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Laura Schlessinger isn’t one to duck a fight. In a talk radio career spanning 50 years, Schlessinger’s acerbic manner has made mincemeat of countless callers and her remarks have generated multiple boycotts. After one particularly egregious rant in 2010, for which she later apologized, Schlessinger resigned from her national talk show, only to resurface on satellite radio four months later.
In doing so, you might say that “Dr. Laura,” as she is known, uncanceled herself.
While she’s not quite the national presence that she once was — in 2010, one industry analyst called her “probably the biggest female talk radio star of all time” — Schlessinger is thriving on SiriusXM, where she remains one of the nation’s most passionate advocates for marriage and children. Her merchandise shop includes T-shirts that say “What can you do today to make your spouse happy they’re married to you?” and “Never stop dating your spouse,” and on her show, she encourages moms to stay home with their kids and discourages divorce when children are involved except in extreme circumstances such as abuse, addiction or serial infidelity.
While it’s difficult to calculate Schlessinger’s reach beyond her social media followers, her audience is now intergenerational; fans report involuntarily listening to her in childhood when a parent turned on the show in the car, and then growing up to be devotees as adults.
And one thing they know about her is that Schlessinger, who holds a Ph.D. in physiology, loves the holidays.
From her “corny joke day” the day before Thanksgiving (in which she awards prizes for the best jokes while dressed as a turkey) to her annual holiday gift shop in which she sells crafts she personally made with proceeds going to the Children of Fallen Patriots Foundation, Schlessinger throws herself into the holiday season. Perhaps even more important for her listeners, she weighs in on common holiday dilemmas and how to navigate them.
This year, one of the most common ones is how to navigate the land mine that is the election with friends and family members who are different from you politically. And although Schlessinger is usually not one to back away from a fight, this is one situation in which her advice is to do exactly that.
In her “deep dive” podcast on surviving family gatherings, released just before Thanksgiving, Schlessinger aired multiple calls in which she counseled callers not to engage on anything politically divisive, even telling one caller, who was anticipating arguing with his mom, to kiss her and leave if she persists in talking about politics.
“Avoiding a topic that has the potential to derail relationships sounds like a good idea, don’t you think?” she told one couple with differing political views, telling them they are “partially right in every opinion you have,” but they don’t have all the information and it’s not worth losing a relationship over.
“Step back. Take a breath. Don’t let any of the bicker bait dangling in front of you catch you,” Schlessinger said.
Talking about politics at a family gathering is “one of the dumbest things you can do in life,” she said. Schlessinger advised anyone hosting a holiday gathering to notify the guests in advance that all political talk is verboten. “Nobody, nobody should be talking politics. It won’t be pretty. Even if you think you’re all on the same side.”
In a year in which some people are advocating not seeing family members who voted differently from you, Schlessinger’s advice on this subject is refreshing, as is her fondness for the classic O’Henry story, “The Gift of the Magi,” which she says gives us an example of the perfect marriage.
Meanwhile, hoping that cancel culture has amnesia after a decade or so has passed, “The Dr. Laura Show” remains growth-minded, announcing earlier this year that Crossover Media Group has purchased an equity stake in Schlessinger’s production company, with the goal of getting more listeners and advertisers.
Drones and the bipartisan ‘Chicken Little’ problem
The Wall Street Journal weighed in this weekend on “the cost of lost trust” when it comes to how Americans respond to, say, drones swarming the skies of New Jersey like locusts, which is what you would think if you spend any amount of time on X. But writing on the same idea for The American Spectator, political scientist Charles Lipson sums it up by saying that America has a “Chicken Little problem,” which seems particularly on target, given the aerial nature of the subject at hand.
In the American version of that centuries-old folktale, an acorn falls on on the head of a chicken, which proceeds to tell everyone that the sky is falling. That level of panic is easily obtained by spending 10 minutes searching for drone news on social media. And it illustrates the problem of getting your news from social media, as many young people do these days. Social media often does break news faster than The New York Times and other news organizations. But that’s in part because news organizations vet information before putting it out (sometimes, of course, to a degree that comes back to haunt them, as in the case of the Hunter Biden laptop). Also, yes, sometimes not enough vetting is going on (see CNN’s acknowledgment that a “civilian” filmed leaving a Syrian prison was actually an officer in the Assad regime).
Republicans tend to trust the media less than Democrats, but in the matter of the drones, we are enjoying a rare, bipartisan expression of skepticism and anger about people telling us there’s nothing to worry about — a spirit of troubled unity not seen since the week after the Trump-Biden debate.
Magazine cover of the year
If you are a Time magazine subscriber, or bought the “Person of the Year” issue at the newsstand, you might want to hold on to the magazine. The most recent issue with Donald Trump on the cover is currently selling for $39 (and up) on Amazon, which is more than a year’s subscription costs.
Shrewdly, Time is selling one-year subscriptions right now that also include the Person of the Year issue. But — pro tip for those inclined — you can also buy the Person of the Year issue on the magazine website for $9.99. So those Amazon sellers might not be getting a buyer until the supply dwindles.
Recommended reads
— Jay Evensen read a transcript of the floor debate in 1866 on the 14th amendment and applies it to today’s debate over birthright citizenship.
Original intent of the 14th amendment was for birthright citizenship
— Lois Collins thought she had no tie to the Change Healthcare data breach until she got a notice informing her that her data may have been stolen — nine months after the hack, which may have affected 1 in 3 Americans.
More than a little mad: 9 months to tell me my data was likely stolen?
— The drug crisis and family breakdown are problems that aren’t usually talked about together, Naomi Schaefer Riley writes. But it’s almost impossible to separate them.
The often overlooked link between drug use and family decline
My latest
If you regularly watch Fox News or listen to talk radio, you’ve likely heard the ads for gettrumpwatches.com dozens of times, and may have come away with the impression that the president-elect is selling them himself.
That’s not the case, and I talked to a North Carolina woman who ordered two watches off the website and is upset about the experience. The watches may well be as great as the ads promise, but one thing is for sure: Express shipping is not available. Read the fine print before ordering, and this story.
The trouble with Trump watches
Looking ahead
The next Right to the Point newsletter will land in your inbox on Christmas morning, so I’m planning a special edition of Christmas-themed columns and essays I’ve collected over the years. If you have one you’d like to share with this community, send a link (or the title and author) to Jgraham@deseretnews.com. Thank you for reading Right to the Point.