doctor heal thyself

I suppose saying the N word trumps using the F word. Dr. Laura used the N word a few times when talking with a radio listener in supposedly providing the listener with some kind of advice on her interracial marriage problems. Dr. Laura used the F word and about a dozen other anti Gay slurs when discussing her distaste for anything LGBT a while ago. The good doctor was called to task about her anti gay harangue, but the LGBT community was only able to persuade her TV advertisers to stop supporting her homophobia, while this last bout of racial bigotry got her fired from the radio.

Dr. Laura (on the Larry King Show), smilingly bragged about how “…I ‘m sort of done with that…” referring to her being denied her supposedly First Amendment Rights saying by dropping out of her radio show, she could focus her venomous hatred via the Internet and speaking engagements and thusly could revive her First Amendment Rights at her leisure. I wonder if she feels her First Amendment Rights are also denied because even Dr. Laura is not permitted to yell “FIRE” in a movie theater.

In the land of First Amendment Rights the rights are supposed to work for all. If Dr. Laura wishes to flame the fans of bias and bigotry, racism and homophobia, then those who are the brunt of the attacks have the right to voice their displeasure. In the land of First Amendment Rights which is also the land of “bottom lines” and “corporate profits”, advertisers also have the right to express their rights and stop any and all leakage from said profits and bottom lines. If the corporate sponsors don’t like the free speech of a personality they have paid for to speak then by all means the corporations can silence and swiftly end any and all speech. In Dr. Laura’s case her speech was not free and was in fact owned by the corporations who paid the radio station a check.

I amaze at how disingenuous many and most Conservative Republican/Tea Bagger Politicians and Entertainment personalities seem to be as they spout sage advice regarding THEIR Constitution. They all want to take us back to the days when the Constitution was written and in a dreamy state reminisce and recall when the Constitution was conceived. They make the lemming like listener, who needs little fact and relies on fiction think that these spokespeople have no ideological agenda but a populist opinion and want things made right like they used to be. These demigods insist the Constitution was not created for equal right, but for selected rights. Rights, they, self appointed and anointed, can clearly decipher, call upon and cancel.

If you have ignored the vitriolic, the rhetoric, the 30 seconds of head talk, it is time to regain consciousness and regain some claim into the direction this American democracy may be headed. The stronger the so called “grass root” Tea Bag movement gets, the more the Republican party acquiesces, the less division between church and state this nation moves, the more the erosion of OUR Constitution becomes. There is ill gotten power for the bully when there is a void of dissent. There is ill gotten power when the majority wants to speak for the minority. There is ill gotten power for the hate mongers when others sit around and say I’m not Gay, I’m not Mexican, I’m not Disabled, I’m not Jewish, I’m not Black, so what!

Dr. Laura for the time being has stopped gracing the airwaves with her rant and raving about anyone or anything she decides is different. Most insecure people need a scapegoat to maintain the very teeny tiny self respect they have. Choose a victim, point fingers away from you and you think no one notices your flaws and misconstrued and tortured life. The cause from the bad is not your fault, ever, and as long as you pick on someone else even you can’t blame yourself for what went wrong in your life.

And when you are called on the carpet for expressing your First Amendment Rights by those who are just expressing their First Amendment Rights call the Constitution police and arrest those who do the same thing you do. “It ain’t fair…they are picking on innocent me." As Newt Gingrich touts, do as I say never once as I do.

Goodbye for now Dr. Laura, we will miss you until your next bout of verbal botulism abounds. Dear doctor, heal thyself.