finally, something sufficiently earth-shattering to drag mkf outta hibernation for a minute

she's throwing in the towel--i can't believe it.

after all the slings and arrows--bitter invective, nudie pictures, boycotts, demonstrations, unauthorized biographies, death threats--after all the crap this tough little woman has taken over the years and shrugged off, bloodied but unbowed--after all that, she lets the "n" word take her down.

god help us all.

*     *     *     *     *

[context for this post:  back in the early nineties, i literally got too sick to smoke.  three weeks later and all better, i figured what the hell--i've done the withdrawal thing, let's see how being a non-smoker feels.  it actually went great until a song i liked came on the radio, and the urge to reach for a cigarette became damn near irresistible.

and thus began my love/hate affair with talk radio.]


i've listened to dr. laura since back when she was the quiet voice in the wilderness toiling away on the graveyard shift on KFI-AM los angeles.  i remember thinking when she was suddenly plucked from late-night obscurity to helm the high-profile noon-to-three slot that she'd go national in no time.

i've gone with her through her phases--from semi-liberal and tolerant to rigid orthodox-jew and out the other side to somewhere in between.

i've followed her as she agonized over the gay issue--from laissez-faire nonchalance, to "are they a biological mistake?" [a perfectly legitimate question, btw, and one i've asked more than once], to breaking with the faith she had worked so hard to attain--i remember the day it happened, because i was listening--she said she could no longer condemn gay relationships, because "no one should have to live their life alone."

i've been there as her seemingly harsh philosophy regarding marriage and divorce and monogamy evolved over the course of many years as she (and i) listened to call after call from people who casually married and/or fucked around and had kids and then divorced, remarried and/or otherwise recoupled and then had more kids with the new guy/girl and then watched in uncomprehending horror as their original kids self-destructed.

i've listened to her initiate constructive dialogue in seemingly-irreconcilable marriages; i've listened to her reunite parents with seemingly-irreconcilable children--all in less than five minutes.

i've listened as she's made hard-resistant callers sit up and say, "my god, i never thought about it like that."

*      *      *      *      *

even when you're brilliant, the problem with doing basically the same shtick for 25-30 years is, you fall into certain patterns--when 90% of your calls become 100% predictable, you become peremptory, and that's what's happened to dr. laura.

which is why she she cut that black caller off--she heard 10% of the woman's issue and figured she could brilliantly extrapolate the other 90% like she usually does.

was she right--was the woman in question too goddam race-sensitive?  we'll never know, because the "n" word got in the way, and god knows that trumps everything else--even, apparently, the indomitable dr. laura.  and this is, ultimately, what pisses me off about this incident more than anything else:  by allowing her radio career to be ended on this note, she's given that ungodly word even more undeserved power than it had before.

*      *      *      *      *

[actually, that's not what pisses me off most--what pisses me off most is,  i will sorely miss those early afternoons happily semi-snoozing my way through the 99% of predictable calls just for that precious 1% when dr. laura still makes me sit up and say, "my god, i never thought about it like that."


and if you had any idea how seldom that happens in my life these days, you'd no doubt agree.]