Laura Schlessinger

Laura Schlessinger
Born	Laura Catherine Schlessinger (1947-01-16) January 16, 1947 Brooklyn, New York, U.S.
Other names	Dr. Laura
Citizenship	American
Education	Physiologist
Alma mater	Stony Brook University, B.S. Columbia University, Ph.D
Occupation(s)	Radio advice show host, self-help author
Years active	15 years in national syndication
Known for	Socially conservative commentary
Spouse(s)	Michael F. Rudolph, (m. 1972, div. 1977) Lewis G. Bishop (m. 1985)
Children	Deryk Schlessinger (b. 1985)
Parent(s)	Monty (d. 1990, cancer) Yolanda (d. 2002, heart disease)
Awards	Marconi Award, Genii, National Heritage, National Religious Broadcasters
Website	Dr. Laura

Laura Catherine Schlessinger (born January 16, 1947) is an American talk radio host, socially conservative commentator, and author. Her call-in radio program occasionally features her short monologues on social and political topics, but consists mainly of her responses to callers' requests for personal advice. Schlessinger's answers have been variously characterized as direct, wise, to-the-point, abrupt and cruel. Her website says that her show "preaches, teaches, and nags about morals, values and ethics."

Previously, Schlessinger combined a local radio career with a private practice as a marriage and family counselor, but after going into national syndication she concentrated her efforts on the daily The Dr. Laura Program, and on authoring self-help books. The Ten Stupid Things Women Do to Mess Up Their Lives, and The Proper Care and Feeding of Husbands are among her bestselling works. A short-lived television talk show was launched in 2000. She announced that she will be ending her syndicated radio show in December 2010, following a controversy stirred by her multiple on-air uses of the word "nigger" while giving advice to an African American caller.

Early life and education

Schlessinger was born in Brooklyn, New York. Her parents were Monroe (Monty) Schlessinger, a civil engineer of Jewish heritage, and Yolanda Ceccovini Schlessinger, an Italian-Catholic war bride. Schlessinger has said her father was charming, and her mother was beautiful as a young woman. She was an only child for eleven years until her sister, Cindy, was born. Schlessinger has described her childhood environment as unloving and unpleasant, and her family as dysfunctional. She has ascribed some of the difficulty to extended family rejection of her parents' mixed faith Jewish-Catholic marriage. Schlessinger has called her father "petty, insensitive, mean, thoughtless, demeaning and downright unloving". She has referred to her mother as having been a person with "pathological pride", who "was never grateful and would always find something to criticize," and "constantly expressed disdain for men, sex and love". However, she did credit her father with giving her the drive to succeed.

Schlessinger grew up in Brooklyn, then on Long Island. She attended Westbury High School and Jericho High School where she showed interest in science. She received a bachelor's degree from Stony Brook University. Moving to Columbia University for graduate studies, she earned a Master's and Ph.D. in physiology in 1974. Her doctoral thesis was on the effects of insulin in rats. After she began dispensing personal advice on the radio, she obtained training and certification in marriage and family counseling from the University of Southern California, and a therapist's license from the State of California. In addition, she opened up a part-time practice as a marriage and family counselor.

Radio career

Schlessinger's first appearance on the radio was in 1975 when she called into a KABC (AM) show hosted by Bill Ballance. Impressed by her quick wit and sense of humor, Ballance began featuring her in a weekly segment. Schlessinger's stint on Ballance's show led to her own shows on a series of small radio stations, and by 1979, she was on the air Sunday evenings from 9:00 to midnight on KWIZ in Santa Ana, California. In 1979, the Los Angeles Times described her show as dealing with all types of emotional problems, "though sex therapy is the show's major focus".

In the late 1980s, Schlessinger was filling in for Barbara De Angelis' noontime relationship-oriented talk show in Los Angeles on KFI, while working weekends at KGIL San Fernando. Her big break came when Sally Jessy Raphael began working at ABC Radio, and Maurice Tunick, former Vice-President of Talk Programming for the ABC Radio Networks, needed a regular sub for Raphael's evening personal advice show. Tunick chose Schlessinger (who until that time, was little-known outside of Southern California), to fill in for Raphael.

Ultimately, Schlessinger began broadcasting a daily show on KFI which was nationally syndicated in 1994 by Synergy, a company owned by Schlessinger and her husband. In 1997, Synergy sold its rights to the show to Jacor Communications, Inc., for $71.5 million. Later, Jacor merged with Clear Channel Communications and a company co-owned by Schlessinger, Take On The Day, LLC, acquired the production rights. Today's Dr. Laura Show is a joint effort between Take On The Day, which produces it, Talk Radio Network, which syndicates and markets it to radio stations, and Premiere Radio Networks, (a subsidiary of Clear Channel), which provides satellite facilities and handles advertising sales. As of September 2009, Schlessinger broadcasts from her home in Santa Barbara, California with KFWB as her flagship station. Podcasts and live streams of the show are available on her website for a monthly fee, and the show is also on XM Radio.

At its peak, The Dr. Laura Program was the second-highest-rated radio show after The Rush Limbaugh Show, and was heard on more than 450 radio stations. Writing in 1998, Leslie Bennett described the popularity of the show:

In an age of moral relativity, Dr. Laura's certitude compels...Schlessinger's fervor is indisputably evangelical, and her listeners believe her to be a paragon, a beacon of hope and rectitude in a dissolute, degraded world.

In May 2002, the show still had an audience of more than 10 million, but had lost several million listeners in the previous two years as it was dropped by WABC and other affiliates, and was moved from day to night in cities such as Seattle and Boston. These losses were attributed in part to Schlessinger's shift from giving relationship advice to lecturing on morality and conservative politics. Pressure from gay-rights groups caused dozens of sponsors to drop the radio show as well. In 2006 Schlessinger's show was being aired on approximately 200 stations. As of 2009, it was tied for third place along with The Glenn Beck Program and The Savage Nation.

On August 17, 2010, during an appearance on Larry King Live, Schlessinger announced the end of her radio show saying that her motivation was to "regain her First Amendment rights", and that she wants to be able to say what is on her mind without "some special interest group deciding this is a time to silence a voice of dissent." Several of her affiliates and major sponsors had dropped her show because of her on air use of a racial epithet on August 10. In support of Schlessinger, Neal Zoren said that her offense was not as bad as it seemed and that context and perspective were needed. Zoren further stated that Schlessinger was trying to explain a double standard regarding the use of the N-word, and that the media overreacted. Zoren predicted that Schlessinger would return to radio under a better contract than the previous one.

Television show

In 2000, Schlessinger signed a deal with Paramount Studios to produce a syndicated talk show, which would be carried mainly by the television stations owned and operated by CBS. The producers hoped to extend the success of Schlessinger's radio show to daytime television, however, because producing the show was controversial before it ever aired, it proved to be short-lived.

In the months before the premiere of her TV show, Schlessinger called homosexuality a "biological error", said that homosexuality was acceptable as long it wasn't public, and said that homosexuals should not attempt to adopt children. She regularly compared gay parenting to pedophilia by reiterating her view that "a huge portion of the male homosexual populace is predatory on young boys." Schlessinger was frequently criticized in lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transsexual (LGBT) media for these views. Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD), a LGBT media watchdog group, began monitoring Schlessinger's on-air comments about LGBT people, posting transcripts of relevant shows on its website. Schlessinger attempted to repair her relationship with the LGBT community without success. Her public apology on her radio show in March, 2000 was withdrawn two weeks later when it was not accepted by the gay community.

In March 2000, a group of gay activists launched StopDrLaura.com, an online campaign with the purpose of convincing Paramount to cancel the Dr. Laura television show prior to its premiere. The group protested at Paramount studios, stating her views were offensively bigoted. StopDrLaura.com eventually organized protests in 34 cities in the U.S. and Canada, and picked up on an advertiser boycott of both the radio and the TV shows started by another grass-roots organization which called itself "Silence Of The Slams" operating its boycott through AOL Hometown. In May 2000 the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council (CBSC) ruled that her "consistent characterization of the sexual behavior of gays and lesbians as 'abnormal,' 'aberrant,' 'deviant,' 'disordered,' 'dysfunctional,' and 'an error' " constituted abusive discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, and as such, were in violation of the human rights provision of its Code of Ethics. The CBSC found similar fault with her generalized statements that pedophilia is more prevalent among members of the gay community.

Not long before her show was set to premiere, Schlessinger was a guest on The View. Protesters were positioned outside the studio and inside the studio Schlessinger was confronted by audience members. Panel member Joy Behar took issue with some of her comments, while host Barbara Walters raised the issue of Schlessinger's nude photos in response to criticisms Schlessinger made about a photo of Walters naked.

The first episode of Schlessinger's television show aired September 11, 2000. Critics and viewers found that the format had been dulled down and did not stand out from any other daytime talk show. The biting rhetoric that worked well on radio seemed overly harsh for face-to-face discourse, owing to the normal sympathetic nature of most other daytime hosts; the radical change in Schlessinger's demeanor from her radio persona left viewers cold. Ultimately, the television show failed to generate the energy and interest of Schlessinger's radio show.

The credibility of Schlessinger's television program also suffered during its first month when the New York Post reported that Schlessinger had used show staff to falsely pose as a guests on the show. A September 25, 2000, episode named "Readin', Writin', and Cheatin'" featured a so-called college student who specialized in professional note-taking. On the next day's show, "Getting to the Altar," the same guest appeared in different hair and makeup, and said she was a woman living with her boyfriend. In fact, the woman was San-D Duchas, a researcher for the show whose name appeared in the closing credits of the shows on which she posed as a guest.

In October 2000, Schlessinger paid for a full-page ad in the "Gay Hollywood" issue of Variety as a Yom Kippur apology for previous negative remarks. However, she stopped short of apologizing for the overall message of her comments.

By November 2000, over 170 of the advertisers that had originally committed to Schlessinger's show left as a result of the StopDrLaura.com and Silence Of The Slams boycotts, and the ratings plummeted. CBS directed its stations to move the show to a late-night slot, or replace it altogether. Other stations outside of CBS did the same thing, while others moved it to weaker sister stations. The television show was canceled in March 2001 and last aired in September 2001.

In 2004, Schlessinger said that although there is more money and celebrity in television, it is not as meaningful or intimate as radio, and for her television was a "terrible experience".

Controversies

Libel lawsuit

In 1998, Schlessinger was in a Costa Mesa surf shop with her son when she began perusing the skateboarding magazine, Big Brother. On her radio program, Schlessinger declared the magazine to be "stealth pornography." When the owner of the store publicly denied that she found pornography in his store, Schlessinger sued him for lying, claiming that his denial had hurt her reputation. When the case went to court, the judge dismissed her suit as frivolous but the shop owner's $4 million defamation countersuit lodged for hurting the reputation of his store, was allowed to stand. The suit has since been settled, but the terms of the settlement have not been revealed.

Internet publication of private photos

In 1998, Schlessinger's early radio mentor, Bill Ballance, sold nude photos to a company specializing in internet porn that he had taken of Schlessinger in the 1970's while they were involved in a romantic relationship. Schlessinger sued to prevent their posting, but subsequently dropped the suit. She stated that she was embarrassed, but that the photos were taken when she was going through a divorce, and that they had "no moral authority."

Use of racial epithets

On August 10, 2010, Anita Hanson, an African American woman married to a white man—misidentified by Schlesinger as "Jade"—called Schlessinger's show to complain of racial comments made by acquaintances. During the call Schlessinger used the word "nigger" 11 times, saying that mention of the term did not constitute racism, continuing to use if after Hansen asked "Is it ever OK to say that word?" Schlesinger justified her use saying "Black guys use it all the time." After the call Dr Schlesinger also suggested that "If you're that hypersensitive about color and don't have a sense of humor, don't marry out of your race."

One day later Schlessinger apologized for doing the "wrong thing." On CNN Hansen questioned the motivation, sincerity and sensitivity of Schlessinger's apology, pointing out that Schlessinger made no apology regarding her marriage. Hanson showed no interest in soon talking to Schlessinger, believing the apology the result of being "caught". Hanson also said, "It's never okay to use that word."

Due to the boycott, Schlesinger said she would end her show at the end of 2010, saying "I'm done trying to help people in a situation where my First Amendment rights don't exist...It's not American." Linda Holmes on her CNN blog "Monkey See" said no First Amendment rights were violated. According to Holmes, the reported abandonment of Schlessinger's sponsors General Motors and Motel 6, as well as other boycotts, were economic actions that the First Amendment protected, since the government had not been implicated.

Publications

Columns

For several years, Schlessinger wrote a weekly column syndicated by Universal Press Syndicate that was carried in many newspapers, as well as Jewish World Review. She discontinued the column in July 2000 citing lack of time due to her upcoming television show. She wrote a monthly column for WorldNetDaily between 2002 and 2004, with one entry in 2006. In 2006, Schlessinger joined the Santa Barbara News-Press, writing bi-weekly columns dealing with Santa Barbara news, as well as general news and cultural issues discussed on her radio show. She suspended the column in mid 2007, resumed writing it later, then discontinued it in December 2008. She currently writes columns on her blog, on a variety of topics.

Books

Schlessinger has published a number of books. Several follow the mold of her successful Ten Stupid Things Women Do to Mess Up Their Lives, with similarly named books giving advice for men, couples, and parents, while others are more religious or moral in orientation. The later advice books emphasize religion more than the earlier works, until her announced departure from Orthodox Judaism in July 2003.

Her 2004 book, The Proper Care and Feeding of Husbands, sold well despite poor reviews by critics. It was a departure from her previous books, which tended to focus on premarital relationships and children. Proper Care asserts that men need direct communication, respect, appreciation, food, and good loving, rather than tearing down the husband's sense of strength and importance. Schlessinger's thesis is that wives have the power to change their husbands' attitudes by seeing to these needs, and then their husbands will "swim across shark-infested waters to bring you a lemonade." The book proposes that wives have the power to promote devotion, compassion, and love from their husbands.

Magazine

For several years, Schlessinger published a monthly magazine, Dr. Laura Perspective. She was the editor, her husband was a contributing photographer and her son was the creative consultant. The magazine has ceased publication.

Website

Schlessinger has a website which contains hints for stay at home parents, her blog, a reading list, and streaming audio of her shows (by subscription only). When it was started, 310,000 people tried to access it simultaneously and it crashed. Certain aspects of feminism are often discussed on her website; she was a self-proclaimed feminist in the 1970s, but is now opposed to feminism.

Charitable work

Schlessinger created the Laura Schlessinger Foundation to help abused and neglected children in 1998. Schlessinger regularly asked her on-air audience to donate items for My Stuff bags, which go to children in need. All other donations came from other people or groups, usually in the form of donated items for the bags. Per the foundation's reports, money not used for operations was directed toward pro-life organizations, such as crisis pregnancy centers. In September 2004, Schlessinger announced that she was closing down the foundation because it had become too difficult and costly for her and her husband to underwrite, and they wished to devote their "energies and resources to other pressing needs".

Schlessinger has been cited as an influential and wealthy donor to Project Prevention, an organization that pays drug and alcohol addicts $200 to use long term birth control or to be sterilized. Her support of the organization has been criticized as unethical, racially biased, and as an endorsement of eugenics. Schlessinger has praised the group emphasizing the voluntary nature of the sterilization or implants, and has said that people who oppose Project Prevention are defending a woman's right "to maim and destroy babies inside her body".

In 2007, Schlessinger began fundraising for Operation Family Fund, an organization which aids the families of fallen or seriously injured veterans of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. In 2008, she helped raise more than $1 million dollars for the organization.

Awards

Schlessinger has received numerous awards from both media and conservative organizations. She was the first woman to win the prestigious Marconi Award for Network/Syndicated Personality of the Year (1997). In 1998 she received the American Women in Radio & Television's Genii Award. She was on the Forbes top 100 list of celebrities in 2000 with estimated earnings of $13 million. In September 2002, the industry magazine Talkers named Schlessinger as the seventh-greatest radio talk show host of all time. In 2005 and 2008, she was nominated for induction into the Radio Hall of Fame, but was not selected.

Schlessinger received a National Heritage award from the National Council of Young Israel in March 2001. She also received the National Religious Broadcasters' Chairman's Award, and has lectured on the national conservative circuit. She was the commencement speaker at Hillsdale College in June 2002 and was awarded an honorary degree as a doctor of tradition and culture.

In 2007 Schlessinger was given an Exceptional Public Service award by the Office of the U.S. Secretary of Education. In 2008, Talkers Magazine presented her with an award for outstanding community service by a radio talk show host.

Religious beliefs

Schlessinger was non-religious until she and her son began practicing Conservative Judaism in 1996. In 1998, Schlessinger, Bishop, and their son converted to Orthodox Judaism, and began instruction under Rabbi Reuven P. Bulka of Ottawa, Ontario. During this time, Schlessinger sometimes used Jewish law and examples to resolve the moral dilemmas of her callers. She occasionally clarified ethical and moral issues with her local Orthodox Rabbi Moshe D. Bryski, before mentioning them on the air. She was embraced by many in the politically conservative segment of Orthodox Judaism for bringing more awareness of Orthodoxy to her radio show. Some of her expressed views were explicitly religious, and are referenced her 1999 book The Ten Commandments: The Significance of God's Laws in Everyday Life. Although her other books have stressed the importance of morality, they are more secular in nature.

In July 2003, Schlessinger announced on her show that she was no longer an Orthodox Jew.

Marriage and family life

Schlessinger met Michael F. Rudolph, a dentist, in 1972 while she was attending Columbia University. The couple married in 1972 in a Unitarian ceremony. Separating from Rudolph, Schlessinger moved to Encino, California in 1975 when she obtained a job in the science department at the University of Southern California. Their divorce was finalized in 1977.

"In 1975, while working in the labs at USC, she met Lewis G. Bishop, a professor of neurophysiology who was married and the father of three children. Bishop separated from his wife and began living with Schlessinger the same year. Schlessinger has vociferously proclaimed her disapproval of unwed couples "shacking up." But according to personal friend, Shelly Herman, "Laura lived with Lew for about nine years before she was married to him." "His divorce was final in 1979. Bishop and Schlessinger married in 1985 and Herman says that Schlessinger told her she was pregnant at the time, which Herman recalls as " particularly joyful because of the happy news." Schlessinger bore her only child, Deryk Schlessinger, in November 1985.

Schlessinger was estranged from her sister for years, and many thought she was an only child, and had not spoken to her mother for 18 to 20 years before her death in 2002. Schlessinger's mother's body was found in her Beverly Hills condo approximately two months after she died from heart disease. Her mother's body lay unclaimed for months in the Los Angeles morgue before Schlessinger had it picked up. In 2006, Schlessinger wrote that she had been attacked in a "vulgar, inhumane manner by media types" because of the circumstances surrounding her mother's death, and that false allegations had been made that she was unfit to dispense advice based on family values. She explained that she had not mourned the deaths of either of her parents because she had no emotional bond to them. When Schlessinger wrote concerning the day that she heard about her mother’s death, she said: “Apparently she had no friends and none of her neighbours were close, so nobody even noticed! How sad.”

Fictional portrayal

In 1999, Schlessinger was parodied as "Dr. Nora" on the sitcom Frasier. The character was portrayed as having dogmatic and fundamentalist social views that promoted social conservatism. The character was also shown to have a degree that belies her therapeutic advice and was estranged from her mother.

Bibliography

Advice books:

• Ten Stupid Things Women Do to Mess Up Their Lives. Villard. 1994. p. 232. ISBN 978-0679416418.
• Ten Stupid Things Men Do to Mess Up Their Lives. HarperCollins. 1997. p. 320. ISBN 978-0060173081.
• Damsels, Dragons and Regular Guys (repackaged portions from Ten Stupid Things Men Do...). Andrews McMeel Publishing. 2000. p. 80. ISBN 978-0740707438.
• Parenthood by Proxy: Don't Have Them if You Won't Raise Them. HarperCollins. 2000. p. 288. ISBN 978-0060191252.
• Stupid Things Parents Do to Mess Up Their Kids (Parenthood by Proxy trade paperback ed.). Harper. 2001. p. 288. ISBN 978-0060933791.
• Ten Stupid Things Couples Do to Mess Up Their Relationships. Cliff Street Books. 2002. p. 288. ISBN 978-0060512606.
• The Proper Care and Feeding of Husbands. HarperCollins. 2004. p. 208. ISBN 978-0060520618.
• Woman Power: Transform Your Man, Your Marriage, Your Life (The Companion to the Proper Care and Feeding of Husbands). HarperCollins. 2004. p. 256. ISBN 978-0060753238.
• Bad Childhood Good Life: How to Blossom and Thrive in Spite of an Unhappy Childhood. HarperCollins. 2006. p. 257. ISBN 978-0060577865.
• The Proper Care and Feeding of Marriage. HarperCollins. 2007. p. 240. ISBN 978-0061142840.
• Stop Whining, Start Living. Harper. 2008. p. 208. ISBN 978-0060838331.
• In Praise of Stay-at-Home Moms. Harper. 2009. p. 224. ISBN 978-0061690297.

Religious books:

• How Could You Do That?! The Abdication of Character, Courage, and Conscience. HarperCollins. 1996. p. 269. ISBN 978-0060173074.
• With Rabbi Stuart Vogel (1998). The Ten Commandments: The Significance of God's Laws in Everyday Life. HarperCollins. p. 352. ISBN 978-0060191382.

Children's books

• Why Do You Love Me?. With Martha Lambers, illustrated by Daniel McFeeley. HarperCollins. 1999. pp. 40. ISBN 978-0064436540.
• But I Waaannt It!. Illustrated by Daniel McFeeley. HarperCollins. 2000. pp 40. ISBN 978-0064436434.
• Growing Up Is Hard. Illustrated by Daniel McFeeley. HarperCollins. 2001. pp. 40. ISBN 978-0060292003.
• Where's God? Illustrated by Daniel McFeeley. HarperCollins. 2003. pp. 40. ISBN 978-0060519094.

External links

• Kathleen Parker (August 22, 2010). "Cut Dr. Laura slack". Opinions. The Washington Post. {{cite news}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |1= (help)
• James, Randy (April 8, 2009). "Q & A Dr. Laura Schlessinger In Praise of Stay at Home Moms". Time.
• Deutch, Stephanie (January 27, 2007). "State of the union: The Proper Care and Feeding of Marriage". Book Review. Washington Times.
• "In My Never To Be Humble Opinion". (VIDEO) clip of Dr. Laura's One Woman Show. August 2005. {{cite web}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |2= (help); Text "publisher DrLaura.com" ignored (help)
• Hoffmann, Barbara (October 1, 2003). "Dr. Laura Tells Women: Just Do It". Entertainment. Fox News.
• DiLucchio, Patrizia (May 27, 1999). "Dr. Laura targets the new Sodom: Libraries". Tech Feature. Salon. {{cite web}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |1= (help)