Or, ‘Raising Hell, The Dr Laura Way”.
It seems Dr Laura Schlessinger, scourge of the morally lax parent, may herself have raised a sociopath. Oh, how I love the smell of hung petards in the morning….
First a little backstory, for non-Usanians like me who may not be that familiar with ‘Dr Laura’, the bizarro-Oprah of talk radio. Dr Laura Schlessinger is a rightwing radio ‘therapist’, wannabe tv star and self-help book author, whose fans absolutely lap up her harsh strictures on sexuality, relationships and child-rearing.
Her show’s syndicated on Clear Channel radio US-wide; Clear Channel, part-owned by Mormon presidential hopeful Mitt Romney’s private equity firm, Bain Capital (which has all kinds of interesting connections with some decidedly neofascist types) has a history of manufacturing and broadcasting far-right reactionary radio ‘personalities’.
So far, so usual for the US rightwing media machine and its creatures.- but Dr Laura is special. First off she’s a doctor, of sorts; even though it’s a Phd. in physiology not pychology it authenticates her very subjective advice as somehow quasi-medical and so iher personal emotional hangups’re adopted as sound principles by her rightwing supporters, some of whom are so loyal to her personally that they describe themselves as ‘Dr Laura’s Army’.
Dr Laura fits the Clear Channel mould perfectly; she’s a cruel homophobe and a hypocrite with a shady past (by her own stated standards) who preaches to others what she does not practice herself. She’s a vicious piece of work with it, as I’ve discovered the more I’ve read:
Even more shocking was her treatment of a Connecticut eighth-grader for an award-wining essay on free speech on the Internet. Attacking the girl by name, she maliciously asserted: “If she was my daughter, I’d probably put her up for adoption. . . .When she makes her marriage vows, and her husband has sex with someone else, let’s see if she thinks that this philosophy works. She also suggested that the girl be “sacrificed,” Inca style!
Someone who could treat a child that way should never be allowed near one in a therapeutic or a parental sense, IMHO. Who knows how many children’s lives she’s affected with her self-interested, twisted ideas? Well, one at least has been severely affected according to this report, and having found out what unpleasant child-rearing ideas his mother has it comes as no surprise – in fact it almost seems inevitable.
Dr. Laura son linked to lurid Web page
Site contained violent, sex-oriented images one official called ‘repulsive’
By Matthew D. LaPlante
The Salt Lake Tribune
Article Last Updated: 05/19/2007 12:15:45 AM MDTThe soldier son of talk radio relationship counselor Laura Schlessinger is under investigation for a graphic personal Web page that one Army official has called “repulsive.”
The MySpace page, publicly available until Friday when it disappeared from the Internet, included cartoon depictions of rape, murder, torture and child molestation; photographs of soldiers with guns in their mouths; a photograph of a bound and blindfolded detainee captioned “My Sweet Little Habib”; accounts of illicit drug use; and a blog entry headlined by a series of obscenities and racial epithets.
The site is credited to and includes many photographs of Deryk Schlessinger, the 21-year-old son of the talk radio personality known simply as Dr. Laura. Broadcast locally on 570 KNRS, “Family Values Talk Radio,” the former family counselor spends three hours daily taking calls and offering advice on morals, ethics and values. She broadcast a show from Fort Douglas, in Salt Lake City, last week.
[…]
“Yes . . . F—ING Yes!!!” said one blog entry on the Schlessinger site. “I LOVE MY JOB, it takes everything reckless and deviant and heathenistic and just overall bad about me and hyper focuses these traits into my job of running around this horrid place doing nasty things to people that deserve it . . . and some that don’t.”
Dr. Laura’s publicity people and the US Army are now trying to suggest that this site was created by mysterious ‘enemies’ engaged in ‘information warfare’. Uh, huh, right, yeah, because Al-Qaeda or the Mahdi army have got nothing better to do than to fuck around creating fake MySpace pages about the batshit crazy sons of psychotic wingnut radio personalities.
After the Salt Lake City Tribune published this report ‘Dr Laura’s Army’ leapt to her defence in the papers’ pages, bombarding it with oddly similar emails, the overall tone of which was ‘don’t blame her for the decisions her child makes’. Bollocks to that, she doesn’t get off that easy – particularly since a major part of her schtick appears to be telling parents that they are indeed responsible for their child’s behaviour. Her catchphrase is even “I am my kid’s mom,”, FFS.
Dr Laura was once asked a very pertinent question a while back about the kind of behaviour her own son is apparently exhibiting , by CNN’s Larry King:
KING: And then how do you explain those where you had parents that drifted and the kid turned out terrific, and other places where the parents did all the things you said to do and he turns into a serial killer and everyone on the block is shocked?
SCHLESSINGER: When we take the fringe of the bell curve of exceptions and try to make them speak for the rule we’re not being fair. We’re taking extremes to try to get away from a truth that we know morally, intuitively we know what we need to do. I think human beings — I mean, from the time we’re born we have the ability to be selfish, we have the ability to be selfless. But I think small creatures are basically selfish, and we always have to strive against our selfishness every day in every way.
Shorter Dr Laura – “I don’t know what makes psychos. Ask me another”.
But she did know the answer all along.
Laura Schlessinger’s appearance in Utah last week included a visit with Army families at Fort Douglas. In an interview with The Tribune, she said, “We raised our son to be a warrior.”
Now see, there’s the problem right there. This is the kind of ‘warrior’ he became under Dr Laura’s tender care – at least according to what may admittedly beunreliable sources, ie someone who says they were at at school with Schlessinger Jr.:
I was in school with Derek in fourth and fifth grade. He was a sadistic bully then. He was a terribly unhappy kid who boasted about all the money his mom made and threatened, bullied, and beat up younger kids.If a teacher tried to discipline him or in any way thwart him he would threaten that his mom would get them fired and would sue them. I don’t know if she could but I know it scared a lot of teachers I don’t know a kid in school who was sorry to see him go when his mom put him in private school. We used to call him Malfoy because he reminded us of the character from Harry Potter. I wouldn’t be amazed by anything the guy is assused of, up to homicide. He is a nasty piece of work.
May 19th, 2007 at 19:09:49
From: KEN KORNFELD
Now, Schlessinger Jr. has been serving in special forces, and there might be those who’ll say PTSD! but that’s a copout. Special Forces are the soldiers who did this. This typifies what’s on young Deryk’s MySpace page:
In one of the stick drawings, a top-hatted man laughs as he rapes a bound and bleeding woman in front of her family. In another depiction, a man forces a boy to perform oral sex at knifepoint as the child’s mother pleads for her son’s life.
No doubt Dr Laura herself will be one of those who scream “PTSD!” too, supporting her little ‘warrior’ and his pyschotic tendencies to the end. But there’s no evading her responsibility: as she’s said herself –
SCHLESSINGER: …men are born of women, they are trained by women, they date marry that are trained by women, they marry women they are trained by women. A lot of what women get from men is their own doing, and that’s why I wrote this book because we primarily have the control in the relationships of the quality of the relationships.
How does that petard feel, Dr Laura? A little uncomfortable, perhaps?
Sharon
May 22, 2007 at 11:33 amThis incident represents a common thread of those who believe they are morally better than everyone else and spend so much time interferring in everyone else’s lives and telling them how to live, that they neglect their own lives and those of their loved ones. The probability is that anyone like her has skeletons in the closet
Progressive Gold » Blog Archive » Dr Laura Psycho Hellspawn Watch Update Thing
May 22, 2007 at 12:27 pm[…] It turns out that serving soldier and notoriously violent MySpace user Deryk Schlessinger, son of radio personality Dr Laura Schlessinger.was also the GOP goon who kicked a young woman in the head at the 2004 Republican convention. […]
frank parker
May 22, 2007 at 12:31 pmI’m no defender of psychotic belligerents, but I am also computer savvy enopugh to know that no-linky, you stinky.
You or I can pull our myspace page, but the wayback machine brings it right back up. If it’s not there, how do we know this isn’t BS? I mean how powerful is this woman? Can she time travel in order to delete every bit of evidence of this supposed webpage?
Just saying.
Lou Aparicio
May 22, 2007 at 12:39 pmI always felt there was some strange behavior in her replies to little girls that called for her help on her show. As late as yesterdays show, mean and sarcastic. When a youngster asks you for help, you give them a possitive answere you don’t put them down with glee in your voice. We as older individuals should take a possitive attitude toward advice to young people no matter what they have done. No one is perfect except maybe Dr Laura.
Jesse
May 22, 2007 at 12:40 pmDr. Laura’s son can write about whatever he wants. This is all about the First Amendment. Let’s not follow the gov’t down the path of censorship. After all, censorship is becoming America’s favorite past-time. The US gov’t (and their corporate friends), already detain protesters, ban books like “America Deceived” from Amazon and Wikipedia, shut down Imus and fire 21-year tenured, BYU physics professor Steven Jones because he proved explosives, thermite in particular, took down the WTC buildings. Free Speech forever (even for Dr. Laura’s son).
Last link (before Google Books caves to pressure and drops the title):
http://www.iuniverse.com/bookstore/book_detail.asp?&isbn=0-595-38523-0
Connie’s Coffee Talk
May 22, 2007 at 12:44 pm[…] http://cloggie.org/proggold/2007/05/21/i-am-my-childs-mom/ […]
Robert
May 22, 2007 at 12:46 pmWhat a joy to discover that Dr. L has feet of clay, too! It couldn’t happen to a “nicer” person – I only hope that James Dobson has had a similar life experience with his family.
Dr. L debuted on the radio about the time my son was young and beginning his painful years of growing up. To listen to her sanctimonious rantings at the time was to feel all the guilt in the world as a clueless young father. A bright and loving kid, our son was a handful – strong-willed and rebellious – but we tried (successfully, in spite of ourselves) to at least be consistent and supportive and, in spite of dealing with a mood disorder as a teenager, have seen him grow into a happy and productive adult.
Nearly ten years ago, he told my wife and me that he was – and had been much to our surprise – gay. My misconceptions about that whole scene were destroyed by suddenly finding that this was not “just a lifetstyle choice” – it was not “the way he was raised” – and that there were genetic reasons for the situation. Sadly, we have witnessed the discrimination that this segment of our population experiences – even in such simple acts as dining out at a local restaurant with him and his partner.
Anyway, thanks for posting this item about the life and times of Dr. L! Hopefully, this little bit of publicity will open her eyes to reality and help her to be more empathetic and sympathetic to her fellow citizens.
Palau
May 22, 2007 at 12:50 pmSharon: horrible skeletons in the closet are an established pattern with Reoublicans great and small, especially the fundy Christians: it’s hy they Came To Jesus in the first place, to have the guilt washed clean.
Frank: He’s in the army, it was the army that deleted it/had it deleted, not his mother. I take your point re wayback machine but there has been military intervention: but i expect there’s more info to come, and as soon as I find out more I’ll post it. I’m not the oracle on the topic though, it just caught my interest. Anyone can google, that’s the beauty of this internet thingy.
Palau
May 22, 2007 at 1:05 pmLast year I posted thislist of just how many Republicans and fundies have been caught committing sexual and/or violent offences, many against children. It’s a gobsmacking number.
frank parker
May 22, 2007 at 1:12 pmI don’t believe the Army has the pull to delete anything beyond the actual real time page, however if that’s the case, it’s a wonder the original spotter of this webpage who made sure to spread the information around wasn’t smart enough to cache a copy on their harddrive.
Not saying I don’t believe the story, just saying there have been enough Internet hoaxes perpetuated on the public in the past year to make my radar go off like a dinner bell. I wouldn’t put much stock into this story until we see some proof.
And as much as I personally despise the neo-cons, anyone who thinks that degenerate behavior is their purview alone isn’t playing with a full deck. The entire political establishment of this country is rife with it- it may be the only reason they attain office to begin with, so those who really hold the reigns of power have some degree of control over them.
Alan Cabal
May 22, 2007 at 1:35 pmI hope the kid gets disembowelled over there.
Anne Gilbert
May 22, 2007 at 3:32 pmI heard Dr. Laura, once, when she first arrived on talk radio. I nearly threw up whatever I’d been eating at the time. She was awful! I have never listened to her since, yet she has continued to spew out hateful stuff. At least she was yanked off TV for her antigay diatribes a few years ago. With that kind of viewpoint, one has to wonder just how she actually raised her son. There are plenty of people who go into military service who try to serve honorably and decently(okay, okay, I don’t agree with their decisions, but I do acknowledge that they did the best they could with what they had). Deryk Schlessinger sounds like just another spoiled rich kid who thought(and apparently still thinks)he could get away with anything he felt like getting away with. And no amount of “excuses”, e.g. “al-Qaida dunni” is going to cover up his “garbagy” behavior.
Anne G
Tim A.
May 22, 2007 at 3:34 pmDon’t forget Dr. Laura’s treatment and care of her own mother (not to mention Commandment #6 – “Honor Thy Mother and Father”).
On December 16, 2002, Schlessinger’s mother Yolanda was found dead in her Beverly Hills condominium by the Beverly Hills Police Department, her body having been there for months. Schlessinger’s estrangement from her family was again highlighted in the media as hypocrisy, as she had often chastised listeners who said they had broken off contact with their families, calling them selfish.
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/lauramomaut1.html
Palau
May 22, 2007 at 3:37 pmAlan: a trifle harsh, perhaps?
Palau
May 22, 2007 at 3:53 pmJust a quick note: if anyone’s wondering why comments don’t mmediately appear, we do moderate comments but only the first one to make sure it’s not spam. After that it’s a free for all unless you’re openly abusive. Swearing is fine, I curse like a trooper myself, though I reserve the right to call ‘troll’ if needs be.
But I know we’re all nice people here :0 )
Alan Cabal
May 22, 2007 at 4:19 pmNot harsh at all, Palau. Not as harsh as a Fallujah Barbecue, which would lift my heart even more in the case of Deryk Schlesinger.
Kay
May 22, 2007 at 4:21 pmAs a former Republican,Republican as far as having a son who was a Republican page,,Hmmm
As a parent that believed in tough love,,you commit the crime,you do the time.
Who would occasionally listen to Dr Laura,who took the time to sew a quilt for her cause…who I will admit, I found some right in her speaking(but any book on child rearing would provide the same),,
Found this woman SPITEFUL,CRUEL,PREJUDISE,MEAN,BITTER,A LIE,ETC.
If her previous sex life is true,,she’s a fraud.
If what is being reported about her son is true,,she’s a failure and should maybe immediatly resign.
I will also admit,,,that I fell victim to the savage and cruel and mean some of these commentators play on,,,,the very reason people really watch a bull fight (to see the bull fighter get hurt),,,these said commentators play on that side of there audience,,,such as Dildo O’reilly,Hannity,Rush,Dr.Laura,etc………
But with the above said,,,her cruelty/mean/bruatallity lost me as a listener.
I believe this story about her son,,,because I listened enough and heard her talk about how she raised her son,,,
I remember thinking,”I FEEL SORRY FOR HER SON”
I STILL DO!
I admit that sometimes I would laugh at her SAVAGE comments,,,but more over I felt sorry for all her callers…ESPECIALLY THE CHILDREN!
I HOPE SHE GETS CANNED!
Rebels Without a Clause » Dr Laura - a right wing first class nutto of the highest order
May 22, 2007 at 7:16 pm[…] Dr Laura a psychopath? […]
suexian
May 22, 2007 at 9:52 pmGod killed more people in the Bible than Satan.
Alan Cabal
May 22, 2007 at 10:18 pmSmoke him nice and slow, Texas-style.
Zoe
May 23, 2007 at 1:49 amThe quote from someone who “supposedly” went to school with Deryck was made up. They should have thought about the fact that Deryck was born in 1985. When he mas in fourth or fifth grade Harry Potter had not come out yet. I doubt it had even been thought of in JK Rowling’s mind. But, it still wouldn’t surprise me, with a mom like that, that he was a bully or at least had some sort of problem.
Tom
May 23, 2007 at 2:01 amI knew Deryk briefly at my alma mater. He dropped out after one semester there. He was truly a completely spoiled sadistic jerk. I’ve never felt a pervasive sense of “evil” in my entire life like I felt when I was around him. He was truly disturbed, and some of the stories about him floating around campus were equally as troubling. The story about his Myspace page doesn’t surprise me in the least.
Palau
May 23, 2007 at 3:24 amZoe: well, I did say the source was unreliable.
Jane Thomas
May 23, 2007 at 6:49 amMan that is awful.
george monroe
May 23, 2007 at 7:12 amIts simple.
She is a Chabad Lubavitch Jew.
She thinks of herself as ‘human’, all non-jews are not.
Look it up.
She probably wishes she could just say ‘it doesnt matter because you all are not jewish’.
These people are ruining the whole world.
Palau
May 23, 2007 at 8:19 amGeorge Monroe: I am aware of the Lubavitchers and their views, but as I understand it Dr Laura has denounced her former orthodox religious allegiance so I fail to see the relevance.
But that’s really neither not there – anyone who refers to any religious or minority group – and particularly Jews – as “these people” and says that they’re “ruining the whole world” strikes me as a deliberately antisemitic troll.
We’re an anti-zionist, anti-Israeli-imperialism blog, but we absolutely, positively don’t tolerate hate speech.
14All
May 23, 2007 at 11:00 amAfter listening to the “good doctor” for half an hour it became apparent to me that she was mentally ill, so it’s really no surprise that her son is, too.
Frank Parker
May 23, 2007 at 11:37 am“…we absolutely, positively don’t tolerate hate speech.”
Well trained, too.
Randy
May 23, 2007 at 11:40 amI just stumbled on your site as a link from another site, and I must say I really enjoyed your analysis of Dr. Laura and her happy, wholesome family.
I’ve listened to her on a few occasions in absolute astonishment. She comes across as a self-righteous sadist and authoritarian, and it’s mind-boggling that she is a huge radio success with a cult-like following.
It’s highly revealing that so many right-wing plutocrats, politicos, and religious zealots in the U.S. would champion her “work” as a counselor. I think you have to turn to the classic research of analysts such as Erich Fromm and his insights on “The Authoritarian Personality” to understand her appeal.
http://home.wxs.nl/~brouw724/Frommenglisch.html
http://www.infed.org/thinkers/fromm.htm
These people who promote and rally behind Dr. L. are not Nazis, but their psychology and its emphasis on humiliation, dominance, masochism, groupthink, hatred, “liberal corruptions” and stern leaders is the same sort of stew that nourished Nazi culture and other authoritarian movements.
The Anatomy of Fascism by Robert Paxton, a recent work, presents an historical context:
http://www.rattlesnake.com/notions/fascism-2.html
The book American Fascists by Chris Hedges is another excellent source. Hedges focuses primarily on right-wing Christian fundamentalism and its yearning for apocalypse and theocracy, but Dr. L is certainly a slice of the same phenomenon.
What is always fascinating about these “moral leaders” is their own hypocrisy rarely undermines the followers’ faith in their infallibility and purity. They appear to be immune to rational refutation.
Dr. Laura and her peculiar past peccadilloes and horrid family life are reminiscent of the recent contretemps of that beacon of Christian virtue, Ted Haggard.
Haggard, head of the largest Christian Evangelical group in the U.S., was caught having gay sex with his drug dealer. (No, you cannot make this stuff up.) Although he was forced to resign, he’s undergoing religious “sexual therapy” and he’ll undoubtedly be back.
Few know that Haggard is a fanatic free market advocate who actually pressured George Bush to remove steel tariffs. This is one of the reasons that certain strains of religious fanaticism are promoted in the U.S.—they dovetail ideologically with predatory capitalism and the growing corporate control over all aspects of our economy and lives.
http://www.time.com/time/covers/1101050207/photoessay/11.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W6rSjrBhUIA
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15536263/
Hedges is excellent at analyzing the economic and cultural poverty, the loneliness and alienation in American life that feeds into religious authoritarianism and mass movements.
Dr. Laura and Haggard, to the more rational and reflective, may appear as nothing more than clowns, and laughing at them and their foibles is certainly a reasonable response. But they also reflect a very dangerous social and political mood in the U.S. They are promoted and pushed by individuals and organizations with a lot of money and power. They are ridicules and distracting, but they also serve certain political and economic interests in this country.
Matt S
May 23, 2007 at 12:04 pmI know lots of Lubavitchers and none of them see non-Jews as non-persons. None ofthem are like Schlessinger. In fact she converted to Judaism, so you can’t blame her upbringing, and she has said that she has left it, so you can’t blame her religious views. I am sorry that you need to express your personal bigotry, but the facts are more important.
Palau
May 23, 2007 at 12:44 pmFrank: I’m a lformer awyer. We talk like that.
george
May 23, 2007 at 12:44 pmI agree with Alan
Palau
May 23, 2007 at 12:45 pmThere should be an ‘l’ there in front of ‘awyer’. One day I will clean this sticky keyboard. Just not now.
Oenopheliac
May 23, 2007 at 2:36 pmI think the promotion of “Doctor” Laura is simply another tool of social manipulation and control. There is now, and has long been, a puritanical streak running through American “Culture”. Epitomized by H.L. Menckens definition of Puritanism i.e., “The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, might be happy.” That is the basic in the irrationality that is “Doctor” Laura. The sick and haunting fear that somehow there is something wrong with being happy and that if you are happy you are doing something wrong.
Trying to call it fascist is, I think, missing the point. Oh, people who share this attitude are likely to behave as fascists, but that is because they have the warped view that “people must be controlled” so as to prevent them from doing bad things – like enjoyng life and being happy – that if someone is enjoying themselves, by extension from my earlier reasoning, they must be doing something wrong – that only the warped ascetism that they practice is a valid viewpoint and way of life.
Going back to the fact that she is a tool of social control – by elevating her into a position of prominence, and thus her viewpoints, she furthers the social control agenda by dictating to the serfs the manner in which they MUST live. It is manipulative as only psychotic sociopaths are. That her son, raised in such a sick environment, is in turn a sick twisted individual is the logical outcome of the disturbed viewpoint she is selling. That she herself is a sociopath is, I think, obvious.
aimai
May 23, 2007 at 7:46 pmSmall point: the first Harry Potter book came out (with a bang) September of 1998 in the US. A child born in 1985 would have been around 13 but its unclear what *grade* that child would have been. My child is in fifth grade right now with kids ranging in age from 10-12. I’d also like to point out that people get pretty fuzzy about what grade they were with someone a few years later. That doesn’t make the letter “true” but the date of the Harry potter release doesn’t utterly disprove the story either.
At any rate, the military’s story seems pretty clear. Someone using Schlesinger’s sons name had a pretty horrendous web page. So bad they are reduced to pushing it off on the terrorists as a kind of osama psy ops. The liklihood of that is so small that I would put the ownership of the web site by schlesinger’s son at near certainity in comparison.
aimai
Jeffrey M. Irving
May 23, 2007 at 11:13 pmYou can renounce paedophilia but it won’t remove you from the watch list.
Palau
May 24, 2007 at 7:09 pmThanks aimai, as usual you put it so much better.
who did it today?
May 25, 2007 at 9:28 pmIs it a coincidence mediabistro has posted the wrong photo?
http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&q=Deryk%20Schlessinger&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=bn
Rosie did it is next!
Leftist Reporter Leads Smear Campaign
http://sadbastards.wordpress.com/2007/05/25/dr-laura-schlessinger-deryk-schlessinger-myspace-controversy/
“Some gay activists posted some porn on Deryk Sclessinger’s MySpace blog so that they could say the soldier and son of famous talk show host, Dr. Laura Schlessinger is monster/conservative/liar/hate monger…” and give him privacy.
Evagoblin
May 25, 2007 at 9:44 pmI’m curious, how does the person who says Dr. Laura renounced her Jewish religon know, is it on her website and if so, where? Haven’t listened to her often in the last few years but when I did, haven’t heard it mentioned at all, in fact lately, it seems she talks little about her personal beliefs.
Palau
May 26, 2007 at 12:03 pmevagoblin: It was me – I read about it when I was doing some background reading. I’ll find the link and post it.
Palau
May 26, 2007 at 12:07 pmWDIT:
what gay activists, who where?
That site you point to ( is it yours?) says “Some gay activists posted some porn on Deryk Sclessinger’s MySpace blog so that they could say the soldier and son of famous talk show host, Dr. Laura Schlessinger is monster/conservative/liar/hate monger…
Follow the money to Soros ”
What money? Follow it? Where to and from? What are your cites for that ssertion, if it’s yours?
Progressive Gold » Blog Archive » The Youth Of Today. Sigh.
May 29, 2007 at 10:09 am[…] We’ve seen recently how these parents’ attitudes play out, with the whole Dr Laura and Deryk saga, and there are who knows how many others just like young Deryk, brought up in deliberate ignorance, coddled and protected by money and parental hypocrisy their whole lives. […]
Realistic
May 31, 2007 at 6:45 pmLet’s take a step back…
I have read all the posts here, and it is clear that there are many people who hate Dr Laura. I could care less. There are also people calling for her to resign. Interesting… doesn’t it make more sense that someone (like any one of you) with a vengence toward her would fabricate a myspace page to discredit her? I know it’s a longshot, because it’s hard to find pictures to crop (sarcasm) into a staged backdrop. It just seems to me that the amount of vomitous spew and hatred this RUMOR has spawned toward her would be exactly the outcome a malicious Dr Laura hater would want. I’m just trying to point out that all of you are taking a rumor and deciding it is fact, when in fact, you don’t know.
Palau
June 1, 2007 at 2:55 amRealistic: But the sheer effort imvolved in this alleged hoax implies much more than just your average common-or-garden fan-loathing.
It was in a reputable paper by a reputable named reporter, and I reported that he’d reported it. Fact ot fiction? Believe it or not? Up to you.
John Defalque
June 1, 2007 at 8:32 amI have always hated Dr. Laura and her Judeofascist podium. She is not a psychologist in the tradition of Dr Joy Brown who leaves her politics at home.She is not a respectable relationship advice show host like Rona Raskin. What she really is is a hypocritical moralist ala Rush (dope fiend) Windbag, Jerry the segregationist homophobe Falwell, Ted Meth closet homo Haggard, Jimmy the John Swaggart, and Jim Pass the Loot Bakker.
I was hoping that her son might get hurt in Iraq so that Dr Laura might have an epiphany, but this expose of her son’s mental illness is just as satisfying to me.I am atheist-we have are all have a conscience and are very resentful of religious zealots imposing their beliefs on us.I am socialist and my belief is in social justice.
Lisa
June 2, 2007 at 1:16 pmWhat I don’t understand is where is this story in mainstream media? The only way I heard about it was on a local morning music radio show. Local papers aren’t covering it and where’s the cable news shows on this? Can you imagine if it was a liberal’s son?
Palau
June 2, 2007 at 1:53 pmOh yes, I can imagine: if Edwards’ hair’s front page news, imagine if one of his kids had done something similar to this – iIt’d be top story on every channel for weeks on end and be used by the right as an illustration of the evilness of liberals.
Lisa
June 2, 2007 at 2:13 pmI recommend we all email fox news, msnbc, your local paper etc. and ask where the story is.
Hope
June 3, 2007 at 10:29 pmWell, I am Jewish and embarassed to share that with her, I lost my daughter to an illness she had and yet she still treats women like sex slaves to their husbands.
Shame on her…..
David Nova
June 6, 2007 at 3:20 amI knew Deryk when I was in 2nd grade, back in Hazel Crest, IL. The bastard beat me up and stole my girl friend and told me his mother would have my parents killed if I said anything about it. That was in 1946 when Harry Potter first came out. I can see the bastard hasn’t changed. Let’s just lynch him now and get it over with.
On a more serious note, I’m on my way to Salem right now to burn some witches. It’s possible, though, that they just might have ergot poisoning … but, who really cares???
D. Greene
August 9, 2007 at 1:11 pmI encountered that mendacious little shitbag when I was a student at Hillsdale College in 2003-2004. He was a complete sociopath.
Someone should try to pull his police records in Michigan for 2003-2004. You might find some pretty surprising stuff.
SWC
August 13, 2007 at 3:12 pmDeryk Schlessinger is going to be on leave soon. I’m more concerned what they are covering up now. She’s always paid well to keep his secrets.
His past needs to be investigated, I remember his rants. Find the girls that know he’s a stalker. Do you know Rhi? Or that blonde who took care of him?
No one knows if his guns were taken away? That was the fear of his former classmate, they were righteous to report him. What kind of support and unity do they have? Where is the Army on keeping the states safe? The last I heard was the Army’s first comment on ‘the enemy’…
Has he been in the Army ward for mentals? Dr. Laura will only say she doesn’t believe in medication. He has an addictive personality and hypercondition.
The Army will let him out and keep hiding him. What about public safety?
What we don’t get: the Aug 10, 2007 Guardian reported British commanders want USSF out, that means all the Deryk’s. Have you seen all the pictures of him? What a case against US tactics and the poor equipment , they set the soldiers up to die or call in the bombers. Why are UK and Canada not reporting on the USSF death squads and heroin take?
Patty Haley
March 17, 2008 at 6:26 pmAlthough not a psychologist of any type, I find similarities in Dr Laura and my sister. I think that Laura’s problem is that she has not fully mourned the loss of having crappy parents. Until she does this, she will continue on her path of co-dependancy, co-dependancy according to the way John Bradshaw describes it. This is the main reason she never was able to become a psychologist. Her hypocrisy in her current behavior is clear evidence that life is not black and white, but shades of grays. She goes from one extreme to another. Her rightousness attitude and delivery of ideals, many to be true I believe, does more harm than good in getting through to callers or listeners. I used to listen to Barbara D Angelis and Barbara would get the same people calling in with the same problems that Laura does. The difference in the way they each approach each caller is that Barbara would talk the person into a state of mind where the caller would recognize their own personal responsibility in the situation. Laura on the oher hand has none of these skills, but would rather just balme and shame, which has proven not to work for many reasons she needs to learn if she is to truly help people. She would really benefit from studying all of John Bradshaws material, for she is a typical example of what he discusses. I once nicely emailed her to ask her to clarify why she bleached her hair blonde when she said on radio that one should not change any body parts ie, breat enlargement, but it is OK to put stuff back the way it was. I’d agrre with that but saw a contradiction with her hair. I was expecting she would explain herself and instead all I got was a very defensive emails back to me. She never did clarify herself. I pity hera bit now, and that is sad.