The whole fall of "Dr." Laura* was surprising because I thought she'd already fallen and faded into obscurity. I'd never cared much for her either way--she is a bigot and and idiot and, if you try not-very-hard-at-all, you can see naked pictures of her on the Internet, so that's nice, in case I run out of other people I want to see naked pictures of. Mostly hearing about Dr. Laura's most recent kerfluffle was like waking up the morning after a party at your house to find that the annoying coworker of one of your roommate's friends is still hanging out. "You're still here? I thought you left hours ago."
* "Dr." being in quotes because, while she is a doctor, she's not the doctor she claims to be. She's a doctor of physiology, not psychiatry, so her expertise isn't in her area of expertise, if you know what I mean. Still, if I'd worked ten years to get a degree, I imagine that I'd be demanding that even the ATM call me Dr., so it's hard to begrudge her that too much.
I guess I probably thought that Dr. Laura had disappeared after the berating she got from the President for her lack of degree and the complete ignorance of her use of Bible quotes to support her bigotry. Only recently did I remember that the President who did the berating was President Bartlett, and that the second season of The West Wing didn't actually happen.
So Dr. Laura said the word "nigger" at least eleven times while in conversation with a black woman with a white husband. The numbers don't remotely capture how incredibly stupid and racist Dr. Laura's statements were. She makes jokes that she says, "aren't racist" but "funny!" (her example is to talk about choosing her black bodyguard to be on a basketball team because "White men can't jump." This is what passes for humor in her circles). And then, after chanting, "Nigger, nigger, nigger," she says, "I don't get it. If anybody without enough melanin says it, it's a horrible thing; but when black people say it, it's affectionate. It's very confusing." This is the oldest canard in the racist's book, by now. If you don't understand why this is the case right now, you suck at life. You should maybe watch the old Seinfeld episode where the guy converts to Judaism for the jokes, think about that, and while you're at it, take a handful of perscription painkillers and a jug of red wine and lie down in the bath for awhile.
She also proceeds to tell the woman "If you're that hypersensitive about color and don't have a sense of humor, don't marry out of your race."
So this stuck in some people's craw, and she got complaints, and she's dealt with the complaints the only mature way possible: by taking her ball and going home. Claiming her First Amendment rights are being violated by people complaining, she's decided to quit her radio show.
Honestly, if anyone can explain to me how this makes sense, I would greatly appreciate it. These people who believe that the First Amendment makes you immune from criticism, and that their critics should just shut up make my head just fucking explode. If I wasn't so busy swearing at random people on the street on the off-chance they might be opponents of the "9/11 Mosque" (or as I like to call it, the FiDi Islam Y), I would just go from blog to blog telling people that the First Amendment just means you can say what you like. It doesn't guarantee that we'll agree, it doesn't guarantee that we have to listen, and it doesn't guarantee that big corporations that make or lose money based on what you do have to continue to support you even when it's not in their interest to do so. So you get to have your hissy fit, but don't complain about us when we say you're being a fucking moron.
Sarah Palin, of course, came out in support of Dr. Laura, even though Dr. Laura criticized Palin during the election as being incompetent woman who was a bad mother for not taking care of her kids and giving them over to childcare professionals when she should have been looking after her developmentally disabled child herself. Usually when you criticize Palin and call her kids retards she gets offended. Sarah Palin, of course, feels a common sympathy for any woman who feels the best way she can respond to her critics is to quit her job.
