WHAT'S UP WITH ALL THE WHINING?

Like most Americans, I have a morning routine that one interrupts at their own peril. And for me, one important element of that routine is watching a few minutes of The Today Show before I head off to work. For some strange reason, I just don't feel quite ready to tackle the day if Matt, Meredith, Al, and Ann haven't given me a rundown on the big stories facing our nation. So, you can imagine how grumpy I was last week when my Today Show experience involved witnessing part of an interview with Dr. (of Physiology) Laura Schlessinger pimping her new book Stop Whining, Start Living.

Rather than go with my instinct, however, to throw the remote at the television, I decided to attempt a little self help and take in some of Dr. Laura's sage advice. And you know what? ... She's right! There is a great deal of whining going on in Santa Barbara lately. In fact, Dr. Laura's wisdom got me thinking about some prime examples of major whining taking place around here ...

- When the News-Press accused Jerry Roberts of downloading porn, Dr. Laura was pretty whiny about the public's negative reaction to Wendy McCaw's actions. Then, a few weeks later, when her son was accused of the same thing, she whined, "We hope all news media outlets will respect his privacy ..."

- When a former NP Healthspan columnist stated that Dr. Laura has "the cajones to preach against tolerating diversity" in one if his columns, man, you would not believe the whining that occurred. Dr. Laura whined-up such a storm that it resulted in the firing of his editor and the resignation of the columnist himself.

- Come to think of it, what do you think lead to her intolerant label in the first place? Hmmm, maybe it was Dr. Laura constantly whining that gays and lesbians are 'abnormal,' 'aberrant,' 'deviant,' 'disordered,' 'dysfunctional,' and 'an error.' That would be my guess anyway.

In the Amazon.com book description for Dr. Laura's new tome, it states that Stop Whining, Start Living encourages whiners "to reject negative thoughts, emotions, and attitudes; shift perspective; open up to gratitude and goodness; and embrace obligations to loved ones and the world in general." Sounds good. I think a great place to start would be for Santa Barbarans to reject the huge steaming pile of negative thoughts, emotions, and attitudes that come from Dr. Laura and the News-Press as a whole.

Yep, it's definitely time to push out those bad emotions and embrace the good. For example, the gigantic collective 2,000 person whine that occurred when Dr. Laura's picture popped-up on the screen during Citizen McCaw was just quite unproductive for the public's healing process. I mean, booing and hissing is very negative behavior.

So, thank you, Dr. Laura. I very much look forward to a lack of whining over the next few years ... from all of us.

WENDY MCCAW TO THE RESCUE!

In my last post, I was taken to task by people on both sides of the issue for running under the assumption that Dr. Laura's son is guilty (of posting some pretty heinous items on a MySpace page) before all the facts have surfaced. I don't necessarily agree with this assessment, but I will admit to not pulling any punches either. I simply gave the good doctor of physiology the same courtesy she gives to others.

If it wasn't Dr. Laura's son at issue, do you Schlessinger fans out there think she would give this person the benefit of the doubt? The answer, of course, is no ... and I can prove it. As anyone local to the Santa Barbara area knows, the Santa Barbara News-Press recently printed a front page article attempting to link former executive editor Jerry Roberts to child pornography. The article was carefully crafted to make it appear as if they were innocently trying to obtain the hard drive from his computer, but we all know their motives are much more sinister. As Jerry himself recently pointed out in a Los Angeles Times opinion piece:

These articles were all published in the full knowledge that: 1) the hard drive in the computer was bought used by the News-Press; 2) the hard drive had been used by as many as three other editors before it got to me; and 3) an investigation by law enforcement experts could not determine when or by whom the offending images were downloaded.

But none of these facts prevented Wendy McCaw from trying to ruin Mr. Roberts anyway. She not only had the audacity to print this "news story" on the Sunday front page, but consider this:

1) Jerry Robert's name was in the headline of the story.

2) Wendy did not list the names of the other editors who used that machine.

3) I'm not sure any other articles or blogs have pointed out that she also used ROBERTS as the jump line to take you to the rest of the story on another page (if she was not trying to link Mr. Roberts to those images, why not have the jump line read PORN or HARD DRIVE?).

So, did Dr. Laura run to Jerry Robert's defense? Did she get up on her holier-than-thou podium and yell with her big fat microphone, "Hey, you guys, Jerry Roberts is innocent until proven guilty in the good ol' US of A!" No, she instead chose to write a column for the NP defending the newspaper's actions.

But fear not, true believers. For all who want to get to the truth of the MySpace page, you (believe it or not) have an ally in the person of ... Wendy McCaw. As Ms. McCaw stated in her recent letter to the Los Angeles Times regarding journalist Lou Cannon:

The Lou Cannons of this world missed the point in our story that our newsroom computers contained this vile material, and how we at the News-Press are fighting to determine who did it. Now we have a real story: It's a story of just how cavalier many in our country are to the suffering and misery of the children subjected to this depravity. Whoever traffics in it, whoever excuses it, simply aids and abets the victimization of those innocents.

I see. So, you're either for Jerry Roberts or against child pornography. Hmm, well, I don't like child pornography, so ... sorry Jerry, you're out. But if we have to take him down, then we have to take down everyone, right? Ms. McCaw said it herself:

We intend to write more about the scourge of child pornography and we intend to uncover and expose anyone, including any former or current employees of our paper, who traffics and delights in the sexual abuse of children.

The MySpace page in question contained images of "child molestation," so am I right in assuming Ms. McCaw will be aggressively pursuing this case as well? In fact, let's work together on this, Wendy. We'll join forces to fight this evil and call ourselves Team McCaw. Do you want to subpoena the military demanding to see the content of the MySpace page or should I? And of course, we're absolutely not going to take no for an answer. Plus, I'm sure whatever means they use to determine who posted that horrible content can't match up to the CSI equipment in The Average-Man Cave. In fact, with your money, I can finally get those fancy new forensics gadgets I've been pining for. We'll be unstoppable!

I know this will be hard for you to do, Wendy, because Dr. Laura is an employee and a friend. But justice is blind, and we know how concerned you are with being unbiased. It's good we have noble people like you defending our children ... if not our animals.

PEOPLE IN GLASS HOUSES

The Average Man does not like Dr. Laura Schlessinger. I don't tend to use words such as hate or loath on this blog very often, but they certainly would not be inappropriate in this case. So far, I've kept my tongue in check regarding Dr. Laura, because others like Craig Smith and George have done an outstanding job of covering her antics. However, the local blogosphere was relatively silent regarding the recent announcement that she was taking a "break" from her column in the Santa Barbara News-Press. Therefore, I thought this would be a good time to get a few things off my chest.

At the expense of stating the obvious, let me start off by telling you what I don't like about Dr. Laura ... she is a hypocrite. "So, lots of people are hypocrites?," you might say. "What makes her so special?" That's a good point, but for me, Dr. Laura takes hypocrisy to a whole other level. You see, for Dr. Laura, it's all about judgement. She stands on her podium with her extra large loudspeaker and dictates to all the little people how to live their lives. YOU are a bad person. YOU don't know how to properly raise a family. YOU don't know how to keep a spouse. And is there any room for error or youthful indiscretion in Dr. Laura's eyes? Absolutely not. Wikipidea does a nice job of detailing all the things at which Dr. Laura likes to wag her finger ...

These include sex outside of marriage ... living together in uncommitted cohabitation before marriage ... intentional single parenthood, re-marrying while living with children from a first marriage, daycare in lieu of a parent staying home to raise their children, the viewing of pornography, the allowing of a schedule arrangement in which neither parent is home when children arrive home from school, marrying too quickly or out of desperation, permissive parenting ... easy or no-fault divorce, and same-sex marriage.

Wow, someone with this many dogmatic positions about YOU sure better have her own house in order. But wait, she doesn't. In fact, she has more skeletons in her closet than Pol Pot; my favorite being the famous incident in 1998 when nude photos of Dr. Laura were posted on the Internets. And what was her excuse upon being forced to accept this embarrassing situation? Oh, I was young and had "no moral authority" at the time. Huh? It gets better ... Soon after the nudey photos controversy "reports surfaced that Schlessinger cheated on her first husband, broke up the marriage of the man who became her second husband, lived with him while unmarried and intentionally bore a child with him out of wedlock." (also from the Wikipidea entry)

Now, does The Average Man judge Dr. Laura for these things? No, I could care less. But that's not the issue. The question is how would Dr. Laura judge Dr. Laura for these things? I suppose it depends on whether she was looking in the mirror or anonymously calling into her own radio show.

This leads us to the present. As it was recently reported in The Salt Lake Tribune, Dr. Laura's son -- currently serving in Afghanistan -- was allegedly caught posting items on his MySpace page that contained the following ...

... cartoon depictions of rape, murder, torture and child molestation; photographs of soldiers with guns in their mouths; a photograph of a bound and blindfolded detainee captioned "My Sweet Little Habib"; accounts of illicit drug use; and a blog entry headlined by a series of obscenities and racial epithets.

As if that wasn't bad enough, he also allegedly wrote the following on said blog ...

Yes . . . F---ING Yes!!! ... I LOVE MY JOB, it takes everything reckless and deviant and heathenistic and just overall bad about me and hyper focuses these traits into my job of running around this horrid place doing nasty things to people that deserve it . . . and some that don't.

Nice. So, what's my reaction? Well, these are clearly the rantings of a disturbed human being who needs some major help (from a real doctor of psychology). But again, that's neither here nor there. The point is what Dr. Laura would say to the mother of someone else's kid who said such things. Do you think she would hold out a sympathetic hand and offer words of comfort or encouragement? Or do you think she would harshly scold this person and blame their son's behaviour on bad parenting? I report. You decide.

So, I have a question for you, Dr. Laura ... why are you taking a break from the News-Press? Is it because you feel bad about preaching family values when your own family is in disarray. Or is it maybe because it seems a little silly defending the News-Press against Jerry Roberts in light of the content on your son's MySpace page? I, for one, was looking forward to some of those insightful News-Press columns where you would defend your son's actions and discuss the proper way to raise warriors ... right before telling us all the ills of daycare.

In the interest of full disclosure, Trekking Left is very close to someone who was fired from the News-Press because a columnist dared to say that Dr. Laura is intolerant. This statement is not entirely true, however. Dr. Laura is only intolerant to those who don't have the last name Schlessinger.