Art & Commerce: Debra Goldman's Consumer Republic

Dr. Laura is learning about righteous wrath firsthand Procter & Gamble has had some rough bumps in the past few months. Then two weeks ago, it finally figured out that media morality maven Dr. Laura was a controversial figure. The midwives of this revelation are the gay and lesbian activists who have been roused into action by Laura Schlessinger, the moral avenger of talk radio's new syndicated TV show, due from Paramount this fall. For some time, homosexuals have been the drive-by victims of Schlessinger's verbal assaults at the enemies of the traditional family. But her attempt to bring her message to the oracle of culture, television, pushed them over the edge. Meanwhile, Dr. Laura has been doing damage control, everything from claiming her remarks--gays are "deviants" and "biological mistakes"--have been taken out of context to condemning a gay cabal determined to act as both "judge and jury"--a job description she has clearly reserved for herself. But it's not enough to keep P&G's support. Now, it's been pointed out many times since Dr. Laura became a national phenomenon in the '80s that Schlessinger, a "doctor" of physiology, has no qualifications for her role as moral and ethical family counselor. This is not quite true. She possesses in spades the only talent a multimedia nag needs: intolerance for ambiguity, no interest in anyone else's opinion, a bully's temperament, a bottomless capacity for outrage combined with limitless self-forgiveness and theatrically bad manners. In recent years, her narcissistic hectoring has been given a new edge by her commitment to Orthodox Judaism--though it's a wonder it took her until middle age to find a faith that matched her inner fundamentalist. The result is a brand so simple and distinctive, it had to end up on TV. Just last week, Dr. Laura popped up on 48 Hours, lending "journalistic balance" to a show called "It's Just Sex" about swingers, housewife-pornographers and other suburban sexual adventurers. In case you are wondering, Dr. Laura was emphatic that it's not just sex, but since the program was one of those sweeps-month excuses to show lots of women in bikinis and underwear, it hardly matters. Her patented over-the-top sound bite was just a prop supporting the kind of prurient entertainment she claims to abhor. Until the organized protests, it seemed inevitable Dr. Laura would join the ranks of such syndicated superegos as Judge Judy, who has won a huge following by telling the grotesque menagerie of sad sacks who come before her bench what pathetic lowlifes they really are. With the same verve, Dr. Laura raps her callers' knuckles with the Ten Commandments, reducing them to helplessly stuttering as she browbeats them into submission. Both women expose the guilty psychic underbelly of these tolerant, relativistic times: our not-so-secret yearning for some strict nanny to give us a well-deserved spanking and set us straight. There is something both embarrassing and thrilling in witnessing tongue-lashings that restore a little black and white to our gray world, while confirming the audience's strong suspicion that the problem with morality is other people. What is remarkable is how well Dr. Laura's opponents are undermining what seemed a surefire concept, succeeding where mighty pressure groups like the Moral Majority failed. Schlessinger has learned what it's like to be on the receiving end of righteous wrath. She's been condemned by the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council; United Airlines has refused to run her ads in their in-flight magazine; P&G took a powder and a trickle of radio advertisers have begun to defect. Since advertisers--even ones that strike a blow for diversity--tend to travel in herds, who knows where it will stop? It takes the forces of tolerance to legitimize the tactics of intolerance. I'm sure the world could do without a Dr. Laura TV show. Not because she spreads hate, but because she is stupid, simple-minded and grotesque--qualities with which television is already well-supplied. As for her First Amendment right to speak out on TV, that privilege, like everyone else's, ends with the advertisers that foot the bill. For that reason, encouraging advertisers to legislate the limits of public speech is no better an idea in the service of a good cause than a bad one. Advertisers are by nature cowards who flee controversy. And if Americans really want TV programming that offends no one, I am confident that advertisers will be happy to oblige them.

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Art & Commerce: Debra Goldman's Consumer Republic

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