Radio host Dr. Laura Schlessinger is quitting her radio show following a firestorm over her use of the N-word.
Dr. Laura Schlessinger, the conservative talk radio commentator under fire for repeatedly using a racial epithet, announced on Tuesday that she was ending her long-running radio show.
Dr. Schlessinger made the announcement on Tuesday night on “Larry King Live,” saying she made a decision not to renew her contract when it expires at the end of the year and suggesting that she did not want her opinions and language, however provocative, to be muzzled.
“I want to regain my First Amendment rights,” she said. “I want to be able to say what’s on my mind and in my heart and what I think is helpful and useful without somebody getting angry, some special interest group deciding this is the time to silence a voice of dissent and attack affiliates, attack sponsors. I’m sort of done with that.”
But she stressed that she was not retiring, only ending her show, and would continue to write books and appear at speaking engagements.
“I’m not quitting,” she told Larry King. “I feel energized actually — stronger and freer to say the things that I believe need to be said for people in this country.”
Quitting a talk show so you can say what’s on your mind is akin to resigning a governorship to have more impact on public policy. But, hey, it’s all the rage these days.
Even back in the days when I was listening to conservative talk radio for hours on end, I was never a Schlessinger fan. She always struck me as bitter, mean, callous, and particularly out of touch with the human condition. She routinely dispensed advice that was plainly idiotic and hurtful.
It didn’t help that she billed herself as “Dr. Laura” for a show built around personal counseling, even though her doctorate is in physiology instead of psychology, psychiatry, or something else that gave her the slightest bit of expertise in the field. Then again, real counseling experts don’t offer diagnoses based on three-minute telephone conversations.
