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Self-righteousness is the gateway to a
fruitless life, Dr. Joy admonishes in
her "Nine Fantasies" book. She might as
well slap Dr. Laura in the face with a
steelhead; "Self-righteous" is the
No. 1 epithet assigned to morality
warriors like Schlessinger who think the
Ten Commandments aren't
self-explanatory. (Dr. Laura wrote a
book about them. She loves things in
groups of 10.) Nine fantasies plus eight realities
makes 17 concepts for Joy to cram a lot
of meaningful advice into. She tries,
but the effort to make a measured,
cohesive concept out of the enterprise
is doomed by her compulsion to drag
nonjudgmentalness into everything she
says. Fantasy No. 1, "There's No Place
Like Home," is not terribly different
from No. 4, "The Truth Will Set Me
Free," at least the way she explains it.
No. 6, "Ignorance is Bliss" is a lot
like No. 8, "Good Always Triumphs," but
directly opposed to No. 4, which
collides resoundingly into Reality No.
7: "People Do Things For Reasons." Using a Q&A format in which Browne
apparently pens the questions as well as
the answers, she's able to skew the
proceedings any way she wants to. But
she always comes to the same conclusion:
The letter-writer winds up in the
doghouse for meddling and smugness, even
when the complaint is that the
letter-writer's brother may be beating
up the letter-writer's niece. (This was
filed under Reality No. 1, "Never Tell
Someone Something They Already Know.")
You probably can't help the girl, says
Dr. Joy. "You can do quite a lot,
however, about your own shortcomings." What Dr. Joy is about is examining
yourself before you hop all over other
people. "Queenie" probably should have
done that instead of writing to say she
feels unloved because her bridge club
didn't appreciate her gift of two dozen
brownies. Dr. Joy gave herself an earful
on that one. (It falls under Fantasy No.
7, "Stick to Your Guns.") From
admonishing Queenie for doing good just
so she can score a little gratitude,
Browne launches into a definition of
socialization ("Somebody has to invent
ways of increasing the probability that
individuals will do the right thing")
and eventually winds up nosing into one
of the Big Questions: "Who determines
what's good and what's evil?" Queenie
may think the subject is brownies and
thwarted generosity. The real deal is,
she wants those bridge ladies punished
for lacking the virtue of thankfulness. From brownies to moral certitude in
three paragraphs: That's either too much
caffeine, or an agenda. Browne, now
definitively off to the races, warns us
away from catastrophic personality types
like Queenie: "Heaven protect us from
folks who are only trying to ... Help/Be
Honest/Be Kind/Do The Right Thing," she
says. The alert shrink-watcher will spot
that red flag: "Do the right thing" is
how Dr. Laura signs off every hour. It's
been her habit for a year, possibly two.
Habitual listeners can hear her yelp
that phrase 15 times a week. "Knowing your own agenda is a good
beginning," says Dr. Joy. If the
Enquirer is to be believed these days --
big if -- Browne's agenda is to make
sure people recognize Schlessinger for a
bully and a fraud. Dr. Joy has a Ph.D. in
psychology, she'll have us know. Dr.
Laura's is in physiology. (But Dr. Laura
doesn't go around saying she's a
shrink.) This name-calling turned up in
an article in which Dr. Joy confessed to
having snorted coke in the Reagan White
House. Everybody's a hypocrite, even
me, the confession implied. But we know
lots of much bigger hypocrites, don't
we? Especially proponents of premarital
purity whose naked how-do-you-dos have been
flashed all over the Internet. Dr. Laura had to endure that nasty
little scandal. But that was nearly two
years ago, and she's been acting as
freaked-out as if it were yesterday. The
few minutes of social commentary she
uses to kick off each hour have begun to
mutate and grow into surprisingly
vitriolic rants. Either she's getting
not enough sleep or too much karate or
maybe both; Dr. Laura seems to be coming
unglued. She's started coming down all
over her callers before they get a
chance to blurt out two sentences. She's also fresh out of patience with
people who can't, or won't fit in: "They
give you what you want so you won't hurt
them," she once memorably admonished a
woman whose lesbian teenager had lied
about being gay. That was the old Dr.
Laura. The new one is big time into the
biblical idea of homosexuality as a sin.
They can't get married, she fumes, so
they want to destroy marriage. The Gay
and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation
is taking out newspaper ads to protest this recent hobby horse.
And as for those feminists, well, they
won't be happy until everybody gets
third-trimester abortions. Dr. Laura's
son just entered teenhood. Maybe she's
afraid an army of perverts is
about to swoop in and nab him. | ||
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