Dr Laura and Sarah Palin became strange bedfellows (which would literally horrify them) this week.
Dr Laura has an absolute right to stand in front of her bathroom mirror and spew venom until her vicious tongue curls up and falls out.
Is Dr Laura a racist? Who knows.
I think she's something else. Something awful. Dr Laura is casually cruel to people who call her when they're in distress. She's unkind.
What's been missed this week is that Dr Laura's not about the callers. Dr Laura's about making the show a good one, and about getting Dr Laura's brand more widely spread. If you call her show, you're a prop. If you get helped, that's a great side show. The caller she said n**** to 11 times didn't really matter.
Her business is Dr Laura, not you. Dr Laura's mistake was believing her own publicity, and thinking she was entitled to a show on the public airwaves.
If you want advice with a problem, call Dr Joy Browne. If you want to be toyed with like a cat with a mouse, call - oh, wait - Dr Laura quit because she wants to regain her First Amendment rights! So she can say what she thinks 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."
Here we go. Enter, stage right, Saint Sarah of Palin, the expert in quitting, facebooking and tweeting.
"Dr.Laura:don't retreat...reload! (Steps aside bc her 1st Amend.rights ceased 2exist thx 2activists trying 2silence"isn't American,not fair"
OMG. Sigh. (Love the firearms ref, Sarah.) What is it with narcissistic Sarah Palin? How on earth have Dr Laura's First Amendment rights ceased to exist because some people got angry? It's not fair? Blankey, anyone?
Sarah Palin cannot resist making the story about her: "I and obviously many others have been "shackled" too by people who play games with false accusations, threats, frivolous lawsuits, misreporting etc. in an effort to silence those with whom they disagree." "I didn't retreat; I reloaded in order to fight for what is right on a fairer battlefield."
She wasn't "shackled." She quit her job as governor half way through her first term. The only people who have actually been shackled are slaves brought to this country, and who, incidentally, had no First Amendment rights.
Palin has a history of making a nonsense of the First Amendment: from claiming that those who disagreed with beauty contestant Carrie Prejean's views on marriage equality were denying her protection under the First Amendment, to suggesting during the 2008 presidential campaign that First Amendment rights were in jeopardy because she was calling Obama out on "his associations". She's also a big fan of Nevada's own Sharron Angle, whose views on the First Amendment are, frankly, whacked.
None of which has anything to do with those five words in the First Amendment: "Congress shall make no law." Sarah Palin and Dr Laura missed that bit. Censorship, legally, is the government trying to shut you up.
Here's an easy way for Sarah and Dr Laura to remember. Take a pretty absolutist view of the Second Amendment (shouldn't be hard), switch it around with the First Amendment, and there you are.
They're an odd couple, the narcissist and the casually cruel elitist. Sarah Palin can't resist making everything about herself and Dr Laura thinks she's entitled to a show on the public airwaves where she can berate people who mistakenly think she's going to help them.
In the end, Sarah Palin came off slightly better this week. While Dr Laura apologized for her vitriol, she spoiled it with her whining about wanting her (supposedly denied) rights back. Sarah Palin came to Dr Laura's defense. The same Dr Laura who, in 2008, said of Palin: "what kind of role model is a woman whose fifth child was recently born with a serious issue, Down Syndrome, and then goes back to the job of Governor within days of the birth?" Ouch.