Do What I Say Not What I Do

The guru of conservative family values, Dr. Laura Schlessinger, probably has some work to do at home if a story reported in the Salt Lake City Tribune about the aberrant behavior of the radio talk show host's son are true.

According to the report, published in the May 19 edition of the Tribune, Schlessinger’s son Deryk, who is currently serving in the Army in Afghanistan, is under investigation for a graphic personal web page that one Army official has called "repulsive."

The site, believed to be Deryk's, reportedly featured "cartoon depictions of rape, murder, torture and child molestation; photographs of soldiers with guns in their mouths; a photograph of a bound and blindfolded detainee captioned 'My Sweet Little Habib'; accounts of illicit drug use; and a blog entry headlined by a series of obscenities and racial epithets"

It was shut down on Friday.

"Yes . . . F---ING Yes!!!" said one blog entry on the site. "I LOVE MY JOB, it takes everything reckless and deviant and heathenistic [sic] and just overall bad about me and hyper focuses these traits into my job of running around this horrid place doing nasty things to people that deserve it . . . and some that don't."

The site indicated Schlessinger's team has survived numerous mortar, rocket and roadside bomb attacks. It also included several graphic cartoons. In one of the stick drawings, a top-hatted man laughs as he rapes a bound and bleeding woman in front of her family. In another depiction, a man forces a boy to perform oral sex at knifepoint as the child's mother pleads for her son's life.

The talk radio host, who refers to herself as "my kid’s mom" and has recently taken to calling herself "the proud mother of a deployed American paratrooper" speaks frequently about her soldier son before military audiences nationwide.

In an interview with The Tribune, Mike Paul, a spokesman for Schlessinger suggested that the web page could be a fake.

This contention was echoed by Army spokesman Robert Tallman, who said "it may be possible that our enemies are actually behind this."

"Our enemies are adaptive, technologically sophisticated, and truly understand the importance of the information battlespace," Tallman continued. "Sadly, they will use that space to promulgate and disseminate untrue propaganda."

It's unclear who created the cartoons, but Army spokesman Robert Tallman said the drawings "are repulsive and not anywhere near being acceptable," for a soldier's personal web page.
David Accetta, public affairs director for the 82nd Airborne Division in Afghanistan, said the Army "will investigate thoroughly and impartially."

Laura Schlessinger's appeared last week in Utah. At that time she met with Army families at Fort Douglas and in an interview with The Tribune, she said, "We raised our son to be a warrior."

After her Utah visit, Schlessinger received criticism for telling The Tribune that she didn't want to hear the complaints of military wives whose husbands are deployed.

"He could come back without arms, legs or eyeballs, and you're bitching?" Schlessinger said. "You're not dodging bullets, so I don't want to hear any whining."

This is not the first time that Dr. Laura has been associated with behavior that appears to be inconsistent with her message of conservative family values.

On her daily radio show, she advocates the basic "family values" -- no sex outside of marriage, moms shouldn't work, divorce is wrong, abortion is wrong, living together without marriage is wrong, getting married too young is wrong and foolish, a marriage without children is hardly a marriage at all, homosexuality is destructive and "a biological error", gay marriage is wrong, girls should not dress like "sluts", and the family unit is of paramount importance.

However, her own behavior and family life have not lived up to this standard.

When she broke into the radio business in the mid- 1970’s she was the protégé of Bill Balance, who some consider the father of modern talk radio. While still married, she apparently had an affair with Balance, before taking up with her current husband Lew Bishop, who is Deryk’s father. Her relationship with Balance would have been a small footnote in her career, if not for her decision to pose for a series of nude photos that have circulated on the internet for several years.

Another questionable aspect of Schlessinger's character is her decision to call herself Dr. Laura, suggesting that her doctorate is in psychology. Actually, it is in physiology, which dictionary.com defines as a branch of biology dealing with the functions and activities of living organisms and their parts. In her website drlaura.com, Schlessinger is referred to as "Dr. Laura" more than 40 times. "

In addition, to her marital infidelities and the problems displayed by her son, Schlessinger also, has displayed some strange behavior with other members of her immediate family.

According to the biographical website NNDB.com, Schlessinger describes her childhood as "difficult" due to the rocky, "unloving" marriage between her father, a Jewish US citizen, and her mother, an Italian Catholic war bride.

Schlessinger never got along with her father, and she and her mother had been estranged for at least 14 years before her mother's death in 2002. (Her partially decomposed corpse had been on the floor of her apartment [a few miles away from Schlessinger's home] for several weeks before being discovered. Police initially suspected foul play.)

Schlessinger has also been estranged from her sister since the mid-1970s, and has reportedly told friends she is an only child. She says it was her family that shunned her, not the other way around.

"My door is open", Schlessinger has said, on those rare occasions when she mentions her sister. On her show, however, she has often advised listeners to break off contact with troublesome family members. "I love shunning", she says. "It reminds people they have an obligation to others".

Schlessinger has also exhibited some ambivalence about her religious views.

NNDB reports that she has changed her religious orientation several times during her life.
In 1996 Schlessinger and her son Deryk converted to Conservative Judaism, then switched to Orthodox Judaism in 1998. She has said that her husband Lew, raised an Episcopalian, also converted, but he later admitted he had not completed the conversion.

In 2003, Schlessinger announced on the air that she was no longer an Orthodox Jew, that she felt frustrated by the effort she had put into the religion, and complained that she felt little or no connection with God. NNDB claims that she converted to Christianity that same year.

Schlessinger's radio show can be heard on 200 stations across the nation or on-line here.