These days she's the most controversial advice-giver in America. Dear Abby, but not nearly as dear, some would say. Or Moses as a talk show host.
As radio's "Dr. Laura," Laura Schlessinger inspires admiration, irritation, praise and scorn. She also draws as many as 20 million listeners a week and 20,000 attempts an hour to reach her by phone, making her one of the hottest talk show hosts in the country.On Monday she was Salt Lake City fielding calls and delivering little sermonettes from the studios of K-News 570 AM. Later in the evening, she spoke to a crowd of 2,500 loyal fans at Cottonwood High School, where she proved that, in person, she is a kinder, gentler Dr. Laura, and funnier, too. Moses as a stand-up comedian. Joyce Brothers meets Joan Rivers.
Earlier on Monday, she also granted 15-minute interviews to the press.
These days, Dr. Laura is not especially fond of the press. Before you interview her, you have to fill out a Dr. Laura media request form. "What is the angle of the story?" the form asks. "What is your background?"
The last time Dr. Laura spoke in Utah -- at Orrin Hatch's 1995 Women's Conference -- there were no media request forms. But a lot has happened since then. A person who has 20 million listen- ers because she stands up for moral responsibility -- for doing what is right rather than what is convenient -- makes people uncomfortable, she says. A person like that gets critics.
So, just to make sure, Dr. Laura's advance person explains the rules of the interview: No questions about the nude Internet photos.
Dr. Laura would say that those photos are beside the point, but it's hard to talk about her these days and not mention them. They hang in the air like a Macy's Parade balloon. The photos (taken by a former boyfriend when she was 28 and recently sold to a pornographic Internet site), and the media ridicule that has followed, make Dr. Laura a little more wary these days. In her radio answers to other people's "moral dilemmas" you can hear their effect.
One of the callers to Monday's show was a young teacher whose students mistakenly thought was living with her boyfriend. "Don't try to defend yourself," Dr. Laura told the woman. "You'll look defensive and hypocritical." Instead, she advised, "go about your life in the same dignified way you did before."
The photos were a mistake of her youth, Dr. Laura has explained. Mistakes made when she was her own moral authority. Critics have called her a hypocrite and Dr. Laura has answered them this way: "The epithet of 'hypocrite' is hurled at people who are unafraid to make judgments based on a set of standards by people who have no standards at all."
"The truth," she wrote in her syndicated newspaper column (which appears in 100 newspapers, including the Deseret News), "is that every human being, even those who aspire to higher levels of moral living, has lapsed in his or her journey because of immaturity, emotional upheaval, curiosity, impulsiveness or temporary stupidity. While sins are inevitable, atonement and change are the hallmarks of teachers, not hypocrites."
So we didn't talk about the photos. But we talked about consequences and responsibility -- "words with lots of syllables" that are vastly more important to society than that one-syllable word, "rights," she said.
We talked about why she thinks she's so popular -- "I'm some truth out there, some direction" -- and the underlying goal behind her radio show, column, magazine, T-shirts, Dr. Laura Foundation and her three books, including her latest, "The Ten Commandments."
"I want to help people behave better despite how they feel," she said. "To be better and do better." Most people don't realize the consequences of their actions on themselves and on the universe.
And people don't realize, she said, that despite how they feel, they can be polite. Pop psychology convinced us that confrontation solves problems, that if you're angry you have to emote anger. Politeness is better, she says.
It was a surprising answer from a woman who, critics argue, isn't polite at all. What about the fact that she sometimes tells people they're 'stupid,' that she interrupts them, that she sometimes doesn't listen to their explanations?
That isn't being rude, she says. "It's being tough. My only intent is to get from point A to point B. . . . I have to shock them past their ruts." On the other hand, if by rude you mean judgmental, then yes, she's "real rude," she says. "But then so is God. He's the ultimate rude person. Those Ten Commandments: how rude can you get!"
She's not there to make people feel better, she says. If you want your self-esteem bolstered, go somewhere else. The focus on self-esteem and being non-judgmental is what has led us straight to ruin as a society, she says.
She tells women to stay home with their children. She tells divorced dads to move wherever their children are, even if it means taking a job that doesn't pay as well. Convenience and adult fulfillment are not what's important where kids are concerned, she says.
Dr. Laura was invited to Salt Lake by K-News to judge "The Greatest Gift of All" -- an essay contest designed to give one working mom or dad the chance to stay home for a year. Dr. Laura cried when she read the winning entries.