I had just finished watching Stephen Colbert’s hilarious treatment of Dr. Laura Schlessinger’s recent rant when I got my weekly call from WEUP Radio in Huntsville, Alabama.  Radio host and journalist David Person asked me for my take on Dr. Laura’s tirade. 

Here’s the background (you can get the full audio and text versions of the complete conversation here).  Dr. Laura got a call from a black woman with a white husband.  The woman was upset because her husband’s friends sometimes toss around racially offensive language in her presence and ask racially insensitive questions.  Dr. Laura asked what her caller meant by “racially offensive”.  Some people, she explained, are hyper-sensitive about race.  Then Dr. Laura launched into phase one of her rant:

“A lot of blacks voted for Obama simply ’cause he was half-black,” she informed the caller. “Didn’t matter what he was gonna do in office, it was a black thing. You gotta know that. That’s not a surprise. Not everything that somebody says — we had friends over the other day; we got about 35 people here — the guys who were gonna start playing basketball. I was going to go out and play basketball. My bodyguard and my dear friend is a black man. And I said, “White men can’t jump; I want you on my team.” That was racist? That was funny.”

The caller was undeterred.  “How about the N-word?” she asked.  “So, the N-word’s been thrown around . . .”

This was Dr. Laura’s cue to give us phase 2:

Black guys use it all the time. Turn on HBO, listen to a black comic, and all you hear is nigger, nigger, nigger.   I don’t get it. If anybody without enough melanin says it, it’s a horrible thing; but when black people say it, it’s affectionate. It’s very confusing. Don’t hang up, I want to talk to you some more. Don’t go away.”

After the break, the caller confronted Schlessinger with her use of the “nigger-word” and the unrepentant host accused the caller of being hypersensitive about race.  When “Jade” gave up, Dr. Laura tried to explain her curious behavior to her audience.

“If you’re that hypersensitive about color and don’t have a sense of humor,” Schlessinger said, “don’t marry out of your race. If you’re going to marry out of your race, people are going to say, “OK, what do blacks think? What do whites think? What do Jews think? What do Catholics think?” Of course there isn’t a one-think per se. But in general there’s “think.”  And what I just heard from Jade is a lot of what I hear from black-think — and it’s really distressting [sic] and disturbing. And to put it in its context, she said the N-word, and I said, on HBO, listening to black comics, you hear “nigger, nigger, nigger.” I didn’t call anybody a nigger. Nice try, Jade. Actually, sucky try.”

Response has been mixed.  Sarah Palin, to nobody’s surprise, called Schlessinger a first amendment hero. 

On NPR’s Morning Edition, black commentator John Ridley said he found Dr. Laura’s use of the n-word laughable, like something out of a Monty Python sketch.  What bothered him more, he said, was the utter disregard Schlessinger showed for a caller with a legitimate concern.  And then there was the way Dr. Laura appeared to “luxuriate” in the word, as if trying to make its utterance as offensive as possible. 

Ridley was surprised that a media maven like Dr. Laura didn’t understand that Jerry Seinfeld can make Jewish jokes, Jeff Foxworthy can tell redneck jokes and black comedians can toss around the n-word because they are indulging in self-deprecating humor about their own social group; a gentile telling Jewish jokes or a black guy cracking wise about rednecks isn’t funny.

Host Scott Simon asked if it was like the person who says, “I can make jokes about my sister, but don’t you even think about it.”

My rambling comments on WEUP Talk covered much the same ground.

Is there anything left to say?

For one thing, Sarah Palin’s cheerleading notwithstanding, Dr. Laura has issued a formal apology.  “I ended up, I’m sure, with many of you losing the point I was trying to make, because you were shocked by the fact that I said the word.  I, myself, realized I had made a horrible mistake, and was so upset I could not finish the show.” 

On the other hand, her performance on Larry King Live, didn’t sound so apologetic.

Having listened to the tape of the exchange a couple of times now, I am struck by the fact that Dr. Laura appeared incapable of hearing the caller’s question.  Her own frustration with political correctness and double-standards lives very close to the surface.  The slightest reference to racial insensitivity and all the venom came pouring out of the poor woman.  She wasn’t trying to make a “philosophical point”.   She was obviously obsessed with the unfairness of having to self-censor while black rappers get away with being as nasty as they wanna be.  That’s all she could think about.

Did it ever occur to Dr. Laura that a lot of white people voted against Barack Obama because he was black . . . it was a white thing?  Probably not.

I got the impression that Dr. Laura, like many white people, finds it hard to think and feel her away inside the skin of a black person–even in a provisional way.  She wasn’t behaving like a trained therapist trying to help a caller with a legitimate concern; she sounded more like a stressed-out woman with a desperate need to vent.

Every so often a male buddy will tell me, “hey, we ought to go golfing some time.”  These friendly words put me on edge.  I haven’t golfed for thirty years.  The last time I tried, I literally couldn’t hit the ball off the tee with a driver.  I need to practice my swing for a few hours before I hit the links–but when am I going to do that?

Similarly, most of us are so unpracticed at race talk that, like the unfortunate Ms. Schlessinger, we fall all over our feet when the subject comes up.  We can’t hit the ball.  It’s embarrassing.  Embarrassment leads to anger.  Or to sullen silence.

Americans talk about race when somebody like Dr. Laura transgresses the boundaries, when Henry Luis Gates reacts harshly to a police officer in his kitchen or when the Jena 6 are charged with attempted murder.  We choose up sides and say our piece.  I’m not sure if anything positive is accomplished by these occasional shouting matches beyond a fleeting opportunity to blow off  a little steam.

Dr. Laura is free to say pretty much anything she wants to say.  Nobody is talking about filing a lawsuit. The First Amendment remains in full force.  But we have the right to be offended by offensive talk.  We are free to say what we will, but we’ve got to live with the consequences.  I can’t remember a period in my adult life when so many people felt the need to engage in crude and intolerant rants. 

Things were worse in the late 50s and early 60s when I was a kid.  But back then we had folks like Martin Luther King talking about a Beloved Community marked by compassion, mutual respect and radical inclusion.  Hardly anyone talks that way in our brave new twenty-first-century world.  That needs to change.