that does not both include and focus around the kids is wrong.” I don’t have kids, myself, and I have little expectation of ever doing so, but this seems a bit heavy handed. Not completely wrong, but not completely right, either. Just “over the top.”
(My favorite — not — example of this was when a male caller talked about how he had come to terms with being gay, and how he and his wife were considering getting a divorce. Dr. Laura’s response? Since he and his wife had a child, divorce was not an option. The couple must stick it out until the daughter grew up; they were not allowed to develop other relationships or otherwise have lives of their own. Another decade of misery and stress for both parents was the only solution Dr. Laura would consider. Never mind what that situation might do to the child.)
She also has a tendency to be abrasive with her callers, jumping on side issues (especially kid-related ones) rather than letting the caller speak through their problem. Sometimes this is the right thing to do, as many callers are rather unfocused and/or unwilling to self-analyze. Most of the time for the audience, though, it just comes off as abuse from the advisor.
The biggest problem with Dr. Laura is when she moralizes. She goes outside the bounds of being an advice show and into the realm of preaching about what is wrong with society. (Two of her favorite topics in 1999 were (a) homosexuality and (b) libraries and the Internet.) She also has a tendency to quote from news stories and letters, giving minimal context, using those phrases which support her or deride those she is opposed to. To someone used to reading between the lines and being suspicious of such “opinion journalism,” it is evident what she is doing, but does her average listener have the skills and skepticism to sift around her statements? And then there is her use of hot-button words like “pedophilia,” words which evoke a reaction stronger than is warranted by whatever story (usually kids and the Internet) she is dealing with.
Further, she gives no opportunity for people with differing opinions to express them to her. Callers to her show are apparently carefully screened in order to prevent confrontation on issues. Dr. Laura explicitly avoids having an e-mail address, and there is not even an obvious way to contact her (or her people) on her web site (there is a chat forum of sorts, but it is subject to editting and enforced “politeness”; it is easy to guess what is apt to happen to anti-Dr. Laura opinions there). [This may have changed some in the years since this post was originally written.] The end result of this is that Dr. Laura has a “bully pulpit” from which she is allowed to speak her mind without fear of contradiciton.
This also means that the only recourse for people who oppose her views is to express themselves via the press, or to attempt to have radio stations (and now, television stations) drop/limit her show. And that just gives more grist for her mill, allowing her to say that she (innocent, good-hearted little her) is being attacked. (And then she quotes only the extreme bits of such articles, of course.) Her favorite claim on being attacked seems be that it comes from “gay activists,” without detailing who they are or what their agendas might be, tarring all gay and lesbian people with the same brush.
So what can or should be done about Dr. Laura and her shows? With neither the ability nor the hope of getting her to moderate her opinions and moralizing, and without trying to outright stop (i.e., censor) her, the best suggestion is to try and limit her instead. In the San Francisco Bay Area, the 1999 popularity of her radio show was such that its carrier, KGO, expanded her show to about double the previous amount of weekly time, even going so far as to bump the schedules of their local talk radio hosts into later slots and removing their female host from weekdays altogether, relegating her to reduced hours on weekends, plus fill-in slots for the other hosts. Dr. Laura’s annoyance factor and the amount of time spent moralizing went up dramatically as a result (although I can’t be sure whether there was a percentage increase for such as well as a total time increase). Fortunately, in July 2000, backlash and negative reaction to Dr. Laura (and her then-upcoming televison program) had increased to the point that she was bumped completely off KGO and onto its conservative sister station, KSFO. Ask your local radio or television station that carries her show to cut her show back to a smaller time slot. In addition to limiting her time in the “pulpit,” it will encourage her to focus on advising individuals — the ostensible purpose of her show — and it will enable your radio station to give more variety to the listeners by using more hosts, hopefully even local ones rather than someone with a national focus like Dr. Laura. Everyone will win.
For more info on Dr. Laura and the fight to moderate her bully pulpit, visit the Stop Dr. Laura website. (Note: I am not associated with this website in any way.)
Updated on October 10, 2000
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