August 2001 || Volume 02, Issue 01

As Promised... Dr. Laura Schlessinger

Last issue I discussed the Ann Landers website, and promised a special treat this month: a virtual visit with Dr. Laura. Laura Schlessinger has a very sophisticated website, complete with multitudinous ads, including popups (no, jumpouts) shilling for products in Dr. Laura's own well-loved and authoritative voice. Like the radio program, the site is multifaceted, literate, and infused throughout with Dr. Laura's very own characteristic strong and unequivocal point of view. So annoying do I find the whole thing that it's an effort for me to realize that nearly all the time, in its practical manifestations though not in its philosophy, the message very much follows my own view of appropriate behavior towards self and others: respect for the needs of others, acceptance of personal responsibility, and subordination of immediate gratification to long-term goals. I'll try to comment on Dr. Laura's website and other offerings without losing my temper - but no guarantees.

The radio shows get to me because although there's never an end to the callers, every troubled and dysfunctional person has to be confronted, advised, and dismissed in the few minutes airtime between the commercials that make this whole world go round. The website has this characteristic as well: no personal problem is so complex that it can't be dealt with in a pithy page of writing that admittedly often contains surprising insights. I think it's the self-congratulatory certainty of Dr. Laura's self-contained philosophical world that so gets to me. Prurient curiosity is the only acceptable vice: it's never discussed, but it has to be acceptable because without it there could be no radio or TV programs, no magazine, and no website.

Here's a sample:

Callers to my radio show often complain about their kids' education. They tell me that the teachers aren't teaching; the books are objectionable and the administration lets bullies harass their kids on the basis of the bullies' right to express themselves. Their complaints are often valid. Many schools—especially public schools—are failing at their primary duty: educating the young people of our country for responsible adulthood.

The failure of the educational system affects you profoundly, whether you have young children or not, because it directly relates to the future social and political health of the nation. By keeping a stranglehold on the public school system, the National Education Association (NEA) is robbing parents of the right to educate their children. The next generation of American citizens is now in the grip of a powerful bureaucracy that allows its political agenda to undermine its commitment to the welfare of our children...

As a retired teacher myself, from another country, I'm used to attacks like this on my own work and that of my colleagues. Never does there seem to be any recognition of the complex and multifarious forces that seem to force educational systems everywhere to behave in certain ways and not in others. Here's my response, Dr. Laura: if all the parents of the kids in my class displayed the characteristics you're assuming, I could behave in the way you'd like, and our lives would be philosophically simpler and in practical terms immeasurably easier. But in fact, a minority come from homes that seem to be the norm in your world. Just one example: zero tolerance for everything that might hurt my kid, but infinite tolerance for my kid's laziness, rudeness, bad temper, and atmosphere-poisoning misbehavior.

See, I did lose my temper. [No real surprise there - Ed.]

But still, if you feel like looking at it...

http://www.drlaura.com

While doing my Dr. Laura research, I also came across a few other things:

IF NOT THE DEVIL, DID ATHEISM MAKE HER DO IT?
"DR. LAURA" FIGHTS NUDIE PICS ON THE NET...

There's more:

SKELETON -- MAKE THAT NUDES -- IN THE CLOSET

It's not new, but it is revealing. To see it, surf on over to:

http://www.atheists.org/flash.line/atheism4.htm

Back to Current Affairs Commentary

Now OK, let's get back to sites that deal with political and other current affairs commentary. [Can we infer an admission that you got a tad off-topic again? - Ed] There's another Canadian whose wonderful commentaries are on Canadian television two or three times a month. With cult following amongst thoughtful Canadians, Rex Murphy's observations on current issues are now available to the rest of the world on the net. Some of the topics are parochially Canadian, but the site's design makes it easy to identify them. Here's an excerpt from Rex's commentary on a domestic US topic:

I don't concur even for a minute that in McVeigh's case that we needed his extinction for closure. If that were the case, it would've had to be performed on Oprah or some other opera house of psycho babble. All the amateur psychologizing during these awful events, to talk of closure, to loosing of legions of trauma teams and grief counselors, strikes me as taking a truly awful event, draining it of its real horror and filling it with a kind of vulgarity.

The press of North America hyperventilated as usual. The mass coverage, the detailing of McVeigh's last minutes, all the crush of talk and over-reportage ... magnified the cruel dim killer to no point, it seems to me, except to give him a peculiar standing with those equally demented who share his strange view of the world. News coverage of modern horrors, be they Columbine, O.J. Simpson or McVeigh, has warped into a kind of soap opera voyeurism marathon. The median need to adopt new protocols that put limits on the extent of coverage and offer some shield to the dignity of those left alive the events most touched.

As for McVeigh himself, the Paul Revere of the black helicopter crowd is gone but for both good and ill, unfortunately he'll not be forgotten.

Good stuff, huh? Worth pursuing.

http://cbc.ca/news/national/rex/

Until next month...

Dennis Field - dennis@macosjournal.com
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