Hey, Dr. Laura! How many families did you break up today?

The tough love, indecent advice that Schlessinger gives some of her callers needs to be looked at very carefully.



Remember, this is the woman whose mother was found practically mummified in an apartment just a few blocks from Schlessinger's broadcast center, where she presumably works every day. I suppose she just couldn't spare the time to check up on the old gal. As a Jew who professes to believe in the Ten Commandments, I suggest she check the one about honoring one's mother and father. However, I am told that she defends her actions, then touts her abyssmal human failure as an example.


In our easy, non-defined media centric culture, someone like Schlessinger succeeds because there are enough mad, self-righteous, narcissitic and naive young people to listen. Her whole schtick consists of telling young men and woman that if it's perfectly fine to cut people in your family out of your life if they're not displaying the "correct" amount of mea culpas for mistakes and past sins, no matter what. It makes me wonder how she can be so easily believed considering her own background.



This woman has a Ph.D degree in Physiology, the study of the function of systems in the body. Does her CV contain advanced psychiatric, psychological, sociological studies or other germane disciplines? Surprisingly, yes. She is a certified MSFC and claims to have twelve years of clinical experience. I'm sure her peers winced when she hung out her shingle spewing her own guilt-driven crap so that she can justify and feel better about her obscene treatment of her own mother. That tells me volumes about her inability to empathize and deal with real issues using thoughtful and effective methods. In addition, her defference to men in general and her preoccupation with her father and the "care and feeding" of husbands says to me she's probably in competition with most woman. It's clear she dislikes the company of other smart women.

Schlessinger's radio presence is hardly new, just modified to demonstrate her gimmick. This is the same woman whom I listened to during 1979 though about 1980 whose schtick THEN was be your own woman, to hell with the kids (of course, then she didn't have any) and look how wonderful she is. I was struggling as a single mother trying to work and go to school for my degree at this time and listened on my way to class every day. My mistake. Her tremendous lack of understanding of the daily realities in other people's lives became apparent too late, but I still listened. I was striving, after all, for normalcy for my family.

Today, of course, we find out she stopped speaking to her own mother, posed for nude photos (as if everyone did) and other outrages that question her ability to provide advice for anyone. What a freaking liar.



So, at age 60, she has the gall to castigate anyone who's made errors in judgement in raising their kids, has no tolerance for what is for many people extended families, issues that can be worked out if shown a forgiving and charitable attitude. She hides behind her conservative facade, her only child paratrooper son (that hoowa thing she does every day is ridiculous), ignoring the impact her past and lack of accountability has on others, then spouts her "common sense."

Who really knows what her family was like? It couldn't have been much of a model because she does everything she can to tempt people into terrible actions which affect and break up entire families. It matters not the circumstances (she simply doesn't have the airtime to explore those minor details); she's a mean old woman with no grace. It makes me wonder if she's turned into exactly what she hated about her mother. Many of us do, you know. The good news is as we mature, we find the old dolls weren't so bad after all.



I've boycotted Laura Schlessinger because I've heard her too many times discount the real problems, take as gospel the family complaints she hears from her callers and even one time told a woman who had just lost her child that she was basically responsible for it (she wasn't). To paraphrase, her response to the woman who called to get some comfort instead got told she's an idiot and deserved what she got.

If I want irrelevant, mean and angry post-menopausal craziness and edginess, I'll look in the mirror.



Thanks for the read.