This is a little old news, but some of you may know about Dr.Laura getting in big trouble from her statements on her radio show.I have been a fan of her since I found her contents at the LingQ library. It is disappointing.
I would appreciate if anyone who listened to it explain why she took President Obama as an example and what was really wrong with her remarks other than her using “N” word many times.
Here’s the link:
Laura Schlesinger is a doctor of Physiology, which has nothing to do with counseling others. She calls herself doctor because she knows it will boost her ratings as a radio show host.
I suspect she deliberately brought up the apparently contradictory usage of “the N-word” in order to boost her ratings too, because it is a hot topic among her audience. I doubt she really cares at all about the issue itself.
The issue itself is easy to explain. Public opinion, as well as some authoritative bodies, say that the word “nigger” is hate-speech. It is more than a word, it is an automatic incitement to substantial violent action toward a group based on their race. What’s more, and this is the important point, it stops being “hate-speech” when it is spoken by someone from the black community. It is this contradiction that “Dr” Laura and her followers are getting excited about.
Other racial slurs, such as “kike”, “jap”, “chink” “wop”…(the list is endless) do not fall under that category. At least I do not think so.
Personally I don’t see why I should be censored from using any word in our society. I don’t believe in “hate speech”. Words are words, not emotions or actions.
In practice, I almost never use any of those words anyway, not from a sense of censorship, but because it is irrelevant to me what race an idiot is. An idiot is an idiot.
I agree with article’s author when he says, “Dr. Laura invoked the n-word not as a racist, but as a bullying, tone-deaf, faux-naïve, tendentious blowhard.”
dooo: "I don’t believe in “hate speech” "
I do think that people who say exceptionally vile things and who have a large public megaphone may be dangerous and their utterings certainly qualify as hateful speech. I know that freedom of speech comes above everything else in the US. Just recently the infamous Westboro Baptist Church won a Supreme Court case which upheld their right to picket dead soldiers’ funerals with slogans such as “Thank God for dead soldiers” and “God hates fags”. One soldier’s familiy had enough and took the WBC to court and finally lost. I cannot imagine how much pain these wackos must have caused grieving parents all over the US.
Living in a country where there is no free speech I know this is a very fine line. However I tend to side with the fallen soldiers’ families in this case. On Youtube I have watched an ABC documentary about the WBC which is essentially the extended family of its founder, nutcase in chief Fred Phelps. It is heartbreaking to see the brainwash two generations of Phelps offspring has gone through.
I am sure they all were home schooled.
I should make it clear that we do not endorse Dr. Laura’s comments in any way, but feel that this program is excellent language learning material, because it is fast paced, interesting and controversial.
Thank you for your relply, doo and Friedmann 
Steve,
I posted this because I didn’t quite understand the whole show and because there is no transcript on the website.
I like her advice in most cases and I really appreciate you have her contents on the Library and want more
@Friedemann said: “I am sure they all were home schooled.”
Funnily enough, in the UK homeschoolers are very often the children of intellectual liberals, who home school because they believe they can provide a better quality of education for their children than the state system can. They may lack some social skills, but they are quite often very smart, open-minded people.
I suppose much depends on the parents’ reasons for homeschooling.
As regards Dr Laura’s comments, I don’t agree with what she says and I don’t think much of her use of language, but as a fast-paced programme it probably is worth recommending to language learners. It’s often worth encouraging people to listen to material they disagree with, to provoke an emotional as well as a rational response :-0