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Rush Limbaugh and Dr. Laura SchlessingerWhy he could be a TV star, and she won't be.

By David PlotzPosted Friday, May 26, 2000, at 9:30 PM ET
Illustration by Charlie Powell

Talk radio, which forfeited whatever cool it had in the '90s to the Internet, is reclaiming its buzz. Rush Limbaugh has made headlines by nominating himself to host Monday Night Football. He auditioned for the job, and ABC is treating him as a serious candidate. Meanwhile, Dr. Laura Schlessinger, the Ma Barker of radio therapists, is warring with gay activists over her planned TV show, Schlessinger. Enraged that Dr. Laura calls homosexuality "deviant" and a "biological error," gays have persuaded advertisers such as Procter & Gamble, Xerox, and Toysrus.com to sever ties to her. A board of Canadian broadcast censors just sanctioned her for anti-gay bigotry as well. The upheaval is flustering Paramount, Schlessinger's network, and may be jeopardizing the show's September launch.

This hiccup of talk radio news is a reminder that radio gab is not merely alive, but healthy. Radio revenue is soaring. Talk radio may not be the ground zero of GOP activism, as it was in 1994, and Limbaugh is no longer, as William Bennett once claimed, the "most consequential person in public life," but Limbaugh attracts as many listeners as he did at the height of his fame, at least 14.5 million per week, according to Talkers magazine. (He is still the leading radio talker in the United States.) Limbaugh has become Republican establishment radio, and he retains enormous influence in GOP politics. His carpet-bombing of John McCain as a closet liberal—an assault unremarked on by the mainstream media—is widely credited with ensuring George W. Bush's South Carolina primary victory. Dr. Laura draws 14.25 million listeners per week, placing her a close second to Rush.

Those who don't pay attention to Rush and Dr. Laura—that is, most Americans—tend to lump them together. That conflation is understandable, because they seem the Ozzie and Harriet of conservative radio. Rush takes care of the right-wing politics (down with Hillary, etc.), while Dr. Laura supervises the conservative home (no divorce, no premarital sex, shut up and listen to me, you idiot). Their shows are similar in format: Both talk virtually nonstop for three hours, use their callers as foils, and never have guests. Both are bombastic. And both are most appealing for their absolute certitude. They allow no gray to creep into their black-and-white worlds. Nothing shakes their conviction that right is right and that left is evil.

But there is a critical difference that separates Dr. Laura and Rush, the reason why his TV venture will succeed and hers won't: He's a professional, and she's not.

Limbaugh's critics have been flaying him for his Monday Night Football ambitions: He has never broadcast sports, they say. He is detested by too many people—dittoheads are a tiny minority. He couldn't keep his politics off the gridiron. (Imagine what would happen if President Clinton showed up at a Redskins game!)

Such skepticism underestimates Limbaugh. When he first emerged, liberals pegged him as the next Morton Downey Jr., a loony who would self-destruct on-air. But Limbaugh has grown more acceptable with age, largely because he has always paid attention to the "real goals of radio: ratings and revenue," says Talkers Editor Michael Harrison. Limbaugh has smoothed his rough edges. He has all-but-dropped the term "feminazi." When he was lambasted for mocking AIDS victims, he quickly apologized. He stopped performing "caller abortions." Other political talk radio shows stumble because their hosts put the politics before radio (see sclerotic Bob Grant). But Limbaugh never makes that mistake. He is a genuine conservative, but "he is a political entertainer and a consummate pro," says John Fund of the Wall Street Journal, who helped write Limbaugh's first book. "Don't forget he was a DJ."

Limbaugh the vaudevillian—not Limbaugh the winger—could be a delight in the Monday Night Football booth. Even people who can't stand his politics concede that he's a wonderful, funny talker. Limbaugh would play Howard Cosell. He would talk big and loud and use his bombast—most of which is a put-on—to generate the controversy and vim absent from football now. (Why would Rush succeed on Monday Night Football when he bombed as a TV talk show host several years ago? Rush is not telegenic, and he proved himself a poor TV interviewer. But the football broadcast, unlike his old TV show, would essentially be a radio gig: Rush would be off-camera for 99 percent of the broadcast, and he would be riffing, not interviewing.)

Where Limbaugh smirks, Schlessinger glowers, and that may be her downfall. She has proved strangely impervious to the criticism that should have ruined her, that she's a hypocrite. (Click here for why.) But Dr. Laura does have an Achilles' heel: her conviction. She considers herself a savior, not an entertainer. The longer Limbaugh is on the air, the softer he becomes. The longer Schlessinger is on the air, the harder she becomes. Limbaugh's bombast is an act; Schlessinger's is real. She has no doubt and no sense of humor. "I am a prophet," she says. "I am a philosopher." She knows how everyone else should live.

Popularity has made her arrogant. Three years ago, Dr. Laura made at least the pretense of listening to the people who phoned in. Today she berates them before they finish a sentence. Her idea of constructive criticism is a frying pan in the head—you're a bad parent, you're a liar, you're a coward. (Dr. Laura used to be refreshing because she offered advice that few others did—don't divorce, don't have sex, etc. As the culture has gotten more conservative—thanks, in part, to Dr. Laura—she sounds just like everyone else, only nastier.)

Dr. Laura's acid enemas work on the radio, a medium that has always been hospitable to ranters. But that style will bomb in the winking, shrugging medium of television. Television abhors a moralizer. Almost no one sits in judgment on television, except for the occasional judge. Jerry Springer may hector the clowns and morons on his show, but that is jokey spectacle. The only TV figures who are as serious and certain as Dr. Laura are TV preachers—chiefly Pat Robertson. But Robertson speaks softly and smiles wide. Schlessinger, with her taut face and sharp teeth, looks vicious.

So vicious, in fact, that gay groups might want to reconsider their campaign to stop her TV show. They should push to get her on the air. She will find her studio audience stupid and her guests morally lax. She'll tear muscle from bone then spit out the blood. She will be canceled in months. Eventually, reruns of Schlessinger will play on the Discovery Channel, after Predators of the Serengeti.

If you liked this Assessment column, check out Backstabbers, Crazed Geniuses, and Animals We Hate, a collection of our all-time funniest, meanest, sweetest, and weirdest profiles.

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David Plotz is Slate's editor. He is the author of The Genius Factory: The Curious History of the Nobel Prize Sperm Bank. You can e-mail him at .
COMMENTS

Reader Response from The Fray:


David Plotz is bothered that "she knows how everyone else should live." Now, Dr Laura may be wrong about literally every one of her moral precepts, but is there something wrong in principle with moral certainty? I'd be willing to bet that Plotz "knows" certain things are wrong, like slavery, racism, sexism, greed, voting Republican, etc. It's surely the case that Plotz is bothered by Dr Laura's conclusions rather than her certainty re them.

Plotz expresses bafflement that Dr. Laura "has proved strangely impervious to the criticism that should have ruined her, that she's a hypocrite." Wrong on two levels: 1) Americans are perfect suckers for stories of redemption, and 2) hypocrisy is the act of prescribing certain behavior while contemporaneously violating one's own prescription. People are not hypocrites if they stop doing X and then tell others not to do it. Or does Plotz seriously mean that moral transformation is impossible, and that anyone who did X then forever loses the moral right to instruct others on the subject?

Finally, Plotz attacks Dr. Laura for her bruising, glowering delivery, but he apparently didn't listen to her long enough to detect her crucial failing: She takes obvious pleasure in savaging callers. Her problem isn't that she's a humorless scold. Her problem is that she's a bully who truncheons hapless callers for sport under the pretense of providing moral instruction. If she's a hypocrite, it's because she purports to host a show about selfless virtue when in fact it's devoted entirely to Dr. Laura's own ego gratification at the expense of those moral reprobates seeking her advice.

--Michael Pollard

(To reply, click here.)


There's certainly criticism that can be fairly aimed at Dr Laura, but the Slate article on her is not fair. I say this because it misrepresents her position on several important issues, and clearly is not based on listening to her program. For example, it is alleged that Dr Laura is against divorce. This simply isn't true.

[The post lists other examples of Dr Laura's views, then concludes:]
You may not agree with some or all of what Dr Laura says, but branding it "hate speech" is an attempt to brand disagreement as evil. This often comes from people who insist that there is no such thing as political correctness--and anyone who thinks there is, is a racist, sexist, homophobe.

George Orwell wrote once about people who are driven into a "perverse Toryism" by the faults of the left. That's beginning to happen to me. I recommend that anyone who swallows the anti-Dr Laura line actually listen to the program. You may disagree with what she says. You may disagree with some of what she says. But like anyone else, she's entitled to be judged on the merits of what she does say, and not on what her enemies claim.

--Alex Bensky

(To read the full version, or to reply, click here.)


There are a few reasons why these people command an audience of 14 million:
It's free
It's entertaining
It provokes people

So what? I suppose that means there is a sizeable segment of our society that likes to be entertained and provoked for free. Nevermind they're self-righteous, arrogant finger-pointers. So are many politicians and doctors. Is it life imitating art, or art imitating life? Without highly opinionated entertainers like Dr. Laura and Rush, we might be less provoked, but a lot more bored.

--The Wandering Void

(To reply, click here.)


Has anyone noticed the trend in the nature of Dr Laura's phone-in fans of late? Seems about one in three seeks the venal vixen of virtue's permission to leverage his or her own moral superiority over a friend, relative, co-worker whose shortcomings would likely fail the moral equivalent of a Dr Laura exam.

--Kevin Gillogly

(To reply, click here.)


Basically, Schlessinger is an idiot and Limbaugh isn't. Limbaugh is pretty smart--certainly better than the average This Week or McLaughlin pundit--and pays attention to what interests his listeners. And he's a master deconstructor and deflator of the usual emotional propaganda put out by the left. Schlessinger, on the other hand, actually has a lot in common with the left: she's relentlessly moralistic, hypocritical, and basically dishonest (eg she's not even a doctor in any relevant discipline but insists on calling herself "Dr. Laura."). Also, Limbaugh looks like what he is: a jolly fat guy. Schlessinger looks like what she is: a dried-up harridan. That matters a lot more on TV than on radio.

--Morton

(To reply, click here.)


[In general Fray post-ers were a lot more interested in discussing Dr Laura than in Rush Limbaugh or Monday Night Football--although one reader was prepared for the worst:]

Hello European Soccer. Goodbye Monday Night Football. Never will I listen to Rush on football.

--Jack G.

(To reply, click here.)

(5/31)


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