She's ending her radio show, because, according to her, she wants to "regain" her First Amendment rights, following an episode in which she used the "n-word" a number of times while speaking with a black caller to her radio show.

You can listen to an audio clip of the segment, in which she was talking to a black woman named Jade, who called in for advice regareding comments she perceived as racist by her white husband's friends and family members, here.

---My thoughts on the audio clip
The first thing that I understood when listening to the clip was that she did not address anyone as a "n****r", or speak of anyone as a "n****r", but rather, only used the word while having a conversation about the word. While casual use of the word to address or speak of people offends me, the mere use of it, especially in some type of topical discussion about it does not, and the insistence that it should be strikes me as typically of political correctness overkill. How are people to discuss such matters if they can't reference the word? I mean, it's a word. It's power to cause hurt should be mitigated by the listener's understanding of the context in which it's used. I mean, what if I want to discuss the autobiography of comedian Dick Gregory? How do I do that? Must the phrase "n-word" be an officially sanctioned replacement for the word "n1gger", such that anyone must fear ostracization should they fail to comply?

The thing that did stand out when I listened to the clip, however, was not racism per se, but the typical threadbare reasoning and non sequiturs that she employed in place of calm, reasoned logic.

Don't get me wrong, I've heard some of Schlessinger's inane, Astroturf Logic drivel before, like when she commented in 2000 that allowing a girl to wear a two-piece bikini will result in her becoming pregnant. (I better pass that along to my sister, who got married in her late 20s, and didn't get pregnant until she was 32, despite having worn two-pieces in her teens.)

But still, it was hard not for me to wince a bit when she reacted to Jade's statement that her husband's friend is prone to coming over to her home immediately asking questions about what black people think, feel or like by saying that it was "not racist". How precisely treating one member of an ethnicity as if they speak for the entire group is not racist, I'll never know.

But then it gets really weird: Schlessinger elaborates on her viewpoint by asserting that "without giving it much thought, a lot of blacks voted for Obama simply because he is half black."

Um....what does this have to do with Jade's husband or his loved ones? And for that matter, what is her basis for this assertion?

It almost seems as if Schlessinger was using Jade's problem to get off of her chest opinions she had on race-related topics, even though they had nothing to do with whether the comments by this man's loved ones were racist or not.

When Jade continues by asking Schlessinger about the use of the n-word, Schlessinger points out that professional comedians use the word n-word in their acts, and black stereotypes are commonly parroted among people as jokes that Schlessinger thinks are funny. How exactly does the fact that a joke might be funny mean that a person acting as if Jade somehow speaks for all blacks is not? Jade didn't even offer that much detail or context about the exchange with her husband's friend before Schlessinger cut her off with her knee-jerk conclusion that it wasn't racist, so how can Schlessinger offer this argument, when she didn't know if the husband's friend was joking? For that matter, even if the friend was joking, racial humor is a type of humor that one should only employ if A. they're in a venue where it might be expected, such as a comedy show, or B. they're speaking with someone to whom they share some type of rapport, someone they know isn't offended by that type of humor. If Schlessinger is capable of comprehending these subtle points of reason, these distinctions, she gives little evidence of it.

Schlessinger continues her Obama non sequitur by complaining that despite Obama's election, more people are complaining about racism. In addition to again offering no empirical evidence for this, it has nothing to do with Jade, who just called in to ask Schlessinger for advice about her family problem, but Schlessinger just can't keep herself from not only dismissing Jade's predicament ("You shouldn't be offended if his family refers to black people as n1ggers, Jade, because Obama is president now!"), but exploiting it to make some rhetorical white-backlash rant.

Schlessinger asks Jade, who was taken about by Schlessinger's use of the n-word, if she ever watches HBO or standup comedians who use that word. Had I been Jade, I'd have said, "Actually, I don't have HBO, and I do like racial humor if it's funny, but not if it's just an unintelligible string of racial epithets. In any event, my husband's friends and family were not joking when they said these things, Dr. Laura." I say "would" not just because this would have the virtue of being true, and because I'm not Jade, but Jade just a few word's worth of her answer in before Schlessinger cut her off, saying that because Jade doesn't view the use of that word the same as Schlessinger, that Jade therefore has a "chip on her shoulder", and "too much sensitivity".

She then becomes irate with Jade by demanding that Jade let her finish a sentence, and says that after Obama was elected, she thought that “the attempt to demonize whites” would stop.

Imagine.

Telling a black person that if they take offense to a loved one’s friends or family members making racist comments or using the word “n1gger”, that they're "too sensitive", have a "chip on their shoulder", “have no sense of humor”, and are trying to “demonize whites”.

It’s clear that Schlessinger didn’t give a damnn about Jade’s problem, and was just using it as a springboard into a completely different discussion on a different topic that had nothing to do with Jade.

Much as I did when I first heard some of her shows during my first office job in 2000, I am left mystified that anyone would call into this person's show. Why, after all the mountainloads of evidence that's been provided that shows that Schlessinger couldn't string together a coherent idea if she had a gun pointed to her head, would anyone go to her for any kind of advice? She has the IQ of a bag of hammers, for cryin' out loud!

---On Larry King Live
Regarding her appearance on Larry King Live, I do commend her for conceding that her statements did not help Jade, and that her behavior was inappropriate, but I notice that she continued to insist that she was trying to "help" Jade with her "hypersensitivity". In my opinion, she was not trying to "help" anyone, but, as aforementioned, used Jade to launch into a tirade about a broader sociological that was only related Jade's problem in the most tenuous manner. The fact that she continues to reference, with matter-of-fact wording, the "hypersensitivity" that she did not establish Jade had, further complicates my ability to judge her "apology" as fully sincere.

Her whining about "regaining" her First Amendment rights is also bogus, since she never lost her rights; she just doesn't like it that other people employ theirs to criticize her. When you consider the condescending tongue-lashing she doled out to Jade about her being too "sensitive", Schlessinger's decision to play the victim is quite striking in its irony.

Dr. Laura said that she thought complaints of racism would decrease after Obama's election, but they increased (as if Obama's election eliminated all racism -- absurd, but that's what she seems to believe). She doesn't even consider the fact that maybe the complaints increased because the racism increased, which was the perfectly reasonable point that Jade was making. Whether it's true or not, I don't know -- and probably neither does Dr. Laura. She simply dismissed Jade's theory as "a chip on her shoulder," rather than considering that it might be correct.

She said plenty of nutty things in that conversation that are worse than the n-word. It reminds me of the guy in "Life of Brian":

I don't think it should be a sin, just for saying "Jehovah..."

How can it be worse? Jehovah! Jehovah! Jehovah!

Imprudent, but not worth stoning her to death.