Originally published:

Pawtucket Times, July 18, 2000

by Mary Ann Sorrentino

Dear Dr. Laura,

There has been much written and talked about lately with reference to your degrading comments on the air about homosexuals. Your fans are quick to spring to your defense. Some of them are fond of justifying your comments by referring to passages from whatever testament they hold dear. Interestingly, you are a convert to Judaism, but you hold sway over many fundamentalist Christians who might, in other circumstances, call you an infidel. Bonded as they are to your hyper-traditional views on family and lifestyles, they are willing to overlook the fact that you actually rejected the Jesus they revere (in defiance of Commandment Number One) in order to adopt the faith of your father when you stopped talking to your mother (Commandment Number Four).

You have weathered public outrage before. Just a few years ago, when a former married lover of yours (commandment Number Six) posted nude photos of

you on the Internet, you at first denied that the photos were Actually of you. (Isn't that called lying or bearing false witness?) Eventually, however, you did 'fess up by admitting that, years ago, when you were also married to your first husband, you had had an affair with a then-married boss of yours. (Oops, there goes Commandment Six again, and even Number Nine!)

After a few rough weeks, people seemed to forget the incident and the naked pictures, and you went back to being the beacon of truth and light for those

listeners of yours who can't seem to navigate routine curves in the road of life without calling for your advice on the radio. You have recently (sort of) apologized for calling gay and lesbian people "aberrations of nature..." but only after your television debut was put in jeopardy as your sponsors starting dropping like flies (sounds like Coveting Thy Neighbor's Goods to me!) Clearly you were worried about losing a few million bucks in the wake of your own public denouncement of some fellow human beings whose lives really have nothing to do with you. This is hard for some of us to understand since you sold your show to your current syndicators for a reported $70 million just a few years ago. (Do I sense a few of the seven deadly sins here? Greed or Covetousness and maybe even a little Gluttony?) No matter.

Fact is that many of us who have heard you on the radio hanging people out to dry because they didn't live up to the Dr. Laura standard of good behavior know that you are one tough cookie in the "Do as I say not as I do" department. You are a mother who spends little time with her own son but insists that people earning in a year less than you earn in a week, stay home with their offspring as opposed to going to work and depending on day care. You are an admitted adulteress who has no compassion for others who may be guilty only of committing the same sins you have committed. You are a Jew who claims to be Orthodox who appeared in the pages of Vanity Fair Magazine in an outfit that in no way resembles the traditional trappings of an Orthodox Jewish wife and mother. You have a degree in physiology but masquerade as a psychotherapist. You lack compassion and patience, treat your callers with disrespect, and you seem intoxicated with the heady drink of power and celebrity that some unbalanced and helpless souls who apparently have nowhere else to turn have delivered to you. You have

capitalized on their helplessness and responded to them with arrogance. (Is your Pride showing, Dr. Laura?)

I wonder if you have ever heard of the seven attributes for which all good people should strive? I am talking about Wisdom, Understanding, Counsel,

Fortitude, Knowledge, Piety and Fear of the Lord. By my count, you seem to be coming up short in a few of those areas. So while your comments against gays and lesbians have brought you up short in a very public way, I just wanted to write to say that some of us have been bothered by your hypocrisy and judgmental lack of compassion since long before you put your pedicured foot in your mouth on homosexuality. Your pseudo-rabbinical sermonizing and your outright cruelty to some callers had deep roots going way back to a time long before your television ambitions had taken form in your greedy

little soul.

Now go take on the day ... and try to do the right thing, which isn't always the Right thing!