

As published in the Eldorado Sun, Santa Fe, NM, January 2001 issue, Jim Terr's monthly column, "Don't Get Me Started." (http://www.eldoradosun.com)

Open Letter to Dr. Laura Schlessinger, December 11, 2000

Dear Dr. Laura,

I believe you truly outdid yourself today. If I understood you correctly, you were complaining that because you have been misrepresented and misquoted so often in the press, you are living proof that journalists have lost all credibility, and that the press therefore does not deserve and will not have for long the particular freedoms guaranteed to it by the Constitution.

Having disparaged (contrary to your oft-repeated admonitions to your listeners not to be disparaging, hateful or impolite) librarians, psychiatrists, school teachers, etc., now you're starting in on journalists.

I doubt that you know any journalists personally, other than the right-wing sources you referred to today, and you certainly never would have made it as a journalist (or a school teacher, librarian, etc.). How about a little appreciation and understanding for people who have hard, generally thankless jobs, often much more difficult and less ego-gratifying than yours?

If you knew any working journalists, or ever hung around a newsroom for even a few hours, you would find out how hard most journalists work to confirm facts. Not every report and allegation is open to the three confirmations you demand (at least for any stories involving you), but shouldn't we hold you to the same standards that you demand of journalists?

Compare the level of accuracy and objectivity of the press to the slander and generalizations about large groups of people that you spew daily (your latest favorite: Democrats!). You have no room to criticize a profession which by training and habit, makes a tremendous effort to be accurate and objective.

Your statement, "There is no serious journalism; it's getting so bad that there soon may not be any constitutional protection for journalists" certainly must make you feel good, but it's a self-fulfilling prophecy for people like you, who can't handle the existence of news and views that you don't agree with.

You said today, "I can't support the press having special privileges". Oh really? How about talk show hosts? They aren't even mentioned specifically in the Constitution, as the press is.

I hate to be anywhere near paranoid, but is it any coincidence that just as a Bush presidency emerged, right-wing pundits like yourself began floating more and more openly the idea that the press could use a few restrictions? You quote the statistic that 32 percent of Americans support some restrictions on the press, as though there is some objective "truth" that a Big Brother government can guarantee. You, of all people, should be horrified at this prospect.

If another Democratic administration were in power, with the kind of authoritarian control over the press that you and other right-wingers dream of, you would be damn thankful that the press is guaranteed its freedom, even given their all-too-human margin of error and bias that we all must put up with. If somebody has reported inaccurately or unfavorably on you, why don't you just shrug it off as everybody in the public eye has to do from time to time, instead of palpitating at the prospect of a muzzled press?

Someone who freely admits that she gets her news and views from Rush Limbaugh (as you did on November 21) is in no position to criticize people who generally do make a serious, professional effort to be accurate and balanced. On that same day I heard you say about Rush, after quoting his crackpot view on something or other: "He's been in the business long enough to know what he's talking about."

You do realize what business he's in, don't you? He's in the business of demonizing "liberals" and glorifying "conservatives," regardless of any fact or view which might run contrary to that thesis, for the gratification of people who like a simple, black-and-white political and social analysis.

In fact, Rush has done something brilliant, if evil: As you know, many adults as well as children and adolescents live with the natural ongoing questions, "Where do I fit in?" What's right? How should I act? Who am I? What distinguishes me from others?

Rush brilliantly answers those questions with a comprehensive, well-constructed mythology and value system, which you seem to have adopted from him: Conservatives/Republicans are good, generous, moderate, fair-minded, sensible, hard-working, family-oriented, God-fearing, self-reliant, temperate and reasonable - - as opposed to liberals/Democrats. (Lately you have even taken to using Al Gore as your metaphor for everything evil, amoral and duplicitous!)

Liberals, on the other hand, have no comparable mythology, and no spokesman as clever and popular as Rush to spew it, with no bevy of clones such as yourself to repeat it and expand upon it.

You might want to consider whether the corporate interests who typically support the Republican Party and their supposed agenda of self-reliance, responsibility, "family," "community," and the future, are really committed to those things. If they were, they would not be the same people who do whatever they can to plunder the earth and its people, based on unrealistic, unsustainable assumptions about population and consumer growth, to meet the immediate demands of the bottom line at all costs.

The best instincts and aspirations of good-hearted Christians, Republicans and other "middle Americans" have been successfully co-opted by conservative Republicans and corporate operatives and ideologues, often by creating phony "grassroots" citizen groups in order to appear legitimate.

Every time you talk about one of your favorite nemeses--gay or environmental activists, librarians, psychiatrists, liberals, etc.--and say "what they really want...", "what they're really doing..." or "what their real agenda is...", you should know that you're generally wrong, and that you're slandering and demeaning people. But you do it anyway, since you have the platform and enough yes-sayers to make you feel good about it in spite of whatever conscience you may have.

Many years ago I underwent a process called "rebirthing," essentially a rapid-breathing process which tends to bring up whatever buried sources of sadness or conflict are nearest the surface. What unexpectedly overwhelmed me was a feeling of great sadness for having bought in to the anti-"Establishment" rhetoric of my college days, which had caused me to dismiss and demean an entire segment of the population, many of them perfectly honorable and sincere. It had evidently made me feel good to demonize them, but I now regret this profoundly, and endeavor to avoid making the same mistake again.

In the spirit of Lee Atwater, the conservative attack dog who found himself on his deathbed tearfully asking forgiveness for all the havoc he'd wrought, I'd recommend you consider doing the same.

Jim Terr is the author of "Letters to Doctor Laura, and other struggles against demagoguery and fundamentalism" (http://www.bluecanyonproductions.com/letters.html)