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Orange Jacket, Stiff Demeanor, Humorless and Vengeful Advertisers Continue to Flee—Protests Erupt in 30 Cities |
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Compiled by GayToday
"Hey, maybe we were wrong after all," said GLBT news pundit Scott Miller, "maybe Dr. Laura is really a gay program....as in camp classic gay. This show is so bad, it's actually rather entertaining…It's the talk show equivalent of Mommie Dearest." "First off," noted Miller, "the camera is not very flattering to Ms. Schlessinger. She appears phony and ill-at-ease. Add to this the constant lecturing and it's like being forced to watch a televised recreation of being sent to the principal's office." In The Dallas Morning News Ed Bark noted that the show's "only discernible bright spot was her Halloween-ready orange jacket. The 53-year-old physiologist otherwise presided over a rather pedantic, sometimes hectoring discussion." "Indeed," wrote Bark, "the most notable aspect of Monday's premiere on Channel 11 was its heavy load of 800-number "direct response" ads, generally a last resort when sponsors are hard to come by." Tim Kiska, who serves as the Detroit News' Television Writer, says Dr. Laura "makes Martha Stewart look warm." "After watching an hour of Schlessinger on the screen," he confesses, "all I can say is: 'Welcome to Dr. Laura's penal colony!' " Kiska also notes that Dr. Laura sets the tone of the show by making her anger and her self-righteousness "apparent within minutes." She said: "They start young, younger, youngest. And if a parent isn't careful, your bubbly young teen could turn into a hostile, moody drug-user right behind your very back… I'm sick of it. I'm worried. And I want it stopped." Kiska observes that punishment is very Dr. Laura-like. He recalls how a young girl talked about how she was grabbed from her bed in the middle of the night and carted off to boarding school while Dr. Laura nodded approvingly. A parent told how her son ran off with the family pickup truck. He wrecked it. "I called the police," exulted the mother, "and I'm pressing charges for grand theft auto," Dr. Laura chuckled supportively, obviously pleased by the parent's punishment. Then she launched into a discussion on how teens can be tested for drugs at home.
Only one day after its advertising-anemic debut, Dr. Laura's TV show was being abandoned by a parade of its (already) few national advertisers. Telecom giants Verizon and Starpower, as well as Scott tissue maker Kimberly-Clark, informed StopDrLaura.com Tuesday that their ads should not have appeared during the show, and that they would not allow them to appear in the future. In a surprisingly strong statement, Verizon informed StopDrLaura.com that: "this [advertising] was done without our authorization and violates our agreement with the stations. Since we did not authorize them, we will not pay for any ads that ran in Dr. Laura's program, and stations that violate our agreement lose future advertising revenue for the product involved." The statement was made to StopDrLaura.com by Verizon's Vice President for Media Relations, Eric Rabe. Starpower, a provider of cable and Internet service, told StopDrLaura.com : "We apologize for the presumption that StarPower is affiliated in any way to Dr. Laura Schlessinger." Kimberly-Clark told StopDrLaura.com that the company "did not purchase advertising time during the 'Dr. Laura' television program. The commercial was run in error and we have asked thenetwork not to air our commercial during the program again. We have no plans to purchase advertising time during 'Dr. Laura'." The New York Times reported this morning that Schlessinger's TV show had debuted with a "paucity of well-known advertisers," and had "clearly suffered from a summer's worth of protests by gay and lesbian activists." The Times' Stuart Elliott reported that the show's lack of national ads, and reliance on injury lawyers and other small local advertisers "made the first 'Dr. Laura' seem more like late-night local cable fare than a nationally-syndicated talk show mean to appear on broadcast network stations during daytime hours." Schlessinger's TV debut was met with protests organized by StopDrLaura.com in at least 30 cities nationwide, in addition to an effort by volunteers to monitor the program for local and national advertisers. Gay and lesbian activists have shown themselves to be upset with Schlessinger for referring to them as "biological errors," calling homosexuality "deviant," and for claiming that "a huge portion of the gay male populace is predatory on young boys." "Her rhetoric, if aimed at any other group of Americans, would not have been rewarded with a multimillion-dollar TV contract," said Joel Lawson, a co-founder of StopDrLaura.com. "Executives at Paramount Television, at CBS/Viacom, and at many local stations have shown their business acumen to be even weaker than their ethics." |
Los Angeles, California—Dr. Laura's Monday debut on her televised program was the subject
of multiple criticisms in the national press on Tuesday. Reviewers, political pundits and others
took aim at her orange jacket and her odd, approving laughter whenever it was revealed that parents
had severely punished their children. It was clear, many noted, that she appeared to be uncomfortable.
