Posted by
Playful Walrus on Tuesday, February 03, 2009 6:23:07 PM
Less than 24 hours ago, someone commented on an entry in the main blog here at Townhall.com, dismissing a mention of Dr. Laura Schlessinger with attack I have seen before:
Ask her about morality: she abandoned her own mother, leaving the old woman sick, poor, vulnerable and alone. She was murdered by thugs in her run-down apartment.
There are a few overused canned attacks on Dr. Laura, and this is one of them. This person is attempting to dismiss a point of Dr. Laura's by attacking Dr. Laura instead of the point.
This dismissal might work if Dr. Laura was making a point about how to stay closely involved with a difficult mother as an adult, because taking the statement at face value as true, it indicated that Dr. Laura was not close to her mother.
Mostly though, it is a weak attack, often used by people who are irritated by Dr. Laura's priorities, which are NOT negated by the circumstances involving her mother. Based on listening to Dr. Laura and reading what she has written, I gather her top priority is:
Raising the next generation to be as healthy (physically, morally, emotionally) as possible through personal responsibility.
That doesn’t sound so bad, does it? What is controversial about that? Well, it is the details that people object to – usually not because those details don't help create a healthy generation, but because they are inconvenient to the person objecting. And that really gets their goat.
The details in Dr. Laura’s priority include:
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- Not fornicating so as to avoid the risks of making babies out of wedlock, spreading STDs, and decreasing the chance of a happy, lasting marriage.
- Unmarried women giving children up for adoption instead of having them killed or raising them without a father.
- Not getting married until you are a ready to be a good spouse and have found a good spouse.
- Treating your spouse kindly (that includes wives treating their husbands well, too!)
- If unhappy with your spouse, who is also the mother or father of your children, maintaining an intact home that has a nurturing environment until the youngest child is 18 instead of divorcing and re-marrying and/or making more babies with someone else.
- If you are without a spouse of the opposite sex, not conceiving a child to be raised without a mother or a father.
- Older generations not cannibalizing younger generations - for example, a wife and mother should not donate a kidney to her elderly mother.
- Avoiding toxic people, even if you are related by blood.
You get the idea.
So why should we not listen to any of this because of how Dr. Laura's mother died? How is what happened to her mother a moral failure on her part? Adult relationships are voluntary, unless a crime is being committed. It takes two to keep that relationship going. These critics have no idea what went on between Dr. Laura and her mother. It is entirely possible that her mother avoided her due to her (the mother's) own faults or errors. That wouldn't be Dr. Laura’s failure. If her mother was murdered, that would be the fault of the murderers.
I do have some minor areas where I quibble with Dr. Laura. Overall, though, she is helping to make the world a better place. She is usually spot-on.
So if you disagree with Dr. Laura, explain why - if you want to be taken seriously. We already know she, like the rest of us, isn't perfect. Citing what you think is a mistake in a personal life doesn’t negate the truth of what she advocates.